How do I go from producing the ʀ to ʁ?

I have been working on my ʁ forever now.

Unfortunately, it only comes out as an ʀ. Most of the other sounds except gn (ɲ) I believe I have figured out. How the hell do I figure out R though? The current one is way too strong. My professor says I can sometimes achieve the R if I try and underpronounce it, but it doesn’t feel natural.

Does anyone have any advice? R is closer, but it’s disgusting and makes me sound awful. The words get weirdly choppy and everything. Has anyone else been here, what are your suggestions?

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I don’t know what language you’re learning, but in case ​ʀ and ​ʁ aren’t different phonemes in that language, I wouldn’t worry too much. No one will misunderstand you if you say the “wrong” r. That’s not a pronunciation error, but at worst part of your accent.

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It’s French, and I think that kinda says enough, it’s really 50/50 in my experience if I’ll get insulted or not for messing up the pronunciation or whatever. Not a huge problem, I know, but I still think it’s a valuable thing to try and master, especially as a European where the French play an important role in our economy.

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Je ne connais pas la lettre “ʁ” en français ? Parlez-vous du “R” ?

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C’est la notation phonétique @BlueBird14
Voir:
« BonPatron » correcteur d'orthographe et de grammaire en ligne pour les textes français.

C’est très étrange comme explication. Personellement, je n’arrive pas à faire l’exercise.

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Merci @nicolasbrunel ! Non seulement je n’y arrive pas, mais je ne pas sûre de comprendre, je suis entre l’étonnement et le fou rire. Je ne connaissais (un peu) que la “phonétique internationale”, juste ce qu’il fallait pour l’anglais, pas plus. Je n’y trouve pas ce “ʁ”.
Je converse chaque semaine avec une Ukrainienne, prof de français, elle n’a aucun problème pour prononcer notre R.

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My Oxford Hachette French Dictionary only lists one r sound, namely R. Where does the upside down R occur? Curiously Wikipedia, which is often unreliable, uses only the upside down symbol to represent the French r sound.

On reading your post several times, I am confused. Are you struggling with R or the upside down R?

It seems to me that there are variations of the r sound depending on the speaker. It can be very light, with very little motion of the dangly bit, or it can be very strong, with the dangly bit flying all over the place, putting the listener in fear of large globs of flying spittle. My impression is that speakers who wish to sound posh or correct use the stronger form, but I don’t know if that is a correct impression.

I’m sure you’ve seen many YouTube tutorials. I will add a few comments in the hope that they are of use.

Speakers of English and other stress timed languages can struggle with the R sound if they use English timing i.e. stress timing. I don’t know if this applies to you, as I don’t know your L1, but make sure you are using syllabic timing in French i.e. you pronounce each syllable clearly and with roughly equal weight.

When I speak French, it feels as if I’m speaking from further back in the mouth compared to English. To pronounce a French R you need good control of the back of the tongue, which only comes with a lot of practice. You are having to create new muscle memory, which means doing it slowly at first, then practicing with easy words, such as rang, and moving on to harder ones such as arriverai and rentrerai. In other words you have to go through a process of training your mouth, and this should be done outside of actual speaking. In essence all you are doing is exhaling while tightening the throat to constrict the air flow so that it sets the dangly bit in motion. For what it’s worth, it took me months of practice before I was able to vibrate the dangly bit, and lots more months to develop finer control. I saw a big gap between being able to make the sound, and being able to use it naturally in speech. If you listen to babies, you will notice that they make a lot of weird sounds before they start speaking, and probably after too. They are of course practising making the sounds in their L1. And they spend a lot of time doing this.

Learning to pronounce foreign syllables takes a lot of listening, so you know how they should sound, and a lot of practicing.

Apologies if the above is obvious.

Je ne sais pas si c’est aucun confort, mais la situation est pareil pour moi (je suis compatriote avec le OP). Cependant, je dirais aussi que la difficulté varie beaucoup selon les lettres qui l’entourent la R. Certains mots, comme p.ex. ”livre” et ”rêver” vont assez bien, alors que d’autres sont quasiment impossible de prononcer. ”Chirurgien” fait ma gueule de s’imploser et ma langue de se convulser en peine.

Je n’ai aucun remède à le problème, désolé.

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Usually when there is a difficulty it’s a sequence of difficulties you partially block on the first “r” and it makes the second one too hard to pronounce. One method I have used with my wife when she was learning french is divide and conquer.

Try to prononce
“chi”
“ru” then “chiru”
“ur”
“gence” then ur gence
“chi”
“rur”
“gien”
Then same thing “chi (pause) rur (pause) gien”.

If we have a difficulty between two syllabs put a big pause between them to get used to pronounce then. Then reduce the pause. It will help isolate each difficulty and it will be easier.

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Et voilà, déjà bien plus facile, merci Nicolas!

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Since originally writing this post, I’ve finally accomplished this trek. It was difficult but I realized I wasn’t raising my tongue in the back. For @Claes7 that might be advice for you, try and raise your tongue but only in the back, so it almost hits the roof of your mouth. Then try and produce the R. The difference between the upside down R and right side up R seems to be a constriction of air happening. (I went on an embarrassing number of forums for this) Now I produce it naturally, even if my vocal chords still get exhausted by this.

All I really have left in French now seems to be my writing skills since I’m fortunate enough to be surrounded by several French speaking classmates. Going to work on that next year. Much thanks to everyone who replied!

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This was so helpful! and @leifgoodwin I had gotten used to it partially, but I wasn’t consciously aware of the stress thing. Much appreciated.

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