American Accent Training | Vocalic /r/

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Vocalic /r/

The term vocalic owes to the fact that the tongue only barely touches the inside of the top back molars and no other internal part of the mouth cavity. Vowel and semi-vowel sounds are similarly produced by letting the air flow unrestricted out of the mouth, and the sound is produced by modulating the muscles of the mouth, throat and tongue.

Mastering the /r/ sound can be challenging for a few reasons.

First off, there's vowel placement. The /r/ sound can precede a vowel (prevocalic) or follow a vowel (vocalic). Depending on the vowel, this can affect the pronunciation of the /r/ sound. Different vocalic combinations include “ar,” “air,” “ear,” “er,” “or,” and “ire.” Most of these vowel combinations can be placed within different positions of a word. Depending on whether the /r/ sound comes at the beginning, middle, or final position of the word can affect how it's produced.

Another reason the /r/ sound can be so challenging is because it's produced solely by the tongue position, making it much harder to visualize compared to other sounds. For example, with the /b/ sound, you can easily see how the lips move during production. A /th/ sound is also easily visualized: The tongue rests between the teeth. For an /r/ production, the tongue has to move in a very specific way, which can often be difficult to demonstrate. Enough tongue tension is also needed in order to establish the correct tongue position required for an /r/ sound.

Lastly, the position of the /r/ in words influences its sound. There are prevocalic and postvocalic sounds: prevocalic when /r/ is found before a vowel, and postvocalic when /r/ is found after a vowel.

In summary, the /r/ sound has more variations than just about any other sound in the English language. But don't let this be discouraging! It simply requires specific techniques to learn the /r/ sound, with lots of intentional practice.

What are the different /r/ sound tongue positions?
There are two different tongue positions that can be used when saying the /r/ sound. They are referred to as "bunched position" and "retroflexed position."

Bunched tongue position: For a bunched tongue position, the tongue is essentially bunched. It stays in a neutral position in the mouth.

Retroflexed position: For a retroflexed tongue position, the tip of the tongue curls and points backward toward the back of the throat.

Pre- and Postvocalic Sounds

Here is a list of 12 variations of the /r/ phoneme: