If you have ever wondered how R sound is made, I'm happy to be of assistance! There are in fact two ways to make the R sound, and in today's episode, I cover BOTH with a few exercises to help your muscles adjust to the position.
Video for this is available on Instagram @en.outloud.
So what are you waiting for? Let's get to work!
Open The Accent Training Podcast on Youtube Here
Teachers Appy to Join the Community Here
https://qlh5kgslus7.typeform.com/to/EDLEjgGz
If you have ever wondered how R sound is made, I'm happy to be of assistance! There are in fact two ways to make the R sound, and in today's episode, I cover BOTH with a few exercises to help your muscles adjust to the position.
Video for this is available on Instagram @en.outloud.
So what are you waiting for? Let's get to work!
Open The Accent Training Podcast on Youtube Here
Teachers Appy to Join the Community Here
https://qlh5kgslus7.typeform.com/to/EDLEjgGz
Welcome to the English out loud podcast, a podcast where I give you tips on how you can enhance your spoken English. My name is Pat I'm from Toronto, Canada, and, uh, I've got, uh, at the moment, six people listening to me on Instagram live. This is my first live episode. So you can know this episode is indeed filmed before a live studio audience. Isn't that quite a treat? There's no laugh tracks, nothing like that needed. I've got people laughing, laughing at me at home. Plenty. So, uh, today today's episode, we are going to die right into the American R sound, the American art sound. You see, I want to kick today's episode off by, uh, getting right into some deep waters of the American accent with the American RSA on the reason why I say deep waters of the American accent is because the R sound requires the most difficult muscle memory movements. It requires that you move your entire mouth when you pronounce it. As a matter of fact, and it is not something that, uh, develops very quickly. It actually takes months of practice. I, uh, typically actually what I have students, the R is where people give up most commonly when I bring up the are people say to themselves, okay, I could take on the RSA and it's nothing. We go over the R for a week and they say, Oh, okay, I'm getting the hang of this. But then two weeks later, they're still making the, do you make a sound? A lot of people go, a lot of people also go hook with their RS, you know, in the back of the throat. Well, both of those things are, you know, they could be clear that there are sounds, but at the same time, we want to control what you're doing. And if you want to get into our sound, that Americans are going to recognize all the time, you really want to be able to control this position. What it looks like is essentially that your tongue is going from a flat position to moving back a R it really pulls back and my mouth are, that's what we're going to be working on today. So our, this is the unstressed are what makes an R stressed? What makes an R unstressed and unstressed are happens if a vowel sound is coming before are a vowel sound. So it's just in the word far car. What's another good word apartment. I don't know I'm in an apartment. Are that kind of our sound? When we have a vowel before our, how about the words like water, brother, a weather earlier. That's again, vowel plus in our good unstressed, our sound. So it's a clearly pronounced this. You're going to need to practice it often. So listen closely because these tips that you're going to be getting right here today are really going to help you for later. Now, here's the common difficulty. As I mentioned, the tip of your tongue, going up the tip of your tongue, going up and touching the Ridge behind your teeth, that little bump back there, touching that, making a[inaudible] kind of sound. That is a habit that we're going to be working on. Changing here a little bit today, we'll discuss here two different ways that you can make the RSM, because I want you to be able to play with both of these methods and just see what fits you better. See what you can work with a little easier. The first method involves the back of your tongue, the back of your tongue. Moving back. This second method is with the front of your tongue, the front of your tongue, moving upwards. Those are the two different methods that we've got to consider here. So here are three different steps to making it with the back of your tongue. First, you want to settle your tongue in the bottom of your mouth. We're going to keep the tongue low to start this one out, kind of voicing the position
Speaker 2:Like, uh, you see how my tongue's low, uh,
Speaker 1:See right to the back of my mouth. At least on Instagram, they can see right to the back
Speaker 2:Of my mouth. Uh,
Speaker 1:That's the first position it's like what a dentist or a doctor would tell you to do. The next thing is going to step this up a little bit. We are going to take it from that, uh, to bending it backwards. You want to kind of tense the back of your tongue, make it tense, and the corners of your tongue, the sides you want to bring them right on up to the top teeth there to get this,
Speaker 2:Cut her a R a R.
Speaker 1:I see that. So that's step one, ah, step two, or,
Speaker 2:And also
Speaker 1:Step number three, that jaw your jaw. Doesn't stay down there. When I say
Speaker 2:They are, I was with her
Speaker 1:Talk like that. I can't talk with my jaw wide open. I need to bring it up. Of course,
Speaker 2:R R.
Speaker 1:That is how you make an R sound by moving the back of your tongue, tensing it and moving it back. That's the first thing. Now, an important tip here is that the inside of your tongue must be pushing towards the roof of your mouth. This ensures that your tongue is really nice and bunched up and bending sound in the right way. So I'm not having my tongue go like that. You know,
Speaker 2:Uh, I'm not going, uh,
Speaker 1:It's not going down. It's going R
Speaker 2:R
Speaker 1:Really tense and up there, that is the position you want to maintain the back of the tongue, the front of the tongue, all of it's coming right up nice and tight. If you feel that the tip of your tongue now is going and touching the roof of your mouth, that is a rolled R as I mentioned, that's the habit that we're working to change here today. And you're more than capable of doing it. You just got to focus. You just got to focus. So, as I mentioned, however, if you don't like that way of making the American art, if it felt strange to you, then that's okay. There is another way to do it. That might be a little bit easier for you because all of our mouths developed in different ways. Our muscles are not all the same. Some people, uh, their muscle memory is one and other people, other people, their muscle memory is a little bit different. And so you want to get the way that you can adjust your muscles to easier. Anyway, here's the second method of this, our sound. So we're going to start with the same position, uh, tongue low down in the mouth. Uh, this second thing. Now, we aren't going to move the back of the tongue, but rather the tip. And we're going to move it up,
Speaker 2:ER, or
Speaker 1:It's going up, but it's not touching the roof of my mouth. If the tip of the tongue goes up and touches the roof of the mouth, you, what are you what's going to happen? We've discussed this. You're going to get a rolled R you're going to get a, and that is what we want to avoid. Of course we don't want, we want
Speaker 2:Our, our
Speaker 1:Tip of the tongue going towards the hard palate, but not touching it. So step one, tongue low, step two. The tip of the tongue goes towards the roof of the mouth, but not touching it, not quite touching it. And step number three, same as the other one. The, uh, your jaw comes up, comes right up with it.
Speaker 2:R a R.
Speaker 1:That's an American R sound. Now many people just did that successfully. Most people probably did not because, and I'm just saying that from experience, most people do not get that right away. Trust me you. I know how it is. And that's okay. What we're going to do is a quick little exercise that you can follow for the R sound to make sure that you're getting it right. The British R does not make that kind of position where we pull the tongue back in it, where we get that, or kind of position, the British are stays
Speaker 2:Low in the mouth. Ah, ah,
Speaker 1:So for example, the British do not say part,
Speaker 2:Part,
Speaker 1:They rather say
Speaker 2:Pot pot, you know, uh, for example,
Speaker 1:Well, it's part of a larger problem. It's part of,
Speaker 2:We don't want that. We don't want that part of a part of it. It's part of a larger problem. Part.
Speaker 1:I want to get that strong are another thing the British do not say that's all
Speaker 2:Mountain. They say that's a lodge lodge mountain. So we don't want that lodge. No, no. We bend the tongue back there, large. That's a large mountain.
Speaker 1:One other here is it's not a party. It's a party. I hear this far too often from people we're going to the potty. We're going to the potty. People who speak English as a second language, I will hear this often. We're going to the potty. No, thank you. We will go to the party that are, we're going to get that are in there. You are totally capable of doing it. Not to mention it's got a flap to you right after it. Doesn't it? That is a useful thing to keep in mind. I won't take too much more of your time here today. I'm going to give you a quick couple of phrases here that you can follow along with. We're going to stretch out
Speaker 2:This, our sound.
Speaker 1:I'm going to give you some real short and basic phrases and, uh, seriously, anybody who hears these and stretches these out and needs to work on that. Our position, these are really going to help build the muscle memory necessary. So first off
Speaker 2:On my arm are on my arm member.
Speaker 1:The tip of the tongue can go up, but
Speaker 2:Not touch the roof of the mouth.
Speaker 1:You don't want the tip of the tongue touching the roof of mouth. You don't want it,
Speaker 2:Uh, but are going up, but not touching the car. Won't start. You hear that the car won't start.
Speaker 1:How about play? The guitar? Play the guitar at the market. Those will get you started. Those will get you started. I got one other thing I want to bring up here that, uh, is going to take this up a notch with your unstressed AR, and this is one other habit, actually, that I noticed many non native English speakers do that people again are totally capable of changing if they want to. And this is the fact that I will notice people pronounce the words are
Speaker 2:R a R E and R O U R differently. I'll hear people say are like, this is our friend. I'll hear people.
Speaker 1:We'll say our, this is our friend. Well, we don't want to say our,
Speaker 2:We say our, are we,
Speaker 1:We want to make sure that we get that real quick and that we don't stretch it out too much. The word our spelled with an H however does receive the pronunciation hour. And it should make
Speaker 2:That. So repeat that
Speaker 1:These after me, here's just three quick sentences here with a couple of ares that you can, uh, use for yourself, practice and get a good feel for them.
Speaker 2:First one, those are ours. Tongue going back are, those are our ears are our ears. And you got that. And now they're here on our lunch hour. You want to feel the difference between our an hour on our lunch hour. And here's one more, when are our hours changing? When are our hours
Speaker 1:Changing? You may be saying to yourself, Pat is saying those,
Speaker 2:Uh, really stretching them out, you know, are are,
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I am indeed. The reason for this is because I want you to practice as well, forcing that our position, really getting a good feel for it, pushing it out hard and, um, and conscience
Speaker 2:Evidently and well, keep it up
Speaker 1:With that, you know, making that position again and again, and again is going to render results in the long run. That's all I can say. Well, for today, this just about brings us to wrapping things up. I like to keep these episodes short and sweet, no need to draw it out. Uh, you know, for too long, I don't want to waste anyone's time. We all got things to do. Don't we, this has been my first podcast episode. It's, uh, that's recorded on Instagram live. This is episode number 51. I've had a blast making episode 51,
Speaker 2:Uh, on
Speaker 1:Live simply because it keeps me talking when I don't do it this way, I take too many breaks. It takes too long, but, uh, I'm going to keep doing more episodes this way, because then Jackie can send me a message and say, howdy, howdy, Jackie,
Speaker 2:Howdy, by the way,
Speaker 1:For, uh, people who are listening and not viewing howdy, what does that mean? You hear people say that it's, it sounds it's silly, but it's fun. How do you, as a way of saying hello, it's very friendly. It's kind of Southern, but it is. It's just a super friendly way to say hello. So if you want to play with, uh, some other words of saying, hello, take my friend Jackie's advice and say, howdy. Now I just want to recap real quick. Uh, what an unstressed art is exactly. When you're going to find an unstressed art compared to a stressed art. You see an unstressed R this is the R that we make after a vowel sound. Now I mentioned that before, but I didn't, I don't think I really got into detail without enough. Let's take the RN mind name, for example, Patrick, Patrick, this AR is coming after a continent. It's coming off to the letter T truck. Rough. I'm not going hot. Tiring. It sounds strange. Hi, Tyra. Yeah, it's an unstressed art. It doesn't fit in my name. So an unstressed R has a vowel sound before the art, a stressed R I'll talk about another time. Don't even worry about stressed, ours and unstressed. Ours is going to be, you know, in the middle of a word, it's going to be after a vowel sound. Anyway, I've got to wrap things up for today. Thank you for your time. Whenever you're listening to this, uh, you know, enjoy your breakfast, your, your dinner, your lunch, enjoy your walk. If you're, uh, maybe this is just playing, you know, on a beach, someone's just gotten their phone stolen or they lost it. And this is just playing on someone's phone as they're walking away from it. And, uh, that's too bad. Sorry. Sorry about that. Anyway, have a good one.