I'm looking for a teacher to guide me in the right direction in learning to trill and tap Rs. I can already make some kind of rolled sound but it sounds very fake to me. Unlike the French R, I really don't see myself getting better repeating it in different forms. It would be great if I can have someone check if I am on the right path and maybe even share training methods. My best efforts was a week's practice months ago.
I am a 19 year old male from Australia.
Aelfric, a freind of mine was taught to do rolled R in school (some Russian children fail to learn it naturally... and no wonder he was one of them: his father uses a really exotic articulation for R) this way: he was just advised to say dddddddd really fast.
He had an advantage though: he was just 6.
As to the 'tap' it is famously present in some pronunciations of 'gotta'. But you likely are aware about this.
I know how to roll R's, If you want I can help you.. but I don't know if that would be effective. I will try my best to help you!! :D so if you're interested you can always send me a message.
The Spanish double R really does take some getting used to. In fact, it generally takes more than twice as long for native speakers to master than the other sounds of the language.
The best articles I’ve seen on the subject are here:
http://spanish.about.com/od/spanishpronunciation/a/pronouncing_spanish_rr.htm
Note that in Spanish, RR and R are two separate phonemes — there are links at the bottom of the above article that will take you to articles on the single R. As KP points out, the Spanish single R is almost the same as the English “quick D,” which is used very often in American English for the T in certain phonetic contexts.
The Russian R sound (P in Cyrillic), which is very similar to, although a bit shorter than, the RR in Latin languages, and this italki article on the Russian R may give you another useful perspective:
http://www.italki.com/article/331/the-russian-letter-p#.Vk1AUIRh1KM
