Roll Your R's!

I admit it, I'm terrible at rolling my R's in Spanish. So when our friend Peter gave me the URL for a website where I could learn to roll my R's, I was curious to see if I could overcome this limitation. Dubious too, but willing to check it out.

Peter sent me to: http://www.wikihow.com/Roll-Your-%22R%22s

It's one long page with lots of information. I was comforted by something I read at the very bottom: If you can't touch your toes today, it doesn't mean you are doomed to never touching them. You'll just need to get in better shape. Well, it turns out that rolling your R's is something like that, unless you happen to have some relatively unusual conditions such as missing upper teeth or a cleft palate.

I can't count the number of times that well-meaning friends have told me to put my tongue on the roof of my mouth and then to let it flutter. That bit of advice just doesn't cut it. My friends, no matter whether Spanish or English is their first language, then merrily proceed to roll long and magnificent R's. I can hear them fine; I just can't create them. A variety of awkward sounds come out of my mouth.

This webpage gives a number of methods you can try for getting a good rolled R. None of them worked for me on the first attempt, which the author says is to be expected. This is something that takes practice.

A list of ten steps begin the page, and while I did bog down on relaxing my tongue on step 3 and tensing it on step 5, it's a nice basic list. Things get more complicated after that with several different approaches outlined. I was intrigued by some of them:

• The Butter/Ladder method builds on something I CAN do, which is give the normal American pronunciation of those two words.
• The dR method did nothing for me at first, even though it helped Lenin. Maybe it would work with time.
• The Tiger method seemed beyond me.
• The Vision Dream method held out some hope.

The page ends with some useful tips and some warnings.

It's clear that practice is called for. If I muster up enough motivation to practice, I will report back in the blog. But there are an awful lot of other things I don't know how to do that don't seem as frustrating to learn. Maybe I will roll an R some day, but please don't hold your breath. Hmm, wonder if that's another way to roll an R.