Thread: rr thingy
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Old September 15, 2010, 06:04 PM
Feliz Feliz is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2010
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Native Language: American English
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I just came upon this interesting thread, and have read it all the way through. I read a lot of good advice here that I hadn't thought of before. I'd like to share with you how I overcame my inability to say the Spanish r. To do that, I have to thank my neighbor and his motorcycle. Almost every evening that he was a neighbor, he fine-tuned his motorcycle. What a racket! After a while, in frustration from the noise, I began to mimic the sound that I was hearing just to keep my cool and entertain myself at the same time. The sound that I made was: "rrrrumm, rrrrumm, rrrrumm." I trilled my tongue against my palate like the sound of that revving 2-cylinder motorcycle engine. When it came time to overcome my inability to trill the Spanish r, I remembered how that sound of the motorcycle was much like what I needed. So, now, instead of trying to trill the Spanish r, I trill the air-only sound of that motorcycle engine. When I'm saying Ricardo, for instance, the ear hears "r" but I'm not saying "r." The only actual letters of the alphabet that I'm speaking are i(e), c(k), a, d, and o. So, for me, there is no "r" in the "spoken" Spanish language when I'm trilling the Spanish r. There is just the fluttering of air that sounds like rr or rrrrrr to the ears. Gracias.
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