Long answer: you need to trill in order to learn Russian. Trilling isn't difficult at all. I used to do that shit all the time when I was a little kid just to piss people off or for my own amusement.
Name:
Anonymous2008-09-06 23:55
1) Above all: BE PATIENT
2) Forget all that stuff you heard about "just purr like a cat" or "say 'pot of tea' over and over and it will come naturally". If we can't roll our Rs, we can't purr like a cat; and repeating "pot of tea" doesn't make R-rolling come naturally.
3) Play around with your tongue. You'll have a hard time getting it to vibrate (which is why you can't trill to begin with), so blow raspberries like you did when you were young. Buzz your lips and try to make your mouth and parts around it vibrate as much as possible. Just play; have fun.
4) Once you get the muscular feel of being able to shake and rattle around, you probably still won't be able to trill unless, by a stroke of luck, you happened upon it while playing. No matter. With your buzzing session in mind, imitate a large truck engine with your whole mouth. Vibrate your lips and stick your tongue out between them so you can feel them flapping on your tongue. The lips' vibration will carry over to the tongue and you'll feel what it's like to vibrate your tongue.
5) Try to reproduce that sensation. DO IT VOICELESSLY. You don't want to concentrate on too many things at once. Don't aim for accuracy or usage; just play. The first time I did it was like a machine-gun, with spit flying out of my mouth and with my tongue totally out of control but madly trilling nonetheless (although never on the same part of the mouth twice!), blowing air all over the place and generally sounding like a lunatic.
6) Congratulations! You can sort-of-almost make a trilled R if you vibrate the tongue while voicing. But for most people (including me), it's a bit like rubbing your belly and patting your head at first. Practice, practice, practice, and when you can get a voiced buzzing-tongue, try to control your tongue a bit. It's also very important to turn down the heat a little bit on the tongue... at the beginning the tongue will likely go wildly up and down. Once you have a little bit of control over it, make the movement softer and more controlled.
7) Say "pot of tea" over and over. The dentals are where you should try to aim. You'll still be doing it way too forcefully, but if you keep trying for the "pot of tea" place with voicing, you've more or less got it.
8) This is most important of all: FORGET THAT IT'S CALLED AN R. It's not pronounced as one, it just sounds like it is. Don't try to pronounce an R at all while doing it; just treat it another consonant altogether and not as an R. Its articulation bears no resemblence whatsoever to anything we think of as an R. It's an alveolar consonant and you'll screw it up if you try to pull it to a "natural" position for an R.
9) Now look at your vocabulary list, find a word that uses a trilled R, and say it over and over and over and over and over and over and then say it some more. I mean 50-100 times over. You'll naturally correct yourself; you'll no longer do it as forcefully, you'll find where to breathe from, you'll find out how to say the word in context, you'll find out how not to overextend it (very difficult at first; it's like roping a bull), et cetera. You won't be perfect, but you're now able to make the rolled R sound!
10) Find as many vocabulary words as possible and repeat #9: you really should get more practice so you can get better at the sound and also be able to say it in a variety of contexts (after and before as many consonants as possible, its interactions with vowels, etc.).