Russian in 3 Months: My Pronunciation Drills Last night, I did some research on how to get better at pronouncing the Russian alveolar trill. It's a very unnatural sound for me since I'm a native English speaker. Growing up in Canada, I also struggled to mimic the "Rrrrrrroll up the rrrrrrrrim to win" commercials for the annual Tim Hortons contest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLNT-v_ad3Q), so it's about time that I learned how to do this! I came across a couple of different exercises, but so far these are the ones I'm liking best and I wanted to document them before I forget. The top row starts with front vowels where the tongue is placed close to the front of the mouth (where the alveolar ridge is). Each row gets gradually tougher as the vowels move to the back of the mouth. I'm struggling to pronouncing the last row, but each time I practice, it's getting better. I try to spend at least 10 minutes doing this every night before bed until I can pronounce every drill confidently without stopping. - The drills are written phonetically using the English alphabet - The "r" symbolizes an alveolar trill, the "i" sounds like "ee", and the "u" sounds like "oo" Drill #1: ara, aray, aro, ari, aru ay-ra, ay-ray, ay-ro, ay-ri, ay-ru ora, oray, oro, ori, oru ira, iray, iro, iri, iru ura, uray, uro, uri, uru Drill #2: ra, ara, pra, kra, tra ray, aray, pray, kray, tray ro, oro, pro, kro, tro ri, iri, pri, kri, tri ru, uru, pru, kru, tru Hopefully this doesn't seem too confusing. Are there any contexts that I really won't need for Russian that I would be better off skipping?