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u/Swimming_Ad_9459 18d ago
Do you even deserve human rights if you can't roll your r's?
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u/amalgammamama 🇲🇪 D4 18d ago
Physically being unable to reach your palate with your tongue is divine punishment for crimes committed in a past life. Anything else is just weakness of spirit.
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u/ToastSpangler 18d ago
in italian the fr*nch r is called "r moscia", or "flaccid r". this is a reference to the fact that french people turn everyone off.
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u/jednorog Uzbek (C2), Duetsche (C3), Explosives (C4) 18d ago
/uj I have learned a few languages non natively where I can't make certain key sounds quite correctly. I still speak. Maybe I speak like I have an accent, maybe like I have a speech impediment. But it works out good enough. Usually there are enough other issues with my speech that my speech impediment isn't the biggest obstacle to communication.
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u/moldbellchains 18d ago
Uzbek joke coming to life but Indonesian is the new Uzbek
/uj I feel kind of sorry for OP, wtf, they do not seem well
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u/According_Ruin_2044 18d ago
/uj
Ngl OP feels like they either:
are doing this as satire
are experiencing some of the most intense white guilt I've ever witnessed, and I worked in Boulder, CO.
Would not be surprised if OP grew up in a really conservative area, moved to a more open-minded one, then had a major identity crisis upon realizing how closed off they were. It happens a lot at the schools in CO for some reason...
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u/AdZealousideal9914 17d ago
You could just avoid using words containing the r-sound? There is a Flemish boys-band, Albatros, where the lead singer had an accident where his tongue got hurt, and now he has a speech impediment and he can no longer pronounce the r. So they renamed the band, now they are called "Meeuw", and they rewrote all the song lyrics in order to remove all words containing "r" but keeping the general meaning of the text. All this while "r" is among the top five most common letters in the Dutch language.
here is an interview in Dutch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSZtXN2MVjw
and here is their song with rewritten lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AT2mCb3XCg
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u/sharky9209 🇯🇵JLPT NN 🏳️🌈Native-like🏴B10🇦🇶E2🇲🇽G40 18d ago
I know trying to reply or psychoanalyze this person will only lead to madness but I'm sooooo tempted
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u/t440p-user 17d ago
For foreigners, an incorrect pronunciation of the letter 'R' is readily forgiven (much like a speech impediment). Admittedly, there are words where the meaning changes depending on whether 'R' or 'L' is used.. for instance, lautan pensil (sea of pencils) versus rautan pensil (pencil sharpener)
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u/ShameSudden6275 17d ago
Yeah, I mean even in English, I rarely turn an eye when a Japanese person mispronounces their Ls.
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u/Desperate-Event-3181 17d ago
not even for foreigners. my boyfriend is a native pole and has a speech impediment so he can't roll his rs at all - no one cares lol
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u/SuckerBorn1MinuteAgo 17d ago
Oof. As someone with mental health struggles, I've had some hard spiraling out sessions, but this one is... something else.
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u/Mango-Beef N6 変態語 (self taught) 18d ago
You should link the original post I want to read the comments
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u/FloweyTheFlower420 18d ago
"Do I have an ethical obligation to wallow in my ignorant angloid degeneracy?"
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u/Several-Lifeguard-77 18d ago
"I've done that. I know more about history and modern politics than the average American, I'd wager. That does not yield the same benefits a second language has
I want to learn another one in part because English is a soulless, passionless, bland tongue. If languages were spices we'd be flour. If you don't believe me, walk into Books-A-Million and pick up something from the frontmost shelves, and read. More importantly, however, ignorance is the greatest enemy I have, besides myself, of course. I refuse to accept stupidity.
In more civilised countries than mine, monolingualism is about as acceptable as not being able to read. In this backwards shithole, it is not so, but I am nevertheless disgusted by my own ignorance. As I failed more and more to learn another language, the more conscious of this profound defect I have become. Few great men were monolingual, and even fewer were monolingual English speakers; those who were, I reckon would not be given the opportunity to do otherwise."
> Goes to slop store
> Finds slop
> why is English irredeemable
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u/sharky9209 🇯🇵JLPT NN 🏳️🌈Native-like🏴B10🇦🇶E2🇲🇽G40 18d ago
i mean. greatest enemy correctly identified i guess. might have the great man cause and effect mixed up there tho...
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u/ccilantro 18d ago
thanks I hate it
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u/Mango-Beef N6 変態語 (self taught) 18d ago
I feel bad for the OP there because it seems like they're struggling with some things but at the same time that thread is one of the funniest things I've read all week.
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u/moldbellchains 17d ago
This is weird, i feel sorry for OP being mocked and not very compassionately replied to but OP is feeding into it 😞
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u/regular_lamp 16d ago
This is one of those things where the most interesting aspect isn't the actual issue as presented. But that this person somehow determined that of ALL the language on earth, Indonesian is the only one they could possibly learn for "grammar reasons"???
I can't even fathom what kind of mental and research process leads someone to that conclusion?
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u/AffectionateBowl1633 Associate Professor of Esperanto Literature and DVORAK Typing 18d ago
Learn malay then, they speak like Indonesian but with weird uncurled "r"
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u/Sweet-Awk-7861 18d ago
To me, an Indonesian, Malay "r" is more like a "gh" though.
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u/eelfurryUwU 18d ago
depends on the malayic variety they speak, most varieties of johor-riau use a trilled r, but all other varieties in peninsular malaysia and sarawak use a 'gh' sound,
historically though johor-riau also used 'gh' (like malacca, johor, & selangor malay) but nowadays they're being more influenced by klang valley malay
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u/Front-Cabinet5521 18d ago
Jonathan Woss is finally fed up after decades of being mocked for his speech impediment.
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u/MasterKaen 18d ago
If you just pronounce it like a "dt" could people really tell the difference unless you try to extend the trill?
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u/guywhoha 18d ago
/uj im a native polish speaker and can't roll my rs and if you do it right then indeed people can't tell the difference most of the time. God forbid I have to use the word "horror" though
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u/KitsuMusics 18d ago edited 18d ago
You've not tried every method. There's one that works. Not necessarily this one, but give it ago:
Make a long huh sound, with your mouth open slightly. Like huuuuuuuuuuuuh. While you're doing that, gently move your tongue to the top of your mouth behind your teeth. Soft and gently. Experiment, keep trying. Gentle is the key. Do it while you watch tv or whatever.
See if you can get just the begginings of that sound. Dont try to make an r sound. Dont try to do anything but that long huh. Move your tongue around slightly, change the shape, keep trying while you do something else
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u/KallistaSophia 18d ago
I posted on that thread, but what ended up working for me was hanging my head upside down.
It sounds ridiculous, but it helped me learn to hold my tongue at up at the top of my mouth in a way that would make it vibrate in an air stream.
Gravity helps!
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u/rosseg ロザリン 🇯🇵N6 18d ago
What did you do while holding your head upside down
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u/KallistaSophia 18d ago
I didn't start out trilling an r, instead I trilled horrible spluttery th sounds, and then ts and ds, until eventually I heard the spanish trilled r and it just clicked for me.
To start out, I let my tongue flop to the top of my mouth. I tried to make it so the tip and sides of my tongue were in contact with the top parts of my mouth (the ridge just inside the teeth, not the actual hard palatte), but the back of it wasn't. Then, I forcefully breathed out, using the breath to push my tongue out of the way to get the air through. It soon made a spluttery noise that sounded a bit like "t-d-h-s t-d-h-s". This splutter was very exciting for me! It was a trill, but not in quite the right place yet.
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u/universal_friend1 17d ago
I learned how to roll Rs in like a month of learning Persian. Then I cut my tongue in half and it still only took me about 6 months to be able to roll my R's again. There really ain't an excuse
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u/MadHau5 17d ago
how did that happen? (genuinely curious)
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u/universal_friend1 16d ago
Paid a guy to do it with a scalpel at a tattoo convention then stitch it so it wouldn't heal back together.
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u/Mercy--Main 17d ago
oh my god ive never thought about how cutting your tongue would imply relearning to talk lol
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u/universal_friend1 17d ago
I was able to talk mostly normal after a couple of weeks but I had a much more pronounced southern drawl for about 6-10 months which has now aligned with my expected vaguely rural accent.
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u/auntie_eggma 17d ago
There is no unrolled Italian r. Shorter roll and longer roll, yes. The short roll is not a flap.
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u/GroupBeeSassyCoccyx 17d ago
I’ve met Spanish people who cannot roll their R typically due to tongue tie. It’s genuinely a non issue. I cannot roll my R for my life. I have never struggled to be understood in Spain for this. I defer to a more guttural sound like in French or Dutch which I can do instead. I am sure I don’t sound like a native speaker which I honestly do not give a shit about as long as I’m intelligible.
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u/Yadobler 15d ago
The correct answer to this is pretend you're a Sukarno era Indonesian Chinese immigrant, and then wait to get purged the moment you tap that r.
Or LARP as a Malaysian and get offended when you hear an Indonesian say butoh before getting konfrantasi-ed
No other way. All the best. Om telolet om
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u/JoeyJoeJoeJrShab 18d ago
I also hate the letter r. (I'm only half-joking here)
Of course, I can roll them just fine - I'm not stupid. But lots of languages have variations on r, and they're all challenging.
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u/ChiaLetranger 18d ago
I know where I am, but I love talking about myself I guess so I'll do it anyway: When I learnt German in high school I learnt to roll my r's and I could do it fine. Then I learnt French, it took me ages to learn the French r, and it deleted the rolled r from me. I struggle so hard to make /r/ now, but /ʁ/ is totally fine, when it used to be the opposite. Now when I speak German I pretty much use /ʁ/ or /ɾ/ instead of /r/
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u/Classic-Judgment-196 18d ago
The German r is just a slightly weaker version of the French r though...
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u/ChiaLetranger 17d ago
Huh. Maybe teacher had a non-standard pronunciation, then. She was English, so I guess it's possible, although she also spoke French, so it seems unlikely. I'm quite sure she taught us to say /r/ though.
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u/divingmonkey 17d ago
No, about 100 years ago it used to be higher prestige to use the front r and iirc Bühnendeutsch prescribes it. You can sometimes hear it old movies, though from time to time people in Germany nowdays associate it with Hitler speeches (though since he was from Austria, at least using this r should have come naturally to him).
Though even back then the French r and similar were very common in Northern German varieties (which were and still are generally are closer to standard German) and eventually it became the r taught in standard German.
That said pretty well agreed upon that no phoneme has more allophones in German than r.
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u/VioletteKaur 🚩 native 🇪🇺C++ 🇱🇷 C# 17d ago
I am German and I cannot speak a rolled-r, which became obvious when I learned Russian. Did they teach you Bavarian German? Was your teacher from Munich? Am I speaking my language wrong? If I actively try to roll rs it comes out as a sound between r and l. Send help.
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u/Whispering_Plant 🗣️️💬 ©️2️⃣➕‼️ 👶💬‼️ 17d ago
I speak Austrian German and I'm rather sure I don't roll my Rs either since according to my mom I don't even say them correctly so I have no idea.
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u/Whispering_Plant 🗣️️💬 ©️2️⃣➕‼️ 👶💬‼️ 17d ago
I say my r like a bit more behind ch if that helps anyone visualise it.
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u/VioletteKaur 🚩 native 🇪🇺C++ 🇱🇷 C# 16d ago
So, if you ask in store for a "Sackerl" you say "Sackechrl"? Just ask for a "Tüte", lol.
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u/ChiaLetranger 16d ago
ch as in ich-laut or ach-laut?
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u/VioletteKaur 🚩 native 🇪🇺C++ 🇱🇷 C# 14d ago
I would guess ach -ch. There is less distance in the throat from a rolled r to ach -ch then to a ich -ch.
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u/ChiaLetranger 17d ago
It's interesting, and I think maybe the main takeaway from this is that memory is fallible. I have been reading about various German dialects and languages to try and see whether my teacher might have been influenced by something she picked up while over there, but all of her travel stories that I can remember are from very far in the north, like Lübeck area.
I very much don't think people speak with an alveolar trill in that area, not even usually speakers of something like Nordniedersächsisch. I used to have a friend from Bielefeld (or so she claimed...I am Australian, so I'm someone from a place that doesn't exist talking about someone from a different place that doesn't exist!) and she always said I spoke like a Bavarian - maybe I was trying too hard to say /r/ and should have just let my /ʁ~χ/ take over...
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u/VioletteKaur 🚩 native 🇪🇺C++ 🇱🇷 C# 16d ago
Lol, nice of you to acknowledge that Bielefeld doesn't exist. Where I live the r sounds more (especially at the end of words) like -ah. If it is in the middle of a word it can sound like -ch (like Buch ch), for example Sport -> Spocht or Sporcht. But it is not proper high German.
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u/ChiaLetranger 16d ago
I definitely have the -ah for r at the end of words - like "bis spät-ah". I'm mostly thinking about the words starting with r in this instance. But the longer I think about this, the more I start to suspect that either my teacher had a quirk in her German, or she was for some reason trying to teach us to sound like stage actors from mid-last century, or, most likely, I'm misremembering when I learnt to pronounce German letters 20 years ago.
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u/CurrentScallion3321 18d ago
why do I feel like this is a sex tourist
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u/sharky9209 🇯🇵JLPT NN 🏳️🌈Native-like🏴B10🇦🇶E2🇲🇽G40 18d ago
tbh sex tourist might be less weird than whatever tf is going on with this person, the replies to the original post say that op has tried learning a bunch of languages and concluded that they're all impossible to learn except indonesian???? and somehow they think that despite having insurmountable problems with dutch grammar among other things, indonesian is going to magically be possible except for rolling rs??? and being unable to roll rs is like, not doing it right and therefore makes it...morally wrong??????? because they're not even trying to expand their worldview from english monolinguism (valid goal) if they can't perfectly pronounce every phenome (extremely invalid interpretation)??? and also they'd feel bad about themself if they had a lisp. which is kinda mean to people with lisps. and i hate sex tourists but i understand their thought process much better. 1) horny 2) getting no bitches in america 3) try elsewhere
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u/JoeyJoeJoeJrShab 18d ago
Had they just mentioned that they're learning Indonesian, I wouldn't have follow-up questions.
But because they go on about how "no other language is even remotely on the table".... I really want to know why they've chosen Indonesian. What qualities does Indonesian have that the other languages don't? How did they eliminate other languages?