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Rolling R

af byronarnold, 16. aug. 2008

Meddelelser: 34

Sprog: English

hiyayaywhopee (Vise profilen) 19. aug. 2008 20.54.20

I've got the rolling down when it's by itself but when it's in a consonant cluster like "dekstra" I stumble. The only way I can do it is separating the letters like the k and the n in "knabo," but that gets a lot harder when there are three or four of them.

Timtim (Vise profilen) 30. aug. 2008 09.00.42

andrew.longhofer:so he opted for the French/German gutteral R, which sounds like a softened, voiced "ĥ." If such an eminentulo was cool with using a "non-standard" pronunciation, anyone should be fine with it.
It strikes me that a good proportion of those Europeans whose languages feature a guttural R (and not a trilled or tapped variant) use that R in Esperanto.

Off the top of my head, I can think of some of the more eminent young people in Esperantujo, such big names as the president of TEJO, and the chief of the Internacia Seminario, himself a denaskulo.

I imagine that Esperanto has featured the guttural R since its inception, and it's too widespread among too many eminent people for others to label it as wrong.

I find this slightly unfair, since I doubt people would be so willing to accept a French person dropping the letter H or a Spaniard pronouncing the letter V as a B.

Using a guttural R ought to be considered incorrect, in the same sense as using an approximation for 'th' in English is. (Consider that a Frenchman might say "I sink/fink" for "I think", "zat is" for "that is", an Irishman speaks about there being "tree trees" [three trees] in his garden, and so on.)

Like these approximations, the language is still understood, so the users shouldn't be demonised, but I still consider it fair to say that the R should be trilled or tapped, and the guttural R should be considered an acceptable approximant to it, though it's not actually the correct sound.

As a related aside, PIV contains the verb kartavi to mean "pronouncing an R with the throat". In other words, it has a special verb to refer to pronouncing R in that particular way.

Frankouche (Vise profilen) 30. aug. 2008 14.33.53

Maybe try to do the sound of a propeller airplane, speed car, harley, motor "vrrrrrrr" or an machine gun "tttttttt", as maybe you made when you were a child okulumo.gif, to make vibrate your tongue with the sound "T" or "R".
When you can make it vibrate, the sound "R" is almost like a "L".

Then, maybe, you will able to repeat this phrase quickly and proudly with your new "rrrr" rideto.gif : "mi miris pri verdan vermon kiu reiris al verdvitran muron"

Matthieu (Vise profilen) 30. aug. 2008 14.50.30

By the way, do you pronounce R as a tap [ɾ] or a trill [r]?

To me, the first one isn’t too difficult, but I’m almost unable to roll the R.

Frankouche (Vise profilen) 30. aug. 2008 14.58.41

I usually pronounce the "R", esperantkape : [ʁ] or [ɾ]. I find the trill "r" to emphatic.
I've learned the trill "r" when i was a child, in holidays, in the south of France.

Maybe you can do it, doing a gargarism, mouthwash with some water in the mouth, not in the throat, to try the vibration, avoiding to suffocate okulumo.gif

Searching about methods to roll the "r", i read that even some spanish people can't do it...

Frankouche (Vise profilen) 2. sep. 2008 14.36.02

Hahaha, i tried the mouthwash but it wasn't a good advice rideto.gif : heuuu heuuu aaaaaa, i risked to drown myself...
As i told you, i found someone on a forum who tried the "machine gun method" which has worked very well for him after few days, the time to entraine the tongue...
An another method, is to imitate the sound of drums of a pipe band "tttt ttt tt tt...", it works fine, muscle the tongue well, and it's less strange than the "machine gun", when someone hears you... okulumo.gif

ceigered (Vise profilen) 8. sep. 2008 11.11.28

Ah, yes, the rolling your 'r's ridulo.gif.

Like someone said, the best thing is to copy the machine gun, motor boat and et cetera sounds, these are actually quite close to the actual sound.

Often the guttural rolling 'r' is so similar to the Russian/Scottish etc 'r' that you won't be able to tell the difference - at one point I thought a German man was from Italy simply because the rolls in the back of his throat were so similar to the ones that tap your front teeth.

Also, even if you are an English speaker, you should be able to do it naturally. Just pretend to be scottish and say 'a wee rabbit' or just 'rrrrrabbit', and then you have a rolling 'r'. ridulo.gif

Good Luck!

Desideratist (Vise profilen) 8. sep. 2008 15.53.55

I’m told that some people are genetically incapable of it – I too can manage to “flip” R a little or gurgle it, but not roll it properly. My boyfriend can roll his perfectly, and is making a few steps towards learning Esperanto, so his pronunciation will doubtless be better than mine…

But as has been said, the rolled R seems more desirable than mandatory. Esperanto is all about communication, and excluding people because they don’t have the perfect pronunciation would be counter to everything Esperanto is about. So keep trying, but don’t let it bother you too much if you can’t manage it.

On a related note, Esperanto doesn’t have the sound “th”, nor do a lot of other languages, and a significant proportion of people just can’t manage to pronounce that either. I read an article some time ago that the brain tends to filter out the linguistic sounds it doesn’t think it needs any more for some kind of processing speed or other, and therefore people who haven’t really needed to use that sound yet just “forget” it and in future can’t differentiate it properly. Like the old chestnut about speakers of Chinese and similar not really differentiating between “r” and “l” in English.

Ĝis

Desi

ceigered (Vise profilen) 16. mar. 2009 14.19.16

Desideratist:I’m told that some people are genetically incapable of it
You would have to have a speech impediment not to be able to pull one off, it's just about listening, practice etc. The actual figure for people physically incapable of it would be so small that you'd find it hard to find someone you know who would not be able to do one. It's just mind over matter, which is probably the hardest thing to overcome when learning a language IMHO.

Abras (Vise profilen) 17. mar. 2009 03.25.56

I have always had trouble rolling my r's too. It was a real pain when I took Spanish in middle school all those years ago -- especially since there were a few native speakers in the class that made it seem so easy. I just never got the hang of it.

Now that I'm learning Esperanto, though, I've actually started to pick up the roll. It's not perfect yet, but it's definitely there and getting better each day. Mind you, I never consciously worked on rolling them. I've just been reading a bunch of selections out loud. I find it helps me with my pronunciation and reading comprehension.

So maybe you should try reading out loud as well? Just a thought. And another word of advice: don't try too hard. I think you should just let it come naturally, and if it doesn't, just say "Oh well." It's not like the rolled r is absolutely necessary in Esperanto, after all.

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