Hi, this is Mara from MosaLingua.
Today we have an entire video about just
one sound, the R sound.
If it sounds like I’m exaggerating, I’m not.
The R sound is a very common sound in many
languages like Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese, and Russian, for instance, while
other languages don’t have it at all.
Every language pronounces it in a different,
specific way. So today we’re going to
learn how to pronounce the R like a real
Italian native!
Before we get started, just a reminder that our YouTube channel has
many other interesting videos
about the Italian language. And if you are watching this video on Facebook,
Instagram or another social media page, don't forget to like and
follow our page. First of all, let’s call the R sound by its
real name: an alveolar trill consonant. What does that mean? That your mouth, tongue,
palate, and teeth have to work together to pronounce it right! But don’t worry, we’ll
do it together and I’ll give you some exercises for practice, too. The first hack to
know is… listen to me carefully! Pay particular attention to the words with
the R sound that I’ll say – and there will be a lot of them – and how I pronounce them. In general, you have
to focus on the R sound every time you immerse yourself
in Italian. Listening and repeating as much as possible is the best way to
improve your pronunciation. Meanwhile, you'll also broaden your vocabulary.
So listen to the Italian R as much as you can, maybe by watching this
video several times. The R is a letter that requires teamwork
between your mouth, tongue, palate, and teeth. In fact, the sound comes from the vibration of your
tongue against the back of your top front teeth. So pay attention to
my tongue position: it doesn’t touch the back of my top front teeth but
it stays close, in mid air. Then it vibrates as I exhale, like this… caro, scherzo, grammo.
If your tongue is too close to your palate, the sound stops. If it is too far away,
it can’t vibrate. The trick is to let just the tip of your tongue lightly
touch the back of your top front teeth.
This is why you need a lot of practice! Repeat this movement until you can do it pretty well.
Try doing it in front of a mirror
so that you can check the position of your tongue. Got it? To make good vibrations and
pronounce a correct R, your tongue must be relaxed. It’s not easy
because the tongue is a very active muscle, and also because we don’t need this relaxation
for other sounds. So take all the time you need and do not rush!
Keeping your tongue relaxed and exhaling air makes it vibrate; if it
doesn’t, you are probably not keeping it relaxed enough and you’ll get
sounds more similar to the D to T sounds. No worries, before the video ends we’ll get there!
A good exercise is to pronounce words that begin with D, T, B or P and that have a R
as the second sound – for exemple dritto, treno, pratica, bravo. If you can
pronounce these correctly, you've already made a lot of progress!
As we saw, to pronounce the R sound like a real Italian native, your
tongue has to vibrate, so air has to pass between your tongue and palate. A useful
exercise for getting this right is… a pernacchia (raspberry)! If you’re learning
Italian and do not know what that means, here it is: prrrr!
So, how can we use raspberries to improve our Italian R? Start by blowing
a raspberry, then use your vocal chords to create some sound; lower
your jaw without stopping the sound, then move your tongue
towards the back of your front teeth without stopping the vibration.
At this point you should be producing a trilled R sound but if aren't, don’t worry.
My next point will help you…
As always, my last
piece of advice is lots and lots of practice. If you practice every day,
you’re going to make great progress in no time. A good trick is to choose
some keywords and use them in your daily practice. For instance, try with:
grazie, barra, tratto, quadro, ricco. When you learn how to pronounce a correct R sound,
you can move on to new words.
That's all for today. Please, do not forget to like this video and subscribe to our channel
if you want more interesting videos about learning Italian.
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