Rr is for Rrrrolling Our R's
Foreword
When I learned what Spanish I learned, "rr" was presented as its own letter in the Spanish alphabet. The difference between "r" ("ere") and "rr" ("erre"), I was told, was the amount of roll they get when spoken. Most r's get rolled at least a little in Spanish, but that double-r really gets rolled. Thus, "pero" is one word ("but") and "perro" is another ("dog"), and you tell them apart when spoken by how much tongue flapping goes on.
However, during my research last night, I discovered that the Real Academia Española does not include "rr" in its official Spanish alphabet. I wouldn't presume to criticize la Academia and do hereby acknowledge the superiority of their command of and authority over the Spanish language.
But for the purpose of this blog post, I'm pretending they don't exist.
The blog post
I am the only one in my family who can rrrroll r's. Frrrrom what I've rrrread, Spanish-speaking childrrrren learrrrn this skill earrrrly and easily, so I suppose I didn't rrrroll enough r's at my girrrrls while they werrrrre toddlerrrrs.
(Yes, this too is all my fault!)
Surrrre, they have otherrrr skills. MJ can fold up herrrr tongue so it looks like a 4-leaf cloverrrr, and she can make swan necks with severrrral of her fingerrrrs. Chloe can walk on herrrr toes without benefit of toeshoes, and she can get tearrrrs to squirrrrt forrrrcefully out of herrrr tearrrr ducts.
Still, I sorrrrt of thought any kid of mine would be able to rrrroll a decent r. Ya know?
But therrrre's hope! I've found this lovely little tutorrrrial for "anyone" who would like to add r rrrrolling to theirrrr rrrrepertoires.
You can thank me laterrrr, girrrrls!
4 comments:
this post takes me back to when i was young and my parents paid a guy to teach me & my sister Hindi.
Both my parents are from India and being born in Australia the multilingual stuff passed me by. My parents used Hindi like most parents use spelling around v young kids... as a secret code to communicate without us understanding.
The guy they got to teach us in my opinion seemed to spend most of his time mocking our inability to pronounce or even hear differences between sounds. "Say rr" he would say. Then, "No not rr... i said say rr!"
We never learnt Hindi. Instead we fell back to our only defence... "alright smarty pants... say Video!"
To this day my Mum still says wideo ;)
I can roll my rrrrrs fine until I notice I'm doing it. Then it's overrr.
Ah, Arun, you take me back to my college days. My instructor for vector math was Indian and I can never think of the word vector without "hearing" it in my head as "wector."
"My parents used Hindi like most parents use spelling around v young kids... as a secret code to communicate without us understanding."
I would have thought that was a surefire way to get you to learn it! :-)
I still remember the day 2yo MJ twigged to what "m-a-l-l" meant. "Yes, yes, yes!" she exclaimed with much wiggling. That girl really was born to shop.
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