The /r/ Sound

The /r/ sound is called the “alveolar approximant,” which means that you put your tongue near the roof of your mouth and voice out. Connect with The English Language Club 🙋 1 to 1 Classes with Colin Munro 🔴 The next 100 sign ups get my course for FREE!!! 🤗 Join the Club: :// 📱 Get the App: 💻 Website: 🐦 Twitter: 📸 IG: 😆 Discord Server: The /r/ sound is made through the mouth and is Voiced, which means you use your vocal chords. It is defined by the position of your tongue. It is an approximant, which is a sound made by creating a narrow space in your mouth through which air flows. In this case, it’s the space between your tongue and the top of your mouth. To produce the /r/ sound, curl your tongue near the roof of your mouth and voice out through your mouth. You’re aiming for the tip of your tongue to be right behind the little ridge behind your teeth but it does not touch any part of the mouth. This video is part of our series on phonetics and pronunciation for learners of English as a foreign language. Phonetics is the science of pronunciation. It can be helpful for people learning English because one of the most difficult things about the language is the spelling and pronunciation. English is not very phonetic and as a result the same letters are often pronounced in many different ways in different words. The IPA helps by providing a way to write words as they are pronounced. The normal alphabet only has 26 characters but there are 44 different sounds that are used to pronounce words. As well as that, most word in English originate from other languages like Greek, Latin and French to name just a few and in many cases the the language of origin influences how the word is pronounced. The IPA provides a symbol (phoneme) for each sound so the correct pronunciation can be written or printed in dictionaries. This video along with the others in our pronunciation series helps language learners to hear the correct pronunciation and also to know how to produce the sound of each phoneme.