Thread: English accent
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Old January 11, 2009, 01:30 PM
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Location: USA
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The trilled 'r' is very hard for a speaker of American English to learn. It took me a solid year to get it right. There are a few posts in the forums that describe tongue placement and air flow to help you learn.
It is the shortened trilled 'r' that precedes the 'd' (and other consonants).

The clipped 'r', when 'r' falls between vowels, can be learned in a couple of minutes. In American English, we have a consonant cluster 'tt'. It appears in words like better and pitter-patter. When these words are spoken quickly, as in normal conversation, you'll notice that there is no 't' sound in the words at all. What you are hearing is the clipped 'r' sound. It's closer to a 'd' than to a 't'. So, if you want to pronounce the Spanish word era, remember how 'better' is said in normal conversation. Repeat it several times, making sure you don't hear the 't' sound at all. While repeating it, drop the final 'r'. After several more repetitions, drop the 'b'. You are now correctly pronouncing the Spanish word era.
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