As problematic as Speedy Gonzalez is, I think saying “Arriba! Arriba!” all the time as a kid might have helped with rolling Rs. I’ve never had a problem with them.
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yep totally—arriba was the first word I got it on. It’s sad but that was such an unforgettable day. And imo arriba is easier because that A gives you a little ramp. It took me way longer to roll the R in a word like Rico without adding a little uh sound before the R, which I’m sure sounded ridiculous. At least I didn’t learn from the rolled Rs I actually heard a lot the last decade—spanish announcers in soccer games, who I think native spanish speakers think sound insane they way we think Gus Johnson & Keith Jackson aren’t exactly normal.
Nice breakdown of the rolled Rs and I think you’ve inspired me to give it another shot! After almost 4 years of study and now speaking fluently, I still can’t do it, but I think maybe it’s less important than we think and nothing to be worried about if you can’t do it. Almost noone is gonna care or expect you to do it and sometimes it gives your accent a bit of flavor, and as long as it’s understandable, it’s not the end of the world if it’s a bit thick.
My girlfriend tells me my accent is thick, but people almost always understand what I’m saying. So I think I learned pretty well the pronunciations of each word, but have been a bit lazy with phonetics and nailing down many of the differences between Spanish and English.
As for your tapped R explanation, you lost me a bit there. I’ve never thought of it as a D sound, and I would think trying to make a D sound for the tapped R might be a bit confusing. For me it’s just a slightly different variation of the rolled R.
If you notice the tongue position when saying Gronk compared to gracias, it’s clearly different. The English R seems to come from the back of the throat and doesn’t use the tip of the tongue. When saying gracias, it seems to come from the front of the mouth with the tongue quickly tapping the alveolar ridge. I guess it’s a bit similar to the English D in that with the D, the sound is also coming from the front of the mouth, but the tongue is contacting the teeth and not the ridge, so the sound comes out quite different.
I’m not sure I would focus on the “dah” sound when using the tapped R unless maybe it’s some kind of peculiarity w/a different Spanish accent that I’m unfamiliar with.
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when most americans say the word butter quickly they don’t exactly make a T or a D sound, they do just what you say: they lightly tap their tongue on their alveolar ridge. In american english, butter spoken quickly sounds closest to budder, but it’s not a perfect match because it’s not a hard D, it’s a soft tap. Imo to an english ear, the words ahora or eres or quiero in spanish sound much more like ahoda and edes and quiedo, but same deal: those aren’t hard Ds, it’s the same quick sound that we use in english when we say “better butter matador” three times quickly.
I agree that focusing on the dah sound isn’t the best solution; the “guh-dah-seeahs” thing only helped me with gracias because by the time I was saying gracias as fast as I could, the “dah” was no longer anything like a hard D and had morphed into the alveolar tap that happens when we say butter quickly. Whenever I want to lock in my pronunciation of an spanish word like ahora, I make sure I’m tapping the R the right way by re-checking in with betterbuttermatador
And some words will still be trickier than others. Initially I really struggled with words like trabaja or even Francisco because my mouth wasn’t used to that move and I felt like a little kid in speech therapy. But then years later you realize that you’re no longer even thinking of leaning on betterbuttermatador as a crutch and you’re now just doing a fluid alveolar tap when you see the singleton spanish R
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PS definitely agree that being unable to do a rolled R is nbd, and tapping an R that’s supposed to be rolled will get the job done 98% of the time. Stuff like pero/perro might be an exception but like I said I’m just starting to learn spanish so I’m just guessing
Yah, that makes more sense, and an English speaker would probably be better served trying to say gdacias by just quickly tapping the D rather than the slow R we use, which I think sounds funny to Spanish speakers. It’s probably a good learning tool until they’re ready for the tapped R.
I’m surprised you had so much trouble with the single R if you’ve now tackled the RR. At least for me, it seems a lot easier and I’ve still been unable to tackle the RR.
I actually actively avoid words with RR b/c I can’t say that sound. Coche instead of Carro and Perrito instead of Perro, since it’s a bit more clear what I’m saying and can’t be confused with Pero. Maybe someday!
I think my friends must be mocking me with this kind of thing so I mock them back.
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good luck and if you ever have more thoughts about RR please post them; my post was already too long so I didn’t include a jillion tiny realizations I had along the way. Above all hang in there—it might take a year, but it will happen. The only reason I felt ok posting so much about it is because when I was trying to learn I absolutely scoured the internet for help, but the best half of what I read was borderline useless and the worst half ended up being flat wrong, which was pretty weird for a topic that so many people seem so interested in.
I’m sure you’ve seen this on youtubes but another milestone in the quest for RR is to be able to do it without engaging your vocal cords so it just makes a rattlesnake buzz.
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I think introducing it at a young age is probably very helpful. My kids picked it up immediately. I’ve never given it the effort you and fossil have but it seems impossible to me.
I find it easier to roll final R’s, usually just for effect: “¡no puedo creerrrrr!”. I noticed the posher locals do it with some frequency so just copied them.
I think native speakers find it kind of cute that we struggle with it, I know I find girls speaking english with foreign accents outrageously cute.
If there is some kind of disease where you’re unreasonably attracted to foreign accents, then I definitely have it. I swore off American girls like 10 years ago b/c I felt like if I wasn’t getting a sexy accent in the package then I was getting ripped off. The cultural exchange and having an easy path to getting good at a foreign langauge helps a lot too, but SEXY ACCENT.
The only hard part for be with trilling the Rs is knowing when to stop. Much easier to just keep trilling Rs for several seconds than to stop short.
Seems like it’s always 2-3 cycles when the locals do it. But it’s hard to count.
Once I learn, I think I’ll prob keep it to a cool 30 seconds for each trilled R just to be safe.
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That’s what my 6-year-old does. He’ll just keep going until he runs out of breath. He is very proud of his skill.
Sounds like a language expert 
Finished episode one of Money Heist. So far so good.
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Like most of these things, it starts strong and fades a bit. Some people think the deterioration in quality is minimal. Others think that it becomes unwatchable. I’m more or less in the first group, but YMMV. I think that no matter what camp you’re in, you eventually become plot committed and you see it through to the end.
Im just here for the español
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Estoy aquí por el español.
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Kinda disappointed with Alta Mar, but sticking with it anyway just for the Spanish.