In this article we’ll be dealing with the dreaded French [R]. A rolled sound. But not always. It is often more pronounced in fits of anger and emotion. At all other times it’s just an ever-so-slight roll in most cases.

Part 4: [R]

Technical manuals describe the sound as:

A vibration of the vocal cords, a continuous consonant for which you can hear air passing over the tongue as it is raised at the back, and a brief batting of the uvula (the middle dangly bit). Tip of the tongue remains lowered and unmoving.

It may be easier to practice with this in mind, and without necessarily worrying about doing a big roll on every R of every word. It is a little like clearing your throat in a controlled manner.

Words to practice:

Sérieux – grand – riz – terre – boire – Paris – France – Irlande

En Irlande, pour boire c’est sérieux.

A Paris, on trouve du riz.

En France, on trouve la grande ville de la lumière.

Now if you feel that you are not yet reproducing this sound as it should be, be patient and just get as close as you can. The tell-tale giveaway of a native English speaker is not converting their [R] sounds to the French version. Try saying the above sounds with an English [R] – that might be as off-putting to a French speaker listening to you as a French speaker rolling all of their [R] sounds in English would be to us.

Finally, click through here to see the influence of this sound throughout Europe: Guttural R sound, Wikipedia

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A handy audio version of this and the other articles in this series is to be distributed at the end.

All questions below, thank you.