erinja:

RiotNrrd:

The only other language I can think of where the ĥ sound occurs at the beginning of a syllable is Greek.

The Dutch "g" is pronounced more or less that way, and there are TONS of Dutch words that start with "g". I personally don't speak Dutch, but my mom was from there, so I've heard it spoken quite a bit in my youth.

Yiddish, Hebrew, and Arabic, too. And I'm assuming many others.

Spanish, Russian, Polish, Georgian, Quechua....

el_edu:K is voiceless velar plosive and Ĥ is voiceless velar fricative.

It's fun to see how many linguists there are in the community. I was going to post this exact same description when I read the first post in the thread, but it had already been mentioned twice by the time I got to the last post in the thread.

It's amazing how much easier it is to describe the pronunciation of something when you have an understanding of the IPA and of the various places/manners of articulation.

The real question is whether or not you can produce a voiceless pharyngeal fricative. [ħ]

(Man I'm a dork...)

The Ĥ/ĥ is the sound you hear in "Bach", as in the musician. Even if you're an American, you should know this one too. I know it. (I know lazy people/people ashamed of feeling stupid say BAHK!, but yeah. it's not a K.)

Baĥ, I guess.

Actually, the difference is that the dutch g is a voiced velar fricative, whereas esperanto ĥ is voiceless.

super-griek:

RiotNrrd:

The only other language I can think of where the ĥ sound occurs at the beginning of a syllable is Greek.

The Dutch "g" is pronounced more or less that way, and there are TONS of Dutch words that start with "g". I personally don't speak Dutch, but my mom was from there, so I've heard it spoken quite a bit in my youth.

I am Dutch-speaking, and I can assure you: our g in the beginning of syllables does NOT sound like the Esperanto ĥ (our at least it doesn't in standard-Dutch). I'm not a linguist, but I think it is a sound between an Esperanto-g and the ĥ. To be honest, I couldn't think of any other language which has the sound... But in the quite rare occasions g comes on the end of a syllable (like in dag - day - or dagloon - a day's pay) it is pronounced as the ĥ.

Northern Mandarin, Some dialects of Min nan, Mongolian and Kazakh all use the hx sound when speaking, but it is usually skipped over and becomes a k or h sound.

I have read that any pronounciation of "R" is correct... And as for me, there are no problems in that - all Esperanto sounds are presented in Russian

I would love to be able to produce the trilled Esperanto r, but I can't roll my r's. Therefore, I use the French r instead of the English r when speaking Esperanto. If anyone has any practical info on learning to roll r's, I would appreciate it. I would prefer to use correct pronunciation!

mrgcatmom:I would love to be able to produce the trilled Esperanto r, but I can't roll my r's. Therefore, I use the French r instead of the English r when speaking Esperanto. If anyone has any practical info on learning to roll r's, I would appreciate it. I would prefer to use correct pronunciation!

One little tip - if you think consciously of the movement of your tongue when you pronounce things - is to compare it to pronouncing a d. Pronounce a few D's. I think you'll notice that the middle of your tongue is touching the top of your mouth. Now, try that again, with only the very tip of your tongue touching, instead. Try that a few times. Then try to speed that up, and keeping that general 'tongue position' in mind, experiment a little and see if you can't get some approximation of the Esperanto R. You don't need to be able to do a huge long trill, just a short tap, to get a good Esperanto pronunciation going! I think if you sit in a room and experiment a little, without fear of people listening in and thinking you're weird, with enough time you can probably get it. It's not so hard as people make it out to be.

Another hint - still along the lines of a D pronunciation - try pronouncing an Esperanto word with a D in it, surrounded by two vowels, such as "pado" ("path"). I assume you can pronounce that with no problem. Now speed that up. Try repeating it over and over again, faster and faster "padopadopadopado", and with a lighter d each time. I think the faster you get, the more you tend to converge on the Esperanto R sound, and "pado" ("path") will start to sound like "paro" ("pair"). Let me know if it works. This is just the random idea I had sitting here at my computer pronouncing things out and trying to explain how it works, but I think this might work.

The R to D thing is a common trick though. I used to sing in a chorus and choral music usually sounds horrible with an American R, so we were always instructed to roll our R's. And whoever didn't know how was instructed to pronounce them as D's, at least so they would blend in with the group and not stick out like a sore thumb!

I've been very interested in learning how to pronounce a rolled r, here are a few things I've learned that seem to help. There were two exercises in particular that helped me the most.

The main difficulty was in learning how to feel what I was doing. I paid a lot of attention to the touch sensation in my mouth (and particularly from my tongue) as I experimented with different things.

The first drill was to press my lips together and make a motorcycle sound by blowing across them, causing them to flap. This wasn't so much a drill as a self-demonstration. It anchored into my mind the physical feeling of the sort of vibration I want my tongue to do, as it makes the r sound by making a similar flapping while pressed against the roof of the mouth as air is blown across it. of course, lips flap much faster than the tongue can, but it at least gave me context.

The next thing, which actually was a drill, established the location of where the tongue is to tap/flap. I said the phrase "I edited it edited it edited it..." over and and over. where the tongue taps on the syllable stresses is where the tongue needs to flap against. Next I eliminated all the sounds except the duh duh duh duh ... duh duh duh duh...etc....and worked to be able to make that sound by very lightly pressing my tongue to that spot of contact and blowing across the top of it

Now, to get the r sound, you want the air to flow over the center of the tongue not the edges. so I focused on curling my tongue around the axis pointing towards the back of my throat. Some people can actually curl their tongue that way until it is canoe shaped, but alas I cannot (that ability is genetic btw...which may explain why some people have more trouble than others with the sound). The idea was to channel the air over the center of my tongue. I don't actually know if I am able to actually curl my tongue that way at all or not, but just trying to seems to help make the sound. Of course, the tongue has to be relaxed in order to flap too.

The final step was to make those mouth motions, but to voice it as an r sound rather than a d sound. It took a little practice, but It actually wasnt too hard.

Now I can "sort-of" do it. but let me explain that qualifyer. I wanted to be able to do a fully rolled r as well as the 1 - 2 tap esperanto r.

1) I can trill my r's, no doubt. However. I'm not totally satisfied with the speed of my taps. I can get about 3-4 taps per second. It seems to me that some native spanish (and other) speakers seem to get that many taps in about half a second. I need to make some recordings of myself so that I can be more objective in my evaluation though. Dividing my attention between listening and actually making the sound might not be the best way. I might be being overly critical of myself. In any case, I *think* that increasing the speed it's simply a matter of increasing the air flow (without increasing the volume which is tricky) and relaxing my tongue more. Easier said than done. but maybe with a lot of practice...

2) It's not just about being able to do it in a vacuum. you have to have the coordination to move your tongue INTO the proper position. Consider the sounds KR and TR. At the conclusion of the making of the K and T sounds, the tongue is in a different position. One has to reposition it to make the Rolled R sound, and that has to be done perfectly fluidly and very rapidly. It's not just 1 sound you have to learn. It may have taken a long time to learn, but now the rolled r sound is easy for me; I can make it all day long if I want. It's putting it into speech that's hard. Every possible combinations with the Rolled R sound and some other letter (both in front of and behind it) requires completely different coordination. Some combinations are effortless for me now. Others I still can't do. KR was particularly hard for me but I've made a lot of progress, TR is still darn near impossible (still I stumble into it sometimes...just wish I could do it at will). (And Zeus Help me if a word has two rolled r sounds in it, lol).

Also, it's very difficult for me to make any rolled r sound (even by itself) if I'm doing it cold. Sometimes I can do it, other times not. However, If I practice it for couple of minutes, then I can use it in speech much more easily. Native speakers don't need warm ups, I still do.

Anyway, for me it's a work in progress, but I thought some of that might be useful to someone.

awake:
1) I can trill my r's, no doubt. However. I'm not totally satisfied with the speed of my taps. I can get about 3-4 taps per second.

Not to speak for Spanish or anything - but as far as Esperanto is concerned, I wouldn't worry about how many taps per second you can get. You only really need one tap, period, in 90% of cases (the exception is when you have a compound word that has two r's in a row, and you might need to hold the r for more than one tap)