Over in the Ask the linguist thread NinjaChickasked about rhotacism which, I came to learn, is the term used for the inability to pronounce “r” sounds.
My 11 year old son has always had this problem. Early on when he was three or four we hired a speech therapist to help him with this, but I don’t think she ever really did much good. At that time he had a lot of problems as well with other sounds like “sh” and “th” as I recall, but he seems to have gotten past that.
After listening carefully to him tonight it seems like he has particular trouble making the “r” sound at the end of a sentence where it sounds more like “ah” but there’s a bit of a “w” in there also. “R” sounds that come at the beginning or middle of a word have sort of a “r+w” blend sound.
Now that I know the word for the phenomenon I’ve been reading up on it, but I was wondering if any of you had any experience with it and how you have dealt with it.
I don’t have rhotacism, but due to my hearing loss, I have difficulty with R’s and for a long time, had a lisp as well. Seven years of speech during school helped me overcome my lisp, and helped my R’s become more pronounced, but it’s still not a normal sound. When I am excited or talking quickly, they tend to drop off and become more like an ‘ah’ sound (it was fine when I lived in Massachusetts!) or like a W if it’s next to a vowel. Words with an R surrounded on both sides by a vowel (ex. stirrer, aurora, paradise) are impossible for me to say properly. I refuse to, because I sound like an idiot, and just use an alternate word.
I would love to see a speech therapist again, but don’t have the money. I used to practice by reading aloud into a tape recorder, but haven’t done that in a long time.
I don’t change my speech to avoid words with R in them, but if given a choice, I automatically pick the one without R.
I took French in high school and college, and many of their words killed me. Crois, for example, I just cannot say properly.
If he can’t pronounce an “r” at the end of words, you should just pick up and move to Australia ;). He’d fit right in. Sorry, I couldn’t help it. My problem when I was a kid was not being able to pronounce the r at the beginning of words. This was especially problematic when my name starts with an “R”. I sort of grew out of it. And I still can’t roll (trill?) my tongue which is problematic for both Spanish and Japanese.
take out the dictionary and say some words he has prblems with. make him sit in front of a mirror and rpeat them. make him notice what shapes your mouth forms when u make an r sound
I think that it’s pretty messed up to use an R in the word for the inability to make R sounds.
Having said that, a trained speech therapist should be able to fix the problem, unless a specific neurological or anatomical issue is at the root of the problem.
I wish I could offer more, but all I can really suggest is perhaps having another speech therapist at least assess him. I don’t really recall any of the speech therapy I went through, as it stopped when I was still pretty young. I do, however, remember an emphasis on speaking slowly and attentively, combined with repetition of the problematic sound (eg, tongue-twisters).
And, again, I sort of ‘grew out’ of it, sometime around high school, so there’s definitely still hope.
I teach kids phonics which have this syndrome (for lack of a better word), and I’ve always
wondered why this r/w thing. Carefully examining the position of both my lips and tongue
(teeth too) when I say both sounds, the “r” sound seems to come from a curved tongue
concave upward touching the roof of the mouth, while the “w” requires a definite rounding
of the lips, with the tongue a little bit lower and flatter than it is for the “r”. You don’t even
need to do anything with your lips for an r sound. Thus both sounds seem to come from
completely different tongue/lip positions (or maybe not).
John, my tongue doesn’t change at all between the two, just my lips. I can kind of make an “R” sound with the sides of my tongue curling slightly upwards and just touching the top molars, but without the lip shaping it’s not much of one. Pretty much the total opposite of what you describe.
Your tongue *should * change position. Your lips shouldn’t move at all, which may be part of the reason why it’s so difficult for those with hearing loss to pronounce R - they don’t see the different tongue positions when first learning through lip-reading.
My speech therapist showed me exactly how to place and manuever my tongue, and I can say R perfectly fine alone using that training. But stick other letters around it and it gets harder.
That sounds like appalling advice and I’d strongly urge you not to force your child to do anything like that!
A speech therapist might help. I’d be wary of making a big deal of it to your child though as that might make him self conscious and make his problems worse. Good luck with it.
But I can’t do it like that (I can’t even imagine how it’d work, honestly), which is why I mentioned the way I was taught, since El Zagna already tried a therapist that didn’t seem to work.
It’s much like having your toilet explode every time you try to start the car, and then the lovely therapist says “No, do it again” and the toilet once again explodes and she gets a little cranky and says “No, do it like this” so you do and the freakin’ toilet explodes again.
For what it’s worth, I’ve had this my whole life. It’s decreased with age, but never really gone away.
People are constantly complementing me on my “wonderful accent.” Guesses for the accent are usually New Jersey, the UK, and Australia, with a few others thrown in (I’ve never lived in any of the places guessed, my “real” accent is completely midwestern.)
At this point, I wouldn’t get rid if it if I could; it’s become an important part of my interaction with the world. But I did have a speech therapist help me when I was a child; I know how to make the sound correctly, and given fairly intense concentration can do it for long stretches at a time–when there’s a formal need, which occasionally arises. I’d suggest at least this much is important.
IANA speech therapist, nor have I ever needed to consult one, so this is a wild stab in the dark.
Have the lad practice growling in front of a mirror. That is, close your teeth together, and pull your lips apart to “bare your fangs.” It’s nearly impossible to make any sound other than an R in that position. The tongue doesn’t even have to help.
Well, there seems to be more family history here than I was aware of. Little EZ’s mom, the lovely La Zagna, had trouble with her R’s early on, and to this day can’t roll her R’s. Also my wife has an aunt that can’t make the R sound, but she lives in Massachusetts where, as **LunaV **suggests, they don’t do R’s anyway.
I agree with pretty much everyone here, in that the best course of action would be to see a speech therapist. I’d recommend treading with caution when it comes to making your own program of therapy, even if you’re getting great stories from other people who went through therapy; each case and pathology is different, and there’s a surprising depth to the things speech pathologists take into consideration, which are rarely evident on the surface.
