The curse of the 'R'

by Madeleine Kando

If you want my opinion, the most difficult letter to pronounce in any language is the letter ‘R’. You can spend a life-time perfecting a language which is not your own, but the ‘R’ will always give you away.

Take me, for example. I had to learn French, Dutch, German, English and Spanish and it would have been a cynch for me to masquerade as a native had it not been for the cursed ‘R’.

That evil-doer always gave me away. It doesn’t help that we are all deaf to our own voice. Yes, deaf. If you want to hear your own voice the way others hear it, you have to record it first. Either that or travel to the Grand Canyon and shout something, to hear it echoed back. Even then, you might think: 'Wow, that person sounds weird. I am glad I don't sound like that.' Yes, if non-native English speakers knew what they really sounded like, they would stop talking altogether.

But to get back to my eternal enemy, the notorious ‘R’. I have to admit that things could have been worse. Had I been born in China or Japan my battle with the ‘R’ would have been lost the day I was born. I would have been doomed to order 'flied lice' for dinner for the rest of my life.

The thing is, the ‘R’ is a mischievous little bugger. It knows that it is a consonant, but the sneaky bastard enjoys getting a free ride on the back of the poor vowel that precedes it.

Take the word ‘part’, for example. In many languages the ‘R’ has the decency of standing on its own, so that a Frenchman will correctly say: ‘parrr’, pronouncing the ‘R’ as a third, distinct, sound in that word. The ‘R’ in English, (especially British English) however, often will ride piggyback on the vowel in front of it.

If you live in Boston, the 'R' becomes particularly lazy and the word is pronounced ‘paht’. But it isn't satisfied by just riding piggyback; it also changes the sound of the 'a' in front of it, and the way the word is pronounced by native Bostonians brings shivers down the spine of any 'normal-English' speaking person. It is pronounced: 'paaaht'. See what I mean?

So what’s a foreigner to do? Well, it depends on which language you speak originally. The expression ‘you cannot teach an old dog new tricks’ surely applies here. If you are from Spain or France, there is no way you will loose the habit of pronouncing ‘R’s like rolling marbles in your mouth. That's what 'R's are meant to do, or they wouldn't be called 'R', don't you agree?

You are supposed to say: 'Bears are usually barred from bringing beer to bars before breakfast.' You don't say: 'beahs are usually bahed from bringing beeh to bahs befoh breakfast.' (Unless you have the misfortune of being Bostonian or a New Yawker.)

So, if Americans cannot agree on how to pronounce their own 'R', how do they expect foreigners to learn the correct pronunciation?

My advice to you is to not even try. Just lay it on thick with your foreign accent. Usually it will charm at least a certain percentage of the people around you and the rest? Well, you can please some people some of the time but you cannot please all the people all the time. So there!  leave comment here