I don’t understand either. Once you’ve begun saying “laaaa” how can it possibly change into a “raaaa”? The ‘l’ is done with, all you’re saying now is “aaaaaa”.
It’s easy for me. Put your tongue on the alveolar ridge and start making noise. You should be saying “lllllllllllllllllll”, now slowly move the tip of your tongue towards the back of your mouth – making sure that the tip stays touching the roof but allowing the rest of the tongue to move naturally. The “llllll” sound will morph into an “rrrrrrrrrrrrr”, but a very deep sonorous “r”, slightly different from the one you usually hear. You may not notice the different until you move between that sound and your natural r a few times.
Sounds like a gagging l to me.
But it’s not the same - as you move your tongue back, you get a sound that is less like an /l/ and sounds very slightly more /r/-ish. But it’s not really that close. It still sounds more like an /l/, although a weird one.
At least not for me.
Is this in response to my post? You’re describing a “rrrr” sound. The person I was responding to was describing a “raaa” sound.
I don’t mean “rrrrrr” as in a trill, I mean a continuous liquid sound that could easily be chained into a “raaaa” sound, which is what I think they meant.
Does not seem true–my r (standard American) involves pointing the tip of the tongue at the hard palate, not all the way back to the soft palate.
“Drag” here implies the tongue remains in contact with the roof of the mouth but that’s not what you mean is it?
In the UK like north east part of US like in New York City the letter R is not pronuced.
So park is pak and party is paty .
Forget the aaaa. I think they phrased it poorly.
Can you say “lurid”?
Your tongue tip starts at the roof of your mouth, behind the teeth, and slides back, tip kept pointing up. It drops, shoots forward and is lightly pressed against the teeth for a D sound.
If you start with the l and pull your tongue back dropping it, then up, then forward, and press against the teeth, you said “laird”.
At least I do.
In my case there is what might be termed incidental contact by the tip of the tongue
with the upper front teeth when I make the “d” sound. However, the sound can be
made without any tongue-to-tooth contact at all.
Yup. I can too.
For me, the tip of the tongue is not against the roof of the mouth, it is down. The mid portion of the tongue is in contact with the aveolar ridge or so. If I touch the tip of my tongue to the hard palate while making the r sound, it becomes an l.
I’m ignoring the aaa. I don’t get rrr.
Okay, sitting at home where I can make lots of weird noises without drawing attention, I guess the sound with my tongue tip on the soft palate is somewhat more r flavored than I gave it credit. Seems an awkward way to make the r sound that is much more clear the “American” way.
That’s not how I say lurid at all. After the l, I drop the tip of my tongue and press the mid outer edges of the tongue to the roof. The u blends to the r. Then extend the tongue, dropping from roof contact and touching the tip of the tongue to the hard palate for the id. How much I want to emphasize the d sound makes the difference on stopping there, or flicking the tip of the tongue to make a duh sound at the end.
There’s no dragging the tip of my tongue along the roof of the mouth. I never have the tip of my tongue that far back in my mouth while talking.
“Pointing at” =/= “against”
My mistake for being too ambiguous. With the retroflex R, the tip points to the hard palate.
For the bunched R, it is the root/back of the tongue that goes back and raised (bunches together, hence the “bunched r”) and touches the velum.
Drag does not imply to touch the roof. If you continue to read the sentence, I continue with “until it hovers.” This is just to get an idea for the positioning and the difference of the /l/ and /r/ sound.
Bunched R. This video is really good because it shows how the back of the tongue raises towards the velum.
Retroflex R. This website calls it an approximant and describes the tongue as having its tip curled upwards, past the alveolar ridge and backwards. If you get to the soft spot (soft palate or velum) and are choking on your own tongue, you are going too far.
That is interesting. I can do either.
Intermingling descriptions from different people. Jragon said
Those links are interesting. I went and looked in the mirror, my tongue is mostly bunched, not really pointed at all. It turns out the tip does appear to go slightly up toward the alveolar ridge, but it is so bunched it is not like I really have a tip of the tongue, and it feels like it is pointed more downward. Pointing the tip upward makes an l sound.
This video is interesting.
I can’t imagine making an r by curling upward and rolling out that coiled tool.
I’m a native English speaker and I can easily make the r-as-in-ruby sound with the tip of my tongue pointing down, so, I don’t know what all the alveolish fuss is about. It’s more important for the back of the tongue to be pushed back and high in the mouth for a good rrrrrrrrr sound. Or, just growl. Grrrrr. Or, talk like a pirate, arrrrrrrr.
I consider the English-r-sound to be a vowel, precisely because you can sustain the growled rrrrrrr. It exists as a pure vowel in father, mother, fir.
But where the confusion comes in is that it is often diphthong with other vowel sounds, which changes its sound. Going to or from other vowel sounds, the English-r-sound tends to ‘color’ them. The words ‘are,’ ‘or,’ ‘ear’ all end in the same r-position. It’s the movement of the jaw, lips, and tongue closing into the English-r-sound which makes it sound like the initial vowels are being ‘colored’ by the English-r-sound. It’s like we’re eating those delicious vowels, and growling at anyone who’s going to try to take them out of our mouth.
Just like the sound of long-i (eye) is a diphthong of short a (ah) and long e (ee) [ah>ee = eye], so to are ‘are,’ ‘or,’ and ‘ear’ diphthongs. The movement of the parts of the mouth gliding from one position to another seems to create a new vowel sound.
Or, look at the words ‘yen’ and ‘wren’ (ignore the silent ‘w’). The vowel sound in ‘yen’ is a long e (ee) diphthonged into a short e (eh). And ‘wren’ is a diphthonged English-r-sound into a short e.
The English-r-sound isn’t the easiest of vowel sound to jump in and out of. Even native English speakers mangle a phrase like “rural juror” (made fun of in an episode of 30 Rock). And native English speakers confuse close ‘r-controlled’ diphthongs. For example, many English speakers pronounce ‘our’ like ‘are’ when it’s not accented in a sentence, “Is this ‘are’ table?” (it should always sound like ‘hour’). Or, they don’t make clear (or even hear) the difference between the sounds of ‘oar’ and ‘or’ – they supposedly aren’t supposed to sound the same (oh>r versus aw>r) – but I can’t hear the difference!
Just for grins, I just made the rrr sound with the tip of my tongue touching my bottom teeth. It takes a bit of the rr out and makes it a bit more lll. Even with a growl.
All I know is You can tell a real Scottish lass by the way she rolls her R’s.