RR con RR

Spanish, as languages go, is pretty straight forward. Every letter is pronounced the way it should be and as long as you stick to that, you will be understood. However, there are a couple of tricky sounds that trip the tongue. Namely, rr. This is the sound that the telephone makes, but do that now with your tongue vibrating off the roof of your mouth. It is difficult. There is a little tongue twister that the locals say to perfect this beautiful part of the Spanish language, it goes like this:

RR con RR cigarro

RR con RR barril

Rapido rueden los carros

Cargado de azucar

El ferro carril

Now, if you can say that fast, you have the rr down, and if not, it is a great way to practice. My husband taught it to me more than a decade ago and it worked to make that stubborn yet beautiful sound fluid in my vocabulary. What's the big deal? If you don't roll that rr, carro (car) becomes caro (expensive), perro (dog) becomes pero (but, as in with an exception to). You catch my drift. So if you are learning Spanish and struggling with making your rr's trill as they should, try this quirky tongue twister. You might even find that it's fun.