I'm terribly sorry - saying the letter 'r' in English

Welcome to season 5 of English Sound Building! Today is the first of a few episodes this season looking at the /r/ sound. In particular, this episode considers words where the written letter ‘r’ is always pronounced, and practises the /r/ sound in minimal pairs with /l/ and /w/.

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Transcript

So, today we’re looking at a consonant sound which we have never spoken about before, but it’s high time we did: /r/. So, you’ll hear that I make the ‘standard’ English-from-England /r/ as a postalveolar approximant… meaning that I make it just behind the alveolar ridge (as regular listeners will know by now, that’s the hard gummy bit behind your upper front teeth), and by narrowing, but not closing the flow of air. To narrow the flow, I bring my lower jaw up, and I hold tension in the tip of my tongue to bring it towards that post-alveolar space. The air moves through the centre of my tongue and I get the /r/ sound. It is not a fricative, so we shouldn’t hear any friction, and it isn’t a stop in my English… Play around with the position of your tongue and moving your lower jaw until you hear something you like the sound or feel of.

Now, there aren’t many languages with this postalveolar approximant /r/ and it can be a tricky sound for some learners to get to grips with, so don’t worry if you’re one of them! Have a play around today with the sound, but remember, this sound only represents some English accents and, as I say at the beginning of the podcast every week, is not an ideal! Many English, British and global Englishes make the ‘r’ another way, and as long as you are doing something consistent you are almost certainly communicating successfully! In fact, this is a sound which can be tricky even for those whose accents should include this sound, and many first-language speakers successfully substitute another sound – most often /w/ - in its place. See if you notice any as you listen to spoken English this week! The last thing I want to mention here is that the IPA symbol for this postalveolar approximant /r/ should be an upsidedown lowercase Latin letter ‘r’, but in English teaching and in many English transcriptions we simply use the letter ‘r’ for ease.

We’re first going to talk about words where we find the letter ‘r’ before a vowel sound. Here, my English-from-England accent will always pronounce this /r/. 

Let’s start with some common words with /r/ in this place – I’ve only included words which start with an ‘r’, here, or where the ‘r’ is surrounded by two vowel sounds today – we’ll talk about consonant clusters with /r/ in this position later this season! You’ll also notice that there are a couple here where there is a silent ‘w’ before the ‘r’.

1. area
2. around
3. arrive
4. carrot
5. carry
6. correct
7. orange
8. rain
9. read
10. ready
11. real
12. reason
13. relax
14. restaurant (there are two in there!)
15. result
16. room
17. run
18. sorry
19. story
20. terrible
21. tourist
22. very
23. writer
24. wrong

…And now for some sentences with these words.

• Can you carry the carrots and oranges?
• He read a sorry story in the terrible restaurant.
• The tourist arrived ready to relax.

Ok, we’re now going to practise this pronunciation of /r/ by looking at minimal pairs with two of the sounds it’s often substituted for, in certain positions at least, /l/ and /w/. Depending on your language background, and on the way your mouth is built, you may find these tricky, or you may find that you can easily make the contrast. It’s a good review of those other two sounds, in any case, and don’t forget there are previous episodes on both of them, both from season 2 as it happens: we looked at /l/ back in episode 22 “A little chill”, and we looked at /w/ in episodes 15 and 16 (“a wet vet” and “twelve giveaways”).

Firstly, some minimal pairs with /r/ and /l/

1. arrive/ alive
2. berry/ belly
3. correct/ collect
4. pirate/ pilot

1. rate/ late
2. right/ light
3. rip/ lip
4. road/ load

1. rock/ lock
2. royal/ loyal
3. writer/ lighter
4. wrong/ long

And some sentences with some of those minimal pairs:

• They arrived alive!
• The pilot collected the correct pirate.
• He took the wrong load down the long road.

And second, some minimal pairs with /r/ and /w/.

1. rage/ wage
2. rail/ whale
3. rare/ where
4. reared/ weird

1. real/ wheel
2. rent/ went
3. rest/ west
4. rich/ witch

1. ride/ wide
2. right/ white
3. roar/ war
4. run/ won

And finally, some sentences with some of those words.

• Where’s the rare rich witch?
• Is this paint the right white for the wide ride?
• His rent went on a real wheel.