Re: rhotics (was Hellenish oddities)

On Wed, 6 Dec 2000, BP Jonsson wrote:

> At 11:14 2000-12-03 -0500, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> >When I'm reading at home and see a word with an "r" in it I've taken to
> >wriggling my tongue tip trying to see it with the trill.  :-)
>
> Does it help you to visualize the proper oral gymnastics?  I've found it
> does so for me with new sounds.
Looking at diagrams helps.  Actually sitting there and visualizing things
helps not at all, mainly because I can't visualize to save my life (and
yes, I know I'm a minority).  *Feeling* where my tongue should be and
what it should be doing in slow motion helps.

> A thought: maybe what method(s) helps you produce a trill depends on what
> kinds of similar sounds there are in your native language.  It occurs to me
> that my founetiks teacher's method maybe presupposes that ones natural /d/
> is dental or post-dental rather than alveolar, as is usu the case with
> Swedes, or maybe that your usual /r/ is a rather strident retroflex fricative.
It wouldn't surprise me; I imagine this applies to learning sounds in
general!

YHL