Rolling R's, erre, y double erre.

[SamM]

Hello guys,

I'm new to the forum but wanted somewhere to ask other speakers/learners about some issues I'm having with the Spanish trill.

I'm able to roll r's for erre, in use for words like 'hablar', 'caro', and 'nosotros', but the double erre has gotten the best of me. I found a video (How To Roll/Trill Your R (3 easy steps) - YouTube) where the creator explained how the sound of a double erre comes from having the tongue on the ancillary ridge, and pushing air out of your throat almost like you're clearing it. I come from an English speaking background with some French as well, so I'm trying not to use the back of my mouth/throat to perform the double erre sound, but I'm unsure of whether or not I'm getting it down properly with this method.

When I do roll my r's using this above method, I get a vibration in my tongue, but the tip of my tongue is laying flat, pointing to the back of my teeth. I also notice that the front of my tongue isn't really touching the ridge of my mouth, it's more so the sides of my tongue touching the ridge (creating something like a tunnel for the air I supposed), and I have to really think about using a double erre in words like carro, perro, and the likes. It feels really breathy when I try to use this method, and I've had to slow down a lot in order to think it through. 

I'm just curious if this sounds right or wrong, I don't want to spend all of my time practicing an impractical method and have to try and relearn it in a different way! Thanks in advance!

[stantontroy]

On 1/30/2023 at 10:15 PM, SamM said:

Hello guys,

I'm new to the forum but wanted somewhere to ask other speakers/learners about some issues I'm having with the Spanish trill.

I'm able to roll r's for erre, in use for words like 'hablar', 'caro', and 'nosotros', but the double erre has gotten the best of me. I found a video (How To Roll/Trill Your R (3 easy steps) - YouTube) where the creator explained how the sound of a double erre comes from having the tongue on the ancillary ridge, and pushing air out of your throat almost like you're clearing it. I come from an English speaking background with some French as well, so I'm trying not to use the back of my mouth/throat to perform the double erre sound, but I'm unsure of whether or not I'm getting it down properly with this method. slope game

When I do roll my r's using this above method, I get a vibration in my tongue, but the tip of my tongue is laying flat, pointing to the back of my teeth. I also notice that the front of my tongue isn't really touching the ridge of my mouth, it's more so the sides of my tongue touching the ridge (creating something like a tunnel for the air I supposed), and I have to really think about using a double erre in words like carro, perro, and the likes. It feels really breathy when I try to use this method, and I've had to slow down a lot in order to think it through. 

I'm just curious if this sounds right or wrong, I don't want to spend all of my time practicing an impractical method and have to try and relearn it in a different way! Thanks in advance!

I watched this video and just about every other popular video you can imagine on learning to roll my R's, but I still couldn't do it. I practiced intermittently for a couple weeks and still couldn't do it. I started to get really discouraged until one of my friends said that rolling his R feels somewhat like a hiss. I instantly tried it again and it worked almost immediately. Maybe the practice made it possible the second time around. 

[HeartJoy]

I think it's possible that the practice helped you the second time around. It can take some time for your mouth and vocal cords to learn new muscle movements, so even if you practiced intermittently, you probably still made some progress that enabled you to finally roll your R's. Also, hearing your friend describe the feeling of rolling an R as a hiss likely helped you to understand what it should feel like and gave you a visual image that you could work with. This combination of practice and finding a way to visualize what you were trying to do probably allowed you to succeed in rolling your R's.