How do you say your r's

[pestopastaa]

According to the video (2m 12s) you curl your tongue up. I've never done this. My tongue just flaps. How do you do yours?

Apparently r is the hardest letter as you can't see how it's done.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml1VTjLN1Mc&pp=ygUNaG93IHRvIHNheSByIA%3D%3D

Won't it also depend on your accent and whether you're rhotic or not? Though I suppose that's more if you say ahh or arr, so phonetically, they're different.

And saying Rs perfect is going to vary according to accent, too, or at least be affected by the adjacent phonemes and stuff.

**I'm a speech and language therapist and if a child is struggling with their 'r' sound, I find the easiest way to reach it is to get them to grip the sides of their tongue between the sides of their teeth, mouth stays open slightly. But you can also make it by curling your tongue back.

Depends on where in a word the letter R stands.

I have a rhotic R.

For an initial R, I'd compress my tongue and form my lips into almost a cat's bum shape. For an R in the middle of a word, it would depend on what letters are around it, but again my lips move, but not the cat's bum shape. For an ending R, sort of the same.

Ahaaaa! This is how I do it.

I have a really small jaw. Is it more common since our jaws got smaller?

Errr 😬 I didn't know our jaws had got smaller so can't comment on that!

Omg. I’ve never been able to say the r sound until I read this thread. It comes out more like a v. I’ve had some success by curling my tongue back!

It was in Dr Van Tullekens book about UPF. Apparently we eat softer food so our jaws have got smaller.

I'm so pleased for you!

There are two ways....

Bunched R, making the tongue muscle tense and pulling the top of your bunched tongue up to the roof if your mouth.

Retroflex R, pulling the tip of your tongue up and backwards.

Both work!

Ooo interesting. Typically children say 'w' for 'r' which wouldn't have anything to do with jaw size, they've just learnt the sound incorrectly.

Don't most English people pronounce r as ahh? I know there are many accents in England and Britain as a whole obviously!
I'm Irish so r is pronounced orr in my accent. Although some Irish accents say arrr like a pirate ☺️