R'n'R
January 22, 2006 – 6:40 PMThere are two distinct ways to trill your R's. The uvular trill, I can manage. This trill is mostly found in the French and German languages. It's more like a growling, or purring. I can do that in the back of my throat.
What I've never been able to do, what I can't do to save my life, is the alveolar trill, common to Spanish, Slavic languages, and Italian. This roll occurs near the middle/front of your tongue. Needless to say, your Spanish doesn't sound very convincing at all when you can't do this.
A professor of mine once told my class that being able to roll your Spanish 'r' is a genetic trait: you can either do it, or you can't, due to Spanish ancestors or lack thereof. When I was younger this made sense to me, because I certainly couldn't trill a Spanish R then and I still cannot do so now.
But as I grow older I find myself questioning this theory, which I haven't found to be concrete (yet). After all, the human race is wildly tangled with ethnicity and nationality. No single person is of pure Spanish or French or German or Celtic or whatever descent. We all trace our lineage back to Mesopotamia or thereabouts when it's all said and done, even if you do have to go back fifty bajillion generations to do so. I'm more inclined to believe that consonant capability is more akin to dialect than genetic predisposal. We learn our language patterns very young. What sounds we have no use for, we lose, probably by the time we're four or five years old.
I still can't trill a Spanish R. I wish I could. I've read about how the sound is made on many linguistic sites, but trying to make my tongue form the sound is like trying to will my eyes to turn blue.
Has anybody ever actually learned to do this, who was previously unable to do so? I'm really curious.