When do you roll your R's?

Question

Like when you say purple in spanish you roll the R

Answer 1

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Answer 2

It's easy to know when you have to roll the 'r' and when not. The 'RR' sound (or erre fuerte) is used when you see a double 'RR', when you have a single 'R' at the beginning of a word or after the letters 'N' or 'L'.

Also, I wouldn't really call the soft R sound as 'rolling'. It has a very slight vibration, but it's just a single touch of the palate with the tongue, pushing a lot less air through the mouth. The real rolling R sound happens in the cases I mentioned above. You hold the tip of the tongue against the palate, close to the teeth, and you push more air through the mouth, making the tongue vibrate a lot stronger.

Answer 3

Rs are always rolled. A single R is usually rolled just once, although at the end of a word it is sometimes rolled more than just once. A double RR is rolled a few times. The amount of times is left to the discretion of the speaker for emphasis.

Hmmm. I guess I never thought of a single roll as a roll, but more like a hit. Mo R ado. - jeezzle, Nov 23, 2010

Perfect answer. It's a matter of degree, but I was going to say one r = single roll myself. - KevinB, Nov 23, 2010

Answer 4

Once you start speaking you won't even notice that you are rolling them. You just will. And purple doesn't roll maybe just a bit though. Morado. Try arreglar if you want to hear one that rolls.

So you wouldn't roll the last r on the end? I've been practicing with it at each R sound, and sometimes it sounds/feels a bit off to multi tap each one - Dragoe, Dec 8, 2014

Answer 5

The preferred terminology is "single/multi tap 'r'" (occasionally "flap" instead of "tap"). In the prevailing usage, "rolling"/"trilling" refer only to the multi-tap sound. Both sounds are, of course, quite distinct from the "retroflex 'r' of English. Japanese, for example, uses the single-tap 'r' but has nothing like the multi-tap 'r'.

The spanish R is very similiar to the Japanese R/L. Some Japanese do trill their R's in certain cases. Particularly gangters like yakuza. Random fact lol - curtisonchi, Jan 28, 2013