Holding out the R: American English Pronunciation

[syedasad581]

I believe she seems and sounds very honest keep on Im impressed with yr demenour

[N0zer0]

You can't hold it out or what?

[nikhilrockzzz0071]

oohh god i canttttttttttttttttt.... :( i've been trying this 'r' sounds tutorials from the past 3 months..... :( :(

any hints....??

[N0zer0]

This is a good method to test pronunciation of R: youtube.com/watch?v=R4SoLrAO2K­4

[j3ff1nho]

i feel shame from myself when doing this exercice.

[rralpha2009]

More clear than that, impossible!

[katherine32ben]

Great video Rachel! Thank you :)

[valery431]

ok!

[Htun691]

Hi Rachel, thanks for the videos.You are the best.

[xThorProductionsx]

Just what I needed :D

Like 30 min ago I was reading a text out loud just to practice and I was stopping at a lot of words with "r" and I didn't know why...

You just answered my question, thanks! Subbed for life ;D

[gulivernashuatec]

Rachel, I have a question: when you say "pull the tongue back" a little bit, shoud I curl up my tip of the tongue to make R sound?

[rachelsenglish]

@gulivernashuatec What I mean has to do with the back part of the tongue stretching towards the roof of the mouth. The front part hangs from that, the tip is pointing down. If you've not seen the video on R, I suggest it. In the slow motion clips, you can see part of the tongue to illustrate this point :) I've put a link to this video in the annotations.

[gulivernashuatec]

@rachelsenglish Are you saying my tip of the tongue should be flat? I saw other videos of your teaching how make R sound, but it's so difficult to me, because my tip of the tongue go up a little bit! :/

[rachelsenglish]

@gulivernashuatec Many non-natives have the habit for it to go up ... that will give it a more hollow sound. Try to point it down, as relaxed as possible.

[gulivernashuatec]

@rachelsenglish Thanks, Rachel! You're so kind and helpful! Sorry I am bothering you, but as you know, making R sound is so difficult, that's why it needs a special attention. So, I'm trying hard to change the way I used to make R sound. I've learned from some books as Mastering American Accent to form the American /r/ is simply curling the tip of my tongue and pull it back a bit; keep the tongue tense. But, from now on I'm following your lessons (to be continued)....

[gulivernashuatec]

@rachelsenglish Let me see if I got it: I should do with the back part of my tongue touches the soft palate and my tip of the tongue should be rest (on the floor of my mouth) and do not touch my bottom teeth, just pull it back a little bit, right?

Another question: when I saw one of your videos, I noticed that you pronounced "drivERs" like "DRIVZ" /draɪvz/ sounds like "He drives"

Ex.: "Whenever Rebecca drivers her car..."

Is schwa + R disappear in fast speech in cases like this?

[rachelsenglish]

@gulivernashuatec I wouldn't say it's touching the soft palate, I would say it's still the hard palate, but it's in the middle of the mouth so it's back close to the soft palate.

[dhaka4040]

Though it'll require the whole lot of practice on my part, this video will work as an excellent prompt. Thanks Rachel.

[x3iDREAM]

The way you pronoun "student". How do you do that?

[rachelsenglish]

@x3iDREAM The first syllable is stressed, second unstressed (with the schwa): [ˈstud ənt]

[merezk]

English with Rachel is awesome.