July 2, 2014

How to roll your R's like an Italian

This just hit me last night. As an Italian guy with an Irish name, I know how to roll my R's. For people like me, it's hard to understand why anyone finds this difficult. I've tried and tried to help people roll their R's, but to no avail.

However, last night something occurred to me. I was watching a baseball game and the announcer said "Wow, he's strong!" My mind kicked into Italian mode and I said out loud: "Strong like bull!" It's just something you hear if you grow up in an Italian household. And of course, I rolled the R in "strong" and pronounced "bull" as bool.

And then I spelled the thing phonetically in my mind and came up with this:

"Stdrong like bool."

I think if people pronounced strong as "stdrong", they would magically be rolling an R just like an Italian! I'm not 100% sure this works, but try it. Just go from the t to the d in as natural a way as you can -- and you're doin' it!

That's how to roll your R's. Now, study what you've done. Note the movement of your tongue as it travels from the t to the d. That's how to make the rolling R sound. Now you can do it anytime you want.

You're welcome. So give me some feedback. Did this work for you?

4 comments:

cm said...

Like you wrote, because I'm Italian, I don't have trouble rolling R's but what's funny is my Polish Father-in-law used the phrase strong like bull and pronounced it exactly the way you spelled it.

writenow said...

I like the image you're using. Did you draw it yourself? (He's a good artist, folks. I'm not dissing him by asking that.) As for your comment, maybe Polish people roll their R's. I have no idea actually. Hi C. Happy 4th.

cm said...

Happy 4th. Jessica drew that with SketchBook. It's me. I spent a good hour a week ago trying to change my profile picture here and nothing happened until today and that doesn't even seem like the one I chose but I do like it too. If it changes again in a week I'll have no idea why. Sheesh.

writenow said...

It's very cool. And I thought it was you. Well, you or Harry Potter. I like it.