Why is the 'R' difficult?

[Johanna]

“/r/ voiced alveolar-dental flap; it occurs in word medial positions; it does not occur in word initial or final positions.” —A Grammatical Sketch of Isaalo (Western Sisaala), 2006, p. 57.

[DavidwithanR]

@JKellyMap

The OP mentioned rhotics often “disappear” — true, they sometimes do, but note there is a difference between “r-coloring” (no distinct sound is made, such as a trill or uvular aproximant, BUT the adjacent vowel changes quality — as in ‘non-rhotic’ Received British Pronunciation of English), and true disappearance (as in many African speakers of English as a second language, for whom “work” sounds to me like “wek”).

They’re just changing ɝ or ɚ into something closer to ɛ - if you asked them to actually say “Weck”, it might sound different. But you can hunt all you like to find the actual “r” in an ɝ sound - there isn’t one. What I mean is that you’re not saying an “r” in “work” any more than the Africans are. (Unless you’re Scottish or something.)

[DavidwithanR]

@Nava

One of the defining characteristics (perhaps the defining characteristic) of a Catalan accent when speaking Spanish is precisely that the Ls are different in both languages; in most Catalan dialects, the L “moves to the ceiling” (it’s palatal vs the alveolar version of Spanish).

Thanks tothis person who thinks Spanish ortography is actually easier than it is, and who pointed out that both Ls are found in Portuguese, I was able to find the two IPA symbols: Spanish /l/, Catalan /ʎ/. For some reason the listings I find when searching for Catalan phonetics always say /l/, which is definitely not right.

Listen to some Russian, and see if they have any “Catalan L’s”.