Rolled R-less cultures

September 25, 2014 1:43 PM

In which cultures/countries is it RARE for people to be able to sustain a tongue-rolled R? (Say, fewer than 1 in 10 people can do it?) In this case I mean sustain artificially long, say for 3 seconds.
posted by kalapierson to Writing & Language (12 answers total)

I grew up in NZ, where everyone learns at least basic Maori at school, and attempting accurate pronunciation of Maori place names is pretty much expected. Maori has something similar to a rolled 'r', but it isn't sustained - probably the closest comparison would be the 'r' in Japanese. I would say that most NZers can manage the Maori 'r' (although some choose not to) but only those who grew up speaking a rolled-r language can sustain it for any length of time. I've tried, while learning other languages, and the closest I can get is a bad approximation of the French 'r' (which is not helpful since I don't speak French!). I just can't seem to sustain the full front-of-the-mouth roll.
posted by embrangled at 2:04 PM on September 25, 2014

Southeast England, where I grew up. My unrolled Rs are a source of pity in my current, German-speaking country of residence. :(
posted by daisyk at 2:08 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

So there are three primary types of 'r'. Trilled, tapped, and approximant.
Approximant is the R that we use in American English. Trilled you'll most likely have heard in Spanish, in words that have two r's together. In most other languages, it's tapped.

So, I can't answer your question exactly, but that sound is uncommonly used in the world's languages and only in Albanian, Czech, Spanish and a handful of others is a rolled r always distinct from the other types of r. Those languages are likely to have most people able to make the sound compared to others.

(my degree in this was ten years ago and all information above subject to correction by Languagehat)
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 2:26 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

I take this to be a learnable skill, i.e. I am answering this question as 'have learned to' vs. 'can do it'.

I taught myself to roll my 'r's (both 'pero' and 'perro', though maybe the difference in those two words is vowel length; what I mean is that I learned both the flapped and sustained roll) and curl my tongue into a u in the same year. The second skill has no linguistic value and took a lot of handling of my tongue into the shape until I could get it there myself.

This was 3rd grade, when I started having Spanish class every day instead of an enrichment dose once every month or so. [We were also doing a genetics unit that touched on tongue-curling abilities and I was determined to not be any more genetically different than my largely-homogeneous classroom.]

Trivially, choose places where rolled-R languages aren't spoken or taught.
posted by batter_my_heart at 2:29 PM on September 25, 2014

Best answer: It depends on what you mean by "unable."

If you mean unable, even with a short period of practice allowed--I don't think that such a community exists. While there are some people who find it either difficult or impossible, on average it's not particularly hard sound to learn.

If you mean people who have simply not had any reason to learn how to do it yet, then any community in which the rolled r doesn't occur in the languages people speak or study, or in play.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:41 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm unable to do it. Can't at all, despite many years of trying. I don't know why, but my partner (who is near-fluent in several non-English languages) posits that it may be because I spoke English first, then picked up Japanese as a small child. My mouth can do the Japanese almost-r sound with no problem, but I can't roll/trill the r sound to save my life.
posted by komlord at 4:57 PM on September 25, 2014

French put their r's in the back of the throat, Germans put theirs in the bottom.
posted by brujita at 8:18 PM on September 25, 2014

That's probably not the reason you can't roll your "r", komlord. That wouldn't explain all of the other people who can't roll their "r", but also--and more importantly--there's no reason to believe that exposure to English and then Japanese would somehow block the ability to learn it later.

One of my colleagues (also a graduate student in phonetics) is completely unable to roll her "r"s, so I know that there are some people who just can't do it. The question is how common are they: will you find a community, like the OP is asking for, where more than 90% of the population can't do it? And what does "can't do it" mean? (Can't do it right now? Can't do it after a week of practice?)

My experience with English-speaking undergraduates in phonetics classes says no, if you mean can't learn to do it. There are usually a few who can't do it, but most can. This isn't because they've previously studied a language with a rolled "r" (many haven't), but because it's not challenging enough that 90%+ of them can't learn to do it.

French put their r's in the back of the throat, Germans put theirs in the bottom.

This is kind of a hard statement to understand, unless you mean that Germans fart their r's. What is the difference between the back of the throat and the bottom? And how does this capture the difference between the French "r" (most commonly realized as a uvular fricative in Standard French), and any of the many variants of the German "r" (which have been described as either uvular also or further forward)?
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:29 PM on September 25, 2014

Southern Part of the Netherlands. "Limburgs" accent.
posted by Mac-Expert at 11:16 PM on September 25, 2014

Response by poster: Thank you -- yes, I'm asking whether there are any cultures in which almost nobody could do it.

In exact terms, my practical question is:

Is there a region or culture in which a group of at least 20 people would be unlikely to naturally include even 2 people who could, with minimal practice, sustain a rolled R?

(Didn't want to derail with the details, but I'm asking re. a choral piece that requires at least 20 singers or so, for musical reasons, and would have two solo parts requiring some sustained rolled Rs -- I'd want that piece not to be accidentally inaccessible to any cultural groups I wasn't thinking of. I know the category "member of a choral group that sings notated music" already selects somewhat for "person invested in language/sound proficiency," but I was looking to see if I'm being blind to any cultures where the ability is just really rare for some reason.)
posted by kalapierson at 1:58 AM on September 26, 2014

Response by poster: (The tip-of-the-tongue Spanish R is what I mean by tongue-rolled R)
posted by kalapierson at 3:27 AM on September 26, 2014

I asked some Korean phonetics students in my department whether students in their undergraduate classes could do it. Korean students don't have as much exposure to Spanish as American students do. They reported that it was the same--that it was pretty easy to pick up, but that there were a few who couldn't do it.

I think you should be concerned more about than than about cultural insensitivity. You might have one or two people in your choir who just can't learn to do it, no matter how hard they try.

(Some suspect it's a physiological issue. Even some people in countries with rolled "r"s can't do them.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:39 PM on September 27, 2014