Rolling the R's

rolling your Rs isnt do or die … but it can help the listener … it does help with enuciation. I understand words much better in Welsh when the R is emphasised maybe because most of my life has been in northern Wales

From what Ive read in linguistics…the ongoing demise of R -rolling in Britain over the last 200-300 years, started as usual with much modern language evolution from the SE of England and London.
The reason is assumed to do with differentiating class/status reasons historically (The spread of received pronunication “Queen’s English” across the education system - Ive met people from shropshire who said they were punished being rhotic even until the 1950s

…you can still hear a few farming families even on the west sussex downs who slightly roll Rs but its basically extinct down there…same with R rolling pushed further west through the old West country…and up through Yorkshire and Lancashire (similar advance to the word mum replacing mam/mammy in most of Northern Britain now

I too am frustrated at not being able to roll my Rs, no matter how much I try. Even more irritatingly, my 8-year-old son can roll his Rs like a machine gun and he’s not even learning Welsh! (Although he picks up the odd bits from me, as illustrated when I said our neighbour Pam was coming round and he deliberately said ‘Why?’! (Gotta love his little sense of humour!)

4 Likes

Superb work that boy! :joy:

Have you tried seeing if you can get the hint of a roll into bRRead? That can work sometimes… :slight_smile:

1 Like

I was today years old when I learned that the German r is not identical to the English, French or Welsh r. (and I pronounce it incorrectly most of the time anyways …)

I think I might be having some limited success with ‘rhaid I fi’…it seems a bit less difficult when the word starts with the letter R. And when the word is Welsh, not English. I’ll keep persevering.