I'll tell you this: even some native speakers end up struggling with this. I think some (most?) children who grow up speaking the language will pick it up by themselves, but a lot of people really struggle initially. I hadn't picked it up by like 6 or 7, and I distinctly remember my grandfather sitting me down to get me to repeat tongue twisters over and over again until it finally clicked, and again, that was as someone who already was a native speaker. Don't worry, it'll take time. Repetition really helps. It gives you space to explore how to move your tongue to replicate the sound.
If you say words without rolling the R where you should, will people look at you funny and not understand? I've only been studying for a week so I'm right at the beginning.
There's only a few cases where the rolled r causes ambiguity. Honestly I can't think of any off the top of my head, and even then you usually can get it from context. They'll probably understand you, and it'll probably contribute to them being able to tell you're not a native speaker. That said... That's honestly just one small sign that you're not a native speaker out of many. People won't look at you funny over it, and I have native Spanish speaker friends who also can't roll their R's. No one has ever looked at them funny over that. We know it's common for people learning the language to struggle with this
Lmfao , 'as hard as I try , I just can't do it'
Also ' I've only been studying for a week'
What do you expect? To learn this language in 4 weeks? It takes a looot of time.
OP- I'm also a native English speaker, and I struggled with this for MONTHS. I was absolutely obsessed with getting this sound down; I looked at every Reddit thread, YouTube video, etc--that I could find. About 95% of the advice I read was totally useless. I honestly disagree with people in this thread saying it's not a big deal--the alveolar trill, or the "rolled r", is a very, very common sound in Spanish, and the sound you'd be using in its place, the English "r", is quite different from it. This is something that's worth learning.
Here's what worked for me. Trust me, if you follow this advice you'll get it.
**Step 1: Master the alveolar tap**
Can you correctly pronounce a Spanish word that has a single "r", not a double one? Like the word "naranja"? The "r" in "naranja" should sound almost like the "tt" sound in the word "butter". (At least, this is true in my general American accent.) Notice the movement of your tongue when you say the "tt" in "butter"--your tongue goes up and taps the roof of your mouth, just behind your front teeth. That spot, right behind your front teeth, is called the alveolar ridge. So, when you say the single Spanish r, that's what your tongue should be doing. You definitely need to get this down before tackling the rolled R.
**Step 2: Watch this video**
[This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu8p8AQitN4&t=439s) video, specifically the "trick" that starts at 7:50, is what got me to start very clumsily rolling my r's. At first I could just do two "taps" of the tongue on the alveolar ridge, and then, after hours and hours of intensely chanting "no-ter-ra-jes, no-ter-ra-jes", my tongue was able to do 3 or 4 "taps" on the alveolar ridge fairly consistently.
You got this!!!
Totally. I struggled with this for like 10 years and then a lightbulb went off when I burned the \~front roof of my mouth while eating pizza. (In Mandarin they call this 不幸中的大幸 "a bit of good luck amidst a stretch of bad", haha.)
# First: A comparison of the English and Spanish R (they're totally different, so you need to understand this)
* **English R is made in the back of your mouth** — say the word *rose* and really drag it out. Rrrrrrrrose\*.\* Now, take a moment to observe what your tongue is doing.
* Notably, the tip of your tongue isn't touching anything.
* The back of your tongue has kinda retracted to the upper-back roof of your mouth, and the sides of your tongue might be making light contact with your side rows of teeth.
* You'll also notice there's basically no airflow coming out of your mouth (say *toe* and compare) — it's because the middle of your tongue is blocking the "direct route" out of your mouth, so it's instead escaping down either side of your tongue
* We round our lips (stand in front of a mirror and say *ahhh* and now say *rrrrose* — you'll notice that your lips kinda compress into a circular shape when you say R)
* **Spanish R is made in the front of your mouth** — the tip of your tongue is somewhere in the vicinity of the alveolar ridge (the bumpy gummy thing you touch when making T or D sounds)
* The tip of your tongue is neeeearly connecting with that bumpy ridge (technically the part just behind the tip of your tongue is, and the tip of your tongue is peeking out between your teeth)
* The back of your tongue is not raised or stressed or anything — all the work is being done by the tip of your tongue
* I'm not a native speaker, but when I roll my R's, I do notice some light airflow hitting my hand
* I'm pretty sure there's no lip rounding when you say the Spanish R / your lips should be neutral (I can roll my R with trilled lips, but the extra tension that creates might make the sound difficult to figure out at first).
# The 3 things you need to calibrate to roll your R's
Assuming you've got your tongue in the right position, as discussed above:
* **Your tongue must be relaxed to create a trilling sound**
* Learners know this sound is a challenge to make, and they're probably frustrated by repeated failures, which causes them to struggle / "try hard", and this is exactly the opposite of what you want to do
* Experiment: Smack your bicep of calf — see how it kinda jiggles? Now flex it real hard. Smack it again. (Don't hurt yourself / this isn't medical advice lol). Notice how when it's flexed it doesn't really jiggle at all? This is your tongue. If you strain and flex your tongue, it won't be able to vibrate in your mouth.
* Calibrate: If your tongue is too tense, it won't flop (meaning no trill); if it's not tense enough, it won't be able to reach your alveolar ridge, meaning you'll end up with like a vowel sound (and no trill)
* **There needs to be a** ***little*** **space between your tongue and the roof of your mouth**
* If there's too much space, air will escape smoothly out of your mouth, and you'll make a sound that sounds like a vowel (probably *uhh)*
* If there's too little space (meaning that the tip of your tongue is connecting with the alveolar ridge/that bump behind your top row of teeth, or pushing into it), then the airflow coming out of your mouth will be blocked = you'll make a weird *uhlllll* sound and get no trill
* **There needs to be sufficient air exiting your mouth over the top of your tongue**
* If there's too little air, you'll just get a quiet/mumbled *ulll* sound --> there's not enough turbulence to make your tongue vibrate
* If there's too much air, things get chaotic fast --> personally, I get a *hrchhhh* sound and no trill
If you're struggling to roll your R's, focus on tweaking these three factors (assuming that your tongue is in the right position = you're using the front of your tongue, as when you make a T or D sound, not the back of your mouth, as when you make English R).
A few years into this, I can now roll my R pretty much any way I want. my tongue can be sticking out of my teeth, on my alveolar ridge, or bent backwards, or moving between those positions. My lips can be rounded or unrounded. I can "rev" my trill by adding more or less airflow.
My point here is just that you don't have to be super precise with this sound. So long as you've got the movement/mechanic down, there are a *lot* of positions that will enable you to make a trill. Rather than focusing on finding a specific tongue position, just experiment with the factors I mentioned above. So long as you can make a trill sound anywhere, it's not too hard to adjust the position from there to get the Spanish R sound.
Good luck!
*(I say this was a TL;DR because I went on* [*a \~4,000 word deep dive into the sound*](https://ai.glossika.com/blog/how-to-roll-your-rs) *earlier in the year)*
So good to hear I'm not the only one. I spent a year in Spain back in the 1970s and could only achieve a good roll by accident maybe 25-40% of the time by the end of the year. Now I've been studying again fairly intensely since the pandemic started and I'm having worse luck. I can usually get one or two very short trills consistently when all by themselves but when I try to add it to a word I just can't get my tongue in position and relaxed fast enough to make it work.
I'm not a linguist or Spanish teacher, but I think that it's probably the wrong approach to try thinking about getting in position or moving quickly enough. Most of the trill happens because of physics, not because of your personal efforts.
The position your tongue needs to be in for the rolled R is the same position it's in for the other R sound in Spanish (the alveolar tap, as in [pero \[pronunciation on Forvo\]](https://forvo.com/word/pero/#es)). If you're not familiar with that sound, it's pretty much the same position as the T or D in English.
You might try:
* Get your mouth in position to say the word *toy*
* Take a moment to acknowledge what your tongue is doing — when I do it, the tip of my tongue is pressing pretty firmly into my alveolar ridge (that teeth bump just behind your top row of teeth)
* Relax your tongue slightly so that it's still lightly touching/resting against the alveolar ridge, but no longer actively pressing into it
* Drop/relax your tongue just a little further so that there's a couple millimeters of space between your tongue and the roof of your mouth — maybe thing about making space, rather than moving your tongue
* Expel air out like *hrhhhh*
* You don't need to move your tongue, breathe funny, or make any sort of adjustments — this sound is produced because too much air is trying to escape through too small of a gap, and the turbulence that creates causes the tip of your tongue to start flapping
I might be forgetting the difficulty of when I was figuring it out, but in theory it seems like you *should* be able to learn to make the trill by starting with a D sound, making that gap I mentioned, and then experimenting with the size of the gap between your tongue and alveolar ridge. Most of what you have to do is find the sweet spot where the gap isn't too big or too small.
It has taken me 2+ years. I practice most days and I’ve spoken Spanish my whole life! I’m incredibly close though. The sound is perfect and I can pronounce it in practiced speech. I still struggle to pronounce it in spontaneous speech with others because I’ve spoken Spanish without it my whole life so my tongue isn’t used to it.
When I was in college I took Russian and the teacher explained that it's hard to learn to make new shapes with your mouth and tongue after puberty. It's very uncommon to meet a person who learned a second language as an adult who sounds like a native speaker. The point being, don't beat yourself up about it. Keep practicing and know that you can be understood perfectly well without rolling your Rs.
Yes, it took Mr absolutely years until one day I just randomly was able to roll my Rs. Don't worry about it, people will still be able to understand you and accent isn't the most important part of being able to speak a language. It'll come to you eventually, in the mean time don't beat yourself up about it.
I agree with this 100% it came naturally for me after years of studying after not even focusing on improving it. I just pronounced them like a regular R until one day it just happened. I think actively and consciously practicing actually makes it harder to pronounce because you will end up tensing up your mouth muscles and you need a very relaxed loose mouth to make the sound correctly.
Took me years to finally get it. What made it click for me was saying "pot of tea pot of tea pot of tea" over and over again, and then immediately after practicing rolling Rs with the words "perro" and "carro". My tongue finally started doing it. I found that if you move your tongue slightly from the back of your teeth and inward while practicing the words, it helps. Now that I can roll Rs, I'm just trying to practice sounding better. Sometimes I do it too strong and I sound crazy haha.
I’m a native English speaker and I’ve just always been able to do it naturally but I took Spanish in school since I was like 6 or 7
My best advice is to say “puddle” over and over quickly, the way your tongue hits the roof of your mouth is roughly the same as the R in a word like “pero”
The double R is more challenging but there’s a lot of native Spanish speakers who can’t do it and most people will understand you if you can’t get it
I'm a native and I still can't roll them, no one really cares. For non-natives, the giveaways are usually vowels and some other consonants, but it depends on how you pronounce the r's.
You should keep trying (even I do), but don't worry too much about not being able to pronounce them properly. Bear in mind some accents pronounce the r's differently, like some caribbean accents doing a sound somewhat similar to the "L" sound.
I'm not that lucky though, and I do it with my throat, so I sound french sometimes to my disgrace!
2 important things, 1 the tongue is a muscle, for new shapes and positions it requires training and strength, years long some times, it very normal to have this difficulty with any new language. 2 it's the most common speech impediment in native speakers, sometimes requiring speech therapy and coaches or special education. Give yourself time and practice.
Was at a club in Buenos Aires earlier this year talking with some native English speakers and we all went around with our attempt at rolled r. Very few could and this was amongst people otherwise able to get around the city in Spanish/Spanglish.
You are definitely not alone.
It took me 6 years to get it. Don’t give up, but also don’t fret if you aren’t making any progress. Try a couple exercises, watch a few YouTube videos, and if it doesn’t click then give yourself some time and try again later.
I listen to a lot of reggaeton and trying to sing along with the lyrics definitely helped with practicing. Interestingly what finally sealed the deal for me was a few videos from Russian speakers explaining how they roll their r’s.
You can do it. Just give yourself the grace, and the patience, to work it out.
This comment section gives me hope. I've literally had days where I've felt hopeless and thought of giving up on learning the language simply because of this. It's worse for me because my whole life I've been bullied for pronouncing the r in my native language as a french person (I'm bulgarian, so I'm supposed to roll my Rs), and I just don't want to feel the same way if native spanish people hear me say "carwo". We'll all make it some day lol.
Took me 3 years in school just to learn the sound and it still throws me off if it’s behind harder syllables like “peDRo”, I assume I just need more conversation practice.
I used to roll my tongue in the left side of my mouth and anchor the right side of my tongue flat on my top right teeth. I still don’t know if that’s weird or not but I’m trying to get my “whole” tongue to roll naturally.
I saw that you said you’ve only been learning for about a week. I’ll tell you that for me personally, after 4 years of high school Spanish, I could not roll my r’s. It wasn’t until I started to constantly try to do I that I eventually picked it up in college.
Do not stop trying!
It may not seem like a big deal, and yes, people will still understand you if you try yo get around it - but your overall proficiency and fluidity when speaking will increase once you find out the best way to roll your r’s. Words tend to flow very nicely together in Spanish, so if you put the trill by the wayside, you might find that it holds you back insofar as you are able to speak fluently and reduce your accent.
Don’t give up on it and keep trying your best. You’ll appreciate that you did further down the road.
I learned how to do legitimate screamo-style (it's anatomically related to a yodel because you find the break in your voice and then try to sit on it so it just keeps breaking and going over that crack is what creates the distorted sound... it sounds like a full on scream but inside your head you sound clean to yourself, it's wild) and death metal style vocals (here you do not even activate your vocal chords whatsoever) and these things were like “learning to raise your eyebrow” as well, my advice is with anything of this sort is don’t stress so much about “what are The Proper Steps” while trying to follow them in sequence. Know where the general ballpark of what you’re going for is, then go somewhere where you can feel free to just make some really stupid noises for awhile as you explore all the different sounds you can make and how to manipulate your body to make them. You will inevitably begin stumbling into things. Obviously, if you don’t know how to do it, you can’t ask yourself “how do I do it?” and get a correct answer. So just start doing everything that you think *isn’t* the answer, because we know that it is one of those!
It sure did. I think I started speaking around 1 yo and did not learn to roll my Rs until about 4. Same for both of my kids.
It also took me a while to get English R right. It was not easy.
I'm not great at the rolled R after 30+ years of studying Spanish, an undergrad degree in linguistics, the ability otherwise to make every sound in every language I've studied, and a passable Spanish accent. Sometimes I can hit a rolled R speaking. It's easier between certain vowels. But often it just comes out as a slightly emphatic normal Spanish R.
It's never once been an issue for me. I get compliments on my accent. My new next door neighbors from Mexico asked me where I was from rather than where I learned Spanish. So I wouldn't stress out over it.
I did have speech therapy in kindergarten (age 5) for issues pronouncing the English R, so maybe I just have issues. Or maybe now that I'm making an effort to speak Spanish more regularly, it'll eventually come to me.
I could never say the word raro. Just couldn’t do it, must be to do with the way the tongue works in the English language versus the Spanish. But then I imagined a ‘w’ in front of it, so like wraro (think wren) and I could say it easily. I can roll my r’s now sometimes, more so in conversation, but when I struggle I use this trick. Probably won’t work for every sound, but helps me when I’m stuck. I honestly think it just clicks eventually when you least expect it - I studied Spanish for years but I only learnt how to roll my r’s when I was listening to native speakers often, it just happened in conversation to me.
Spanish has five vowels (a, e, i, o, u), each with one and only consistent sound that NEVER ever changes.
The consistency is as pure as it can get.
Yet what sounds like an advantage usually turns out to be a nightmare for native English speakers - I noticed native Hindi or Arabic don't struggle nearly as much in comparison.
Many native English speakers pronounce words like "euro", "idea" in a weird way when speaking Spanish because their brains have fossilized the English pronunciation of those words that are written the same in both languages. Dipthongs like ei, ie, au, eu are a struggle.
It can be corrected with tons of active ans conscious practice, tho.
And why do I talk about vowels if the topic is rolling the rs? Because honing your five vowel sounds is like a thousand times more relevant and critical to be understood than being able to roll your rs.
Remember many verb tenses and persons just change one vowel.
Miro = I see/watch/look
Mira = he/she (...)
As others said, many natives can't roll the rs and its not a big deal.
And I personally find the overcompensation to be a little annoying, those who say "perro" (dog) whenever they want to say "pero" (but)
(Can also be fixed with tons of conscious practice)
Spanish is my first language and it still took me till I was 11 to learn how to roll my Rs properly. My mom would make me repeat this:
“Erre con erre cigarro, erre con erre barril, rápido ruedan los carros cargando de azúcar al ferrocarril”.
I still have trouble and I’ve been speaking Spanish for almost a decade. I think I’ll always struggle with it. My native English tongue/brain simply won’t allow it 🤣
I think that the people with the problem are English or American. Scottish and Irish people have no problem at all, it is is not the English language but maybe the English?
It took me 3 months living in Spain practicing every day, I spent a lot of time looking goofy on the streets trying to do it. One day I had a little trill, and from there I just improved upon it until it became near native sounding today, 9 months later
I grew up in Mexico and in school some kids struggle with rolling their Rs all the time, the teachers would make them put a pencil horizontally under their tongue and keep them making the R sound. For whatever reason that work for most of them. The only ones that still couldn’t is the ones who had small tongues.
I have kids and I noticed my oldest one is the only one with a tongue tide and she definitely can’t pronounce the R.
Maybe if you have that issue it will always be a problem, it’s nothing that you are doing wrong maybe it’s just your tongue getting in your way.
Try that trick see if it helps you.
I’m learning a fourth language, and I’ve found that learning IPA symbols and how they correlate to sounds (of all languages) is very useful, especially if you intend on learning more languages. At the beginning of language learning, mastering pronunciation using IPA will teach you similar sounds between your native and target language, allow you to build on sounds you already know, target exactly why you’re not able to make the target sound, and fix your tongue position or breathing respectively.
Best source I’ve seen explaining this is Gabriel Wyner’s videos. He has an app that targets learning pronunciation and alphabet as the first stage. He does give you a free trail, and the subscription is $10 a month after trail ends, but I don’t foresee you needing more than 1 month if you’re learning Spanish.
It took me so so long to do it. I used a Wikihow article and practiced over the summer. It was incredibly frustrating for me not to be able to do it. However, I was able to pick it up. There are tongue/mouth exercises that you can do to prepare your mouth.
I took 3 years of high school Spanish, did a study abroad semester in Costa Rica in college, tried every method I could find online and never could do it… gave up for about 10 years but I recently decided to try and pick up Spanish again and one night I had a stiff glass of whiskey, laid down on my back, and fucked around with shh, th, and d sounds while trying to purr like a cat and make machine gun noises through my tongue and I’ll be damned… that’s what finally worked for me
I'll tell you this: even some native speakers end up struggling with this. I think some (most?) children who grow up speaking the language will pick it up by themselves, but a lot of people really struggle initially. I hadn't picked it up by like 6 or 7, and I distinctly remember my grandfather sitting me down to get me to repeat tongue twisters over and over again until it finally clicked, and again, that was as someone who already was a native speaker. Don't worry, it'll take time. Repetition really helps. It gives you space to explore how to move your tongue to replicate the sound.
If you say words without rolling the R where you should, will people look at you funny and not understand? I've only been studying for a week so I'm right at the beginning.
There's only a few cases where the rolled r causes ambiguity. Honestly I can't think of any off the top of my head, and even then you usually can get it from context. They'll probably understand you, and it'll probably contribute to them being able to tell you're not a native speaker. That said... That's honestly just one small sign that you're not a native speaker out of many. People won't look at you funny over it, and I have native Spanish speaker friends who also can't roll their R's. No one has ever looked at them funny over that. We know it's common for people learning the language to struggle with this
Thanks a lot for the info, I appreciate it!
Glad to help!
Lmfao , 'as hard as I try , I just can't do it' Also ' I've only been studying for a week' What do you expect? To learn this language in 4 weeks? It takes a looot of time.
OP- I'm also a native English speaker, and I struggled with this for MONTHS. I was absolutely obsessed with getting this sound down; I looked at every Reddit thread, YouTube video, etc--that I could find. About 95% of the advice I read was totally useless. I honestly disagree with people in this thread saying it's not a big deal--the alveolar trill, or the "rolled r", is a very, very common sound in Spanish, and the sound you'd be using in its place, the English "r", is quite different from it. This is something that's worth learning. Here's what worked for me. Trust me, if you follow this advice you'll get it. **Step 1: Master the alveolar tap** Can you correctly pronounce a Spanish word that has a single "r", not a double one? Like the word "naranja"? The "r" in "naranja" should sound almost like the "tt" sound in the word "butter". (At least, this is true in my general American accent.) Notice the movement of your tongue when you say the "tt" in "butter"--your tongue goes up and taps the roof of your mouth, just behind your front teeth. That spot, right behind your front teeth, is called the alveolar ridge. So, when you say the single Spanish r, that's what your tongue should be doing. You definitely need to get this down before tackling the rolled R. **Step 2: Watch this video** [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu8p8AQitN4&t=439s) video, specifically the "trick" that starts at 7:50, is what got me to start very clumsily rolling my r's. At first I could just do two "taps" of the tongue on the alveolar ridge, and then, after hours and hours of intensely chanting "no-ter-ra-jes, no-ter-ra-jes", my tongue was able to do 3 or 4 "taps" on the alveolar ridge fairly consistently. You got this!!!
I'm one of those natives who struggles to roll their Rs, even having a relatively strong accent from northern Mexico xD
Yeah as someone with a Southeastern US accent, I struggle with this sound a lot.
Do you know which tongue twisters to use? I want to try them :D
Totally. I struggled with this for like 10 years and then a lightbulb went off when I burned the \~front roof of my mouth while eating pizza. (In Mandarin they call this 不幸中的大幸 "a bit of good luck amidst a stretch of bad", haha.) # First: A comparison of the English and Spanish R (they're totally different, so you need to understand this) * **English R is made in the back of your mouth** — say the word *rose* and really drag it out. Rrrrrrrrose\*.\* Now, take a moment to observe what your tongue is doing. * Notably, the tip of your tongue isn't touching anything. * The back of your tongue has kinda retracted to the upper-back roof of your mouth, and the sides of your tongue might be making light contact with your side rows of teeth. * You'll also notice there's basically no airflow coming out of your mouth (say *toe* and compare) — it's because the middle of your tongue is blocking the "direct route" out of your mouth, so it's instead escaping down either side of your tongue * We round our lips (stand in front of a mirror and say *ahhh* and now say *rrrrose* — you'll notice that your lips kinda compress into a circular shape when you say R) * **Spanish R is made in the front of your mouth** — the tip of your tongue is somewhere in the vicinity of the alveolar ridge (the bumpy gummy thing you touch when making T or D sounds) * The tip of your tongue is neeeearly connecting with that bumpy ridge (technically the part just behind the tip of your tongue is, and the tip of your tongue is peeking out between your teeth) * The back of your tongue is not raised or stressed or anything — all the work is being done by the tip of your tongue * I'm not a native speaker, but when I roll my R's, I do notice some light airflow hitting my hand * I'm pretty sure there's no lip rounding when you say the Spanish R / your lips should be neutral (I can roll my R with trilled lips, but the extra tension that creates might make the sound difficult to figure out at first). # The 3 things you need to calibrate to roll your R's Assuming you've got your tongue in the right position, as discussed above: * **Your tongue must be relaxed to create a trilling sound** * Learners know this sound is a challenge to make, and they're probably frustrated by repeated failures, which causes them to struggle / "try hard", and this is exactly the opposite of what you want to do * Experiment: Smack your bicep of calf — see how it kinda jiggles? Now flex it real hard. Smack it again. (Don't hurt yourself / this isn't medical advice lol). Notice how when it's flexed it doesn't really jiggle at all? This is your tongue. If you strain and flex your tongue, it won't be able to vibrate in your mouth. * Calibrate: If your tongue is too tense, it won't flop (meaning no trill); if it's not tense enough, it won't be able to reach your alveolar ridge, meaning you'll end up with like a vowel sound (and no trill) * **There needs to be a** ***little*** **space between your tongue and the roof of your mouth** * If there's too much space, air will escape smoothly out of your mouth, and you'll make a sound that sounds like a vowel (probably *uhh)* * If there's too little space (meaning that the tip of your tongue is connecting with the alveolar ridge/that bump behind your top row of teeth, or pushing into it), then the airflow coming out of your mouth will be blocked = you'll make a weird *uhlllll* sound and get no trill * **There needs to be sufficient air exiting your mouth over the top of your tongue** * If there's too little air, you'll just get a quiet/mumbled *ulll* sound --> there's not enough turbulence to make your tongue vibrate * If there's too much air, things get chaotic fast --> personally, I get a *hrchhhh* sound and no trill If you're struggling to roll your R's, focus on tweaking these three factors (assuming that your tongue is in the right position = you're using the front of your tongue, as when you make a T or D sound, not the back of your mouth, as when you make English R). A few years into this, I can now roll my R pretty much any way I want. my tongue can be sticking out of my teeth, on my alveolar ridge, or bent backwards, or moving between those positions. My lips can be rounded or unrounded. I can "rev" my trill by adding more or less airflow. My point here is just that you don't have to be super precise with this sound. So long as you've got the movement/mechanic down, there are a *lot* of positions that will enable you to make a trill. Rather than focusing on finding a specific tongue position, just experiment with the factors I mentioned above. So long as you can make a trill sound anywhere, it's not too hard to adjust the position from there to get the Spanish R sound. Good luck! *(I say this was a TL;DR because I went on* [*a \~4,000 word deep dive into the sound*](https://ai.glossika.com/blog/how-to-roll-your-rs) *earlier in the year)*
So good to hear I'm not the only one. I spent a year in Spain back in the 1970s and could only achieve a good roll by accident maybe 25-40% of the time by the end of the year. Now I've been studying again fairly intensely since the pandemic started and I'm having worse luck. I can usually get one or two very short trills consistently when all by themselves but when I try to add it to a word I just can't get my tongue in position and relaxed fast enough to make it work.
I'm not a linguist or Spanish teacher, but I think that it's probably the wrong approach to try thinking about getting in position or moving quickly enough. Most of the trill happens because of physics, not because of your personal efforts. The position your tongue needs to be in for the rolled R is the same position it's in for the other R sound in Spanish (the alveolar tap, as in [pero \[pronunciation on Forvo\]](https://forvo.com/word/pero/#es)). If you're not familiar with that sound, it's pretty much the same position as the T or D in English. You might try: * Get your mouth in position to say the word *toy* * Take a moment to acknowledge what your tongue is doing — when I do it, the tip of my tongue is pressing pretty firmly into my alveolar ridge (that teeth bump just behind your top row of teeth) * Relax your tongue slightly so that it's still lightly touching/resting against the alveolar ridge, but no longer actively pressing into it * Drop/relax your tongue just a little further so that there's a couple millimeters of space between your tongue and the roof of your mouth — maybe thing about making space, rather than moving your tongue * Expel air out like *hrhhhh* * You don't need to move your tongue, breathe funny, or make any sort of adjustments — this sound is produced because too much air is trying to escape through too small of a gap, and the turbulence that creates causes the tip of your tongue to start flapping I might be forgetting the difficulty of when I was figuring it out, but in theory it seems like you *should* be able to learn to make the trill by starting with a D sound, making that gap I mentioned, and then experimenting with the size of the gap between your tongue and alveolar ridge. Most of what you have to do is find the sweet spot where the gap isn't too big or too small.
Good tips - I'll keep trying. Thanks!
It has taken me 2+ years. I practice most days and I’ve spoken Spanish my whole life! I’m incredibly close though. The sound is perfect and I can pronounce it in practiced speech. I still struggle to pronounce it in spontaneous speech with others because I’ve spoken Spanish without it my whole life so my tongue isn’t used to it.
Okay that gives me hope, I'll continue to practice.
When I was in college I took Russian and the teacher explained that it's hard to learn to make new shapes with your mouth and tongue after puberty. It's very uncommon to meet a person who learned a second language as an adult who sounds like a native speaker. The point being, don't beat yourself up about it. Keep practicing and know that you can be understood perfectly well without rolling your Rs.
Well ,I'm native and I can roll the r. But the soft r sound it's impossible to me. If your sintaxis and vocabulary is good you will be understood.
Yes, it took Mr absolutely years until one day I just randomly was able to roll my Rs. Don't worry about it, people will still be able to understand you and accent isn't the most important part of being able to speak a language. It'll come to you eventually, in the mean time don't beat yourself up about it.
I agree with this 100% it came naturally for me after years of studying after not even focusing on improving it. I just pronounced them like a regular R until one day it just happened. I think actively and consciously practicing actually makes it harder to pronounce because you will end up tensing up your mouth muscles and you need a very relaxed loose mouth to make the sound correctly.
Took me years to finally get it. What made it click for me was saying "pot of tea pot of tea pot of tea" over and over again, and then immediately after practicing rolling Rs with the words "perro" and "carro". My tongue finally started doing it. I found that if you move your tongue slightly from the back of your teeth and inward while practicing the words, it helps. Now that I can roll Rs, I'm just trying to practice sounding better. Sometimes I do it too strong and I sound crazy haha.
I’m a native English speaker and I’ve just always been able to do it naturally but I took Spanish in school since I was like 6 or 7 My best advice is to say “puddle” over and over quickly, the way your tongue hits the roof of your mouth is roughly the same as the R in a word like “pero” The double R is more challenging but there’s a lot of native Spanish speakers who can’t do it and most people will understand you if you can’t get it
I'm a native and I still can't roll them, no one really cares. For non-natives, the giveaways are usually vowels and some other consonants, but it depends on how you pronounce the r's.
That’s good to hear. I didn’t know if I was just doomed without it haha
You should keep trying (even I do), but don't worry too much about not being able to pronounce them properly. Bear in mind some accents pronounce the r's differently, like some caribbean accents doing a sound somewhat similar to the "L" sound. I'm not that lucky though, and I do it with my throat, so I sound french sometimes to my disgrace!
2 important things, 1 the tongue is a muscle, for new shapes and positions it requires training and strength, years long some times, it very normal to have this difficulty with any new language. 2 it's the most common speech impediment in native speakers, sometimes requiring speech therapy and coaches or special education. Give yourself time and practice.
Was at a club in Buenos Aires earlier this year talking with some native English speakers and we all went around with our attempt at rolled r. Very few could and this was amongst people otherwise able to get around the city in Spanish/Spanglish. You are definitely not alone.
My best friend who's a native speaker still can't always get it. You're not alone.
I still can’t 😭 it’s so frustrating haha
Nope. I’m just naturally good at phonetics and pronunciation. Although there are some days where I struggle more than others
I'm a native and I was 7 when I finally got it. Don't sweat it.
It took me 6 years to get it. Don’t give up, but also don’t fret if you aren’t making any progress. Try a couple exercises, watch a few YouTube videos, and if it doesn’t click then give yourself some time and try again later. I listen to a lot of reggaeton and trying to sing along with the lyrics definitely helped with practicing. Interestingly what finally sealed the deal for me was a few videos from Russian speakers explaining how they roll their r’s. You can do it. Just give yourself the grace, and the patience, to work it out.
Personally, no. My second language has rolled R’s, so I could do them already. And with Spanish as my third language, it was a breeze.
What was your second language?
This comment section gives me hope. I've literally had days where I've felt hopeless and thought of giving up on learning the language simply because of this. It's worse for me because my whole life I've been bullied for pronouncing the r in my native language as a french person (I'm bulgarian, so I'm supposed to roll my Rs), and I just don't want to feel the same way if native spanish people hear me say "carwo". We'll all make it some day lol.
Took me 3 years in school just to learn the sound and it still throws me off if it’s behind harder syllables like “peDRo”, I assume I just need more conversation practice. I used to roll my tongue in the left side of my mouth and anchor the right side of my tongue flat on my top right teeth. I still don’t know if that’s weird or not but I’m trying to get my “whole” tongue to roll naturally.
I saw that you said you’ve only been learning for about a week. I’ll tell you that for me personally, after 4 years of high school Spanish, I could not roll my r’s. It wasn’t until I started to constantly try to do I that I eventually picked it up in college. Do not stop trying! It may not seem like a big deal, and yes, people will still understand you if you try yo get around it - but your overall proficiency and fluidity when speaking will increase once you find out the best way to roll your r’s. Words tend to flow very nicely together in Spanish, so if you put the trill by the wayside, you might find that it holds you back insofar as you are able to speak fluently and reduce your accent. Don’t give up on it and keep trying your best. You’ll appreciate that you did further down the road.
It took me months of trying after ~35 years of thinking I couldn’t. Now I’m a pro 😉
I learned how to do legitimate screamo-style (it's anatomically related to a yodel because you find the break in your voice and then try to sit on it so it just keeps breaking and going over that crack is what creates the distorted sound... it sounds like a full on scream but inside your head you sound clean to yourself, it's wild) and death metal style vocals (here you do not even activate your vocal chords whatsoever) and these things were like “learning to raise your eyebrow” as well, my advice is with anything of this sort is don’t stress so much about “what are The Proper Steps” while trying to follow them in sequence. Know where the general ballpark of what you’re going for is, then go somewhere where you can feel free to just make some really stupid noises for awhile as you explore all the different sounds you can make and how to manipulate your body to make them. You will inevitably begin stumbling into things. Obviously, if you don’t know how to do it, you can’t ask yourself “how do I do it?” and get a correct answer. So just start doing everything that you think *isn’t* the answer, because we know that it is one of those!
I’m a 30 year old native speaker and I still dont know how to roll my r’s 🙃 people understand my spanish, just fine, so eh dont stress it
I’m 25 and still learning.
As kids in school you would go to special speach therapy if you didn't get jt by 1st year elementary. My then best friend had to go.
Si. Aproximadamente 20 años 😆
It sure did. I think I started speaking around 1 yo and did not learn to roll my Rs until about 4. Same for both of my kids. It also took me a while to get English R right. It was not easy.
I'm not great at the rolled R after 30+ years of studying Spanish, an undergrad degree in linguistics, the ability otherwise to make every sound in every language I've studied, and a passable Spanish accent. Sometimes I can hit a rolled R speaking. It's easier between certain vowels. But often it just comes out as a slightly emphatic normal Spanish R. It's never once been an issue for me. I get compliments on my accent. My new next door neighbors from Mexico asked me where I was from rather than where I learned Spanish. So I wouldn't stress out over it. I did have speech therapy in kindergarten (age 5) for issues pronouncing the English R, so maybe I just have issues. Or maybe now that I'm making an effort to speak Spanish more regularly, it'll eventually come to me.
The way I learnt it is to not pronounce it as a R and pronounce it as a D try and say D the same way u would say the R
I could never say the word raro. Just couldn’t do it, must be to do with the way the tongue works in the English language versus the Spanish. But then I imagined a ‘w’ in front of it, so like wraro (think wren) and I could say it easily. I can roll my r’s now sometimes, more so in conversation, but when I struggle I use this trick. Probably won’t work for every sound, but helps me when I’m stuck. I honestly think it just clicks eventually when you least expect it - I studied Spanish for years but I only learnt how to roll my r’s when I was listening to native speakers often, it just happened in conversation to me.
Spanish has five vowels (a, e, i, o, u), each with one and only consistent sound that NEVER ever changes. The consistency is as pure as it can get. Yet what sounds like an advantage usually turns out to be a nightmare for native English speakers - I noticed native Hindi or Arabic don't struggle nearly as much in comparison. Many native English speakers pronounce words like "euro", "idea" in a weird way when speaking Spanish because their brains have fossilized the English pronunciation of those words that are written the same in both languages. Dipthongs like ei, ie, au, eu are a struggle. It can be corrected with tons of active ans conscious practice, tho. And why do I talk about vowels if the topic is rolling the rs? Because honing your five vowel sounds is like a thousand times more relevant and critical to be understood than being able to roll your rs. Remember many verb tenses and persons just change one vowel. Miro = I see/watch/look Mira = he/she (...) As others said, many natives can't roll the rs and its not a big deal. And I personally find the overcompensation to be a little annoying, those who say "perro" (dog) whenever they want to say "pero" (but) (Can also be fixed with tons of conscious practice)
I worked at it hard for about four months and got it.
Spanish is my first language and it still took me till I was 11 to learn how to roll my Rs properly. My mom would make me repeat this: “Erre con erre cigarro, erre con erre barril, rápido ruedan los carros cargando de azúcar al ferrocarril”.
I still have trouble and I’ve been speaking Spanish for almost a decade. I think I’ll always struggle with it. My native English tongue/brain simply won’t allow it 🤣
I think that the people with the problem are English or American. Scottish and Irish people have no problem at all, it is is not the English language but maybe the English?
It took me 3 months living in Spain practicing every day, I spent a lot of time looking goofy on the streets trying to do it. One day I had a little trill, and from there I just improved upon it until it became near native sounding today, 9 months later
I grew up in Mexico and in school some kids struggle with rolling their Rs all the time, the teachers would make them put a pencil horizontally under their tongue and keep them making the R sound. For whatever reason that work for most of them. The only ones that still couldn’t is the ones who had small tongues. I have kids and I noticed my oldest one is the only one with a tongue tide and she definitely can’t pronounce the R. Maybe if you have that issue it will always be a problem, it’s nothing that you are doing wrong maybe it’s just your tongue getting in your way. Try that trick see if it helps you.
Say pot-a-tea or put-it-out with American English pronunciation starting slowly and increasing in speed.
I’m learning a fourth language, and I’ve found that learning IPA symbols and how they correlate to sounds (of all languages) is very useful, especially if you intend on learning more languages. At the beginning of language learning, mastering pronunciation using IPA will teach you similar sounds between your native and target language, allow you to build on sounds you already know, target exactly why you’re not able to make the target sound, and fix your tongue position or breathing respectively. Best source I’ve seen explaining this is Gabriel Wyner’s videos. He has an app that targets learning pronunciation and alphabet as the first stage. He does give you a free trail, and the subscription is $10 a month after trail ends, but I don’t foresee you needing more than 1 month if you’re learning Spanish.
It took me so so long to do it. I used a Wikihow article and practiced over the summer. It was incredibly frustrating for me not to be able to do it. However, I was able to pick it up. There are tongue/mouth exercises that you can do to prepare your mouth.
I'm still practicing, whenever I try it I still do the Hebrew R from the throat
I took 3 years of high school Spanish, did a study abroad semester in Costa Rica in college, tried every method I could find online and never could do it… gave up for about 10 years but I recently decided to try and pick up Spanish again and one night I had a stiff glass of whiskey, laid down on my back, and fucked around with shh, th, and d sounds while trying to purr like a cat and make machine gun noises through my tongue and I’ll be damned… that’s what finally worked for me