Caio Rossi wrote:
>But when it comes to speak English people tend to
> roll their R's.
No, they really don't! Some regions in Scotland do, but English people
have great trouble with a rolled r. It's _not_ part of the spoken
English accent.
I also find many of these exercises in which you have repeated d's and
n's unhelpful for it, but that's my own personal experience of it.
I couldn't roll an r all the way through my teens and into my 20s, and
was told that if I couldn't do it at 21 I probably never would. The
nearest I could get, and I had to use it as a substitute, was a purr in
the back of the throat, like a cat. I could control it very well, and
produce it at any pitch or intensity - but it still wasn't a proper
rolled r with the tongue. Then it came, all of a sudden. when I was 22.
Someone I was talking to who was Spanish or Portuguese or Italian said
something about feeling it "ripple down the middle of the tongue from
back to front", and to curl the very tip of the tongue upwards to
"catch" it, and somehow, I succeeded in getting this "purr" to
ripple to the front. I still have a sensation that the the purr is still
happening, but the tip of the tongue is _definitely_ vibrating. (I can
also purr on pitch without using the tip of the tongue, for instance, by
sticking it out and holding it)
However, my method was more of a success by trial and error. I'm not
sure it would work as a scientific approach. Most speakers of languages
where the r is rolled did not have to be taught scientifically: they
picked it up by listening. And when teaching a "flipped" r, which is not
the same thing (is that what you were thinking of, Caio?) I sometimes
have trouble with students who can't let go of their "instinct" to use
the teeth and lips, and substituting d for r in these cases tends to
result, at first, in "dr".
To get a single flipped r, I teach singers to say America or horrible,
but to pronounce as Ameddica or hoddible (some English speakers make
this d very fricative and we first have to get rid of that) and then use
this anywhere where an audible r is required. Now, this _does_ sound
like some types of more upper-class English, but it isn't rolled.
These exercises which repeat d or n or dn very fast, I find like the
instructions to produce a trill by alternating the notes very fast. Some
will advocate this, some won't (I believe it was Lloyd Hanson said he
felt a trill was more like a conscious wide vibrato). In the same way, a
repeated fast dn dn dn isn't in itself a rolled r and never will be,
however fast you do it. For many people it will trigger off the rolled r
that is waiting in the wings (oh, please excuse the mixed metaphor
there!) but for many others - I know, I was one of those many others -
it will lead to a dead end.
Linda
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