Marcie from Fort Worth, Texas, grew up in Chile speaking Spanish, but her 10-year-old daughter has trouble rolling her Rs. This difficulty or inability to trill one’s Rs is called rhotacism, and it’s not uncommon in Spanish-speaking countries. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Trouble Rolling or Trilling Rs in Spanish”
Hi there. You have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha. This is Marcy, and I’m calling from Fort Worth, Texas.
You’re welcome. What can we do for you?
Thank you. So I grew up in South America, in Chile, and we got there when I was a little baby, and so I’m a native Spanish speaker.
And in Spanish, you roll your R’s with quite a lot of words.
And I was talking to my daughter, who is frustrated that she can’t roll her R’s.
And I started thinking, why is it that some people can and some people can’t and how that works?
Just, you know, phonetically, because both my parents got there as adults as well, and they have a harder time.
But some people can do it and some people can’t.
I was just curious about why some people can roll their R’s and why some people can’t.
How old is your daughter?
She’s 10.
Okay.
And I have sadly not taught her how to speak Spanish, so I’m sort of beating myself up for that, too.
Oh, so she’s not learning Spanish at all?
No, no.
My theory is I’ll send her to Chile for a year.
She can do, you know, exchange program, and it’ll just all fall into place.
Oh, that sounds like a gift.
There’s a lot of children that have problems with that, even in Spanish-speaking countries.
And it’s one of the top things that children in Spanish-speaking countries go to speech therapy for to learn how to trill their R’s.
Oh.
Yeah.
It’s very common, as a matter of fact.
And there are adults that can’t do it either.
And they’re often seen as sounding foolish and they just can’t help it because it’s just something that their tongues won’t do.
Just like there are other things that in any other country that mouths may not be able to perform.
We’re not all capable of the same things with our mouths.
Rotacism is the word that you’re looking for, R-H-O-T-A-C-I-S-M.
You can look that up and see all the different ways that it can manifest and all the different solutions that people have for it.
But there are some dialects of Spanish where they don’t roll the R’s even though they do in other dialects of Spanish.
So carro with a double R might sound like carro in some other dialects.
Or even in some Caribbean varieties of Spanish, it might sound more aspirated like carro, like something like that.
Oh, interesting.
It’s very interesting.
More like a French R rather than a traditional Spanish trilled R.
So interesting stuff.
But, yeah, it’s incredibly common for people not to be with children.
And you can go to speech therapy for that.
It can be solved for a lot of people.
Did you grow up learning that song with the carro and the, what is it, erre con erre, cigarro?
Yes, and ferrocarril, and, yeah, you have to say all the little words, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I would think that that would be really helpful.
Yeah, yeah, maybe I’ll try and find it for her so we can start singing.
Yeah.
Yeah, that seems to be the one that teaches lots of little kids.
Yeah, well, good luck with that, and I hope she does get her year in Chile.
That sounds fantastic.
Yeah, I hope so, too.
Who wouldn’t want to year in Chile?
All right.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
Thanks, Marcy.
