I want to learn to roll my Rs in Italian. Right now I just end up doing this strange guttural thing that sounds terrible. I want to slaughter the language as little as possible.

I hope someone can help you with this. I certainly cannot teach it and would need training myself!!

Hi Andrew! My guess is that any experienced voice-based Spanish teacher can help you with this (Spanish and Scottish/Celtic both roll the Rs using the tip of the tongue.) Not sure how this compares with the Italian equivalent, but is sure to be closer than the R used in French and German. For some reason I always found this easy to imitate, even as a child (who spoke no Spanish at all (lol), but after years of practice I still can only approximate the R made at the back of the tongue.

as an Italian native speaker and phonetics enthusiast I would really like to help you but my r’s are not perfectly rolled due to a very light pronunciation problem…. @william Spanish r’s are similar to Italian’s r’s, but not exactly the same, but if it’s just a general problem with rolling r’s maybe you could help anyway.

Ciao Andrew,

As a native Italian speaker and teacher, I’ve been often asked this question by my students and foreign friends.

It’s very easy to learn when a child and it’s a matter of tongue:

Simply imitate the noise of the “brum brum” – this is how we call the car when children :D – exagerating a little the vibration of the “r” by trilling a lot.

If this does not work for you – and it will most probably be the case if you don’t have a native speaker to imitate in front of you!- try placing your tongue against the roof of your mouth, near the front, and trill your tongue.

If none of these attempts work and if you are an English native speaker ONLY, you can repeat the following English terms a few times and very fast:

ladder, pot o’ tea, or butter.

I cannot tell on the legitimacy of this third rule but it did work perfectly with some of my native English speakers on eduFire. And as Machiavelli taught us “il fine giustifica i mezzi” (only the results count;-)).

Let me know what worked for you!

Anyway, don’t panic if you cannot!
As my fellow tutor Marged said, some Italians cannot roll their r’s either! Those pronounce the “R” like the French (called in Italian “R moscia” = soft R)…. and we all understand them when they speak :D

ciao ciao,
Katia

P.S. The Italian “R” is much different from Spanish one!