Most common ‘r’ pronunciation in each European language

38 comments
  1. This makes no sense. Portuguese has both alveolar (as in caro) and uvular r’s (as in carro); sometimes in the same word as in raro.

  2. Albanian has the English r too, they’re two distinct sounds and letters of the alphabet, the *r* represents the English r and *rr* represents the rolled one. In fact the English r is more frequent in words.

  3. Wrong: In Georgian, we have both rolled and guttural. They are two completely different sounds to us 🙂

  4. Can someone explain what is a ”hard’ post-alveolar rolled r slightly further back’?

    I am Bulgarian and I have no idea what this means or how this is supposed to sound like. Afaik we only have one type of r which is the regular rolled r.

  5. The differences are quite noticeable for me.

    When I speak in French and try words like frites, retard, Français and then try fries, retry, French in English there are very noticeable differences. (heck, try the word difference in French v English)

    My girlfriend is from Eastern Ukraine and when she speaks French with me she rolls her R far too harshly for French. It doesn’t seem to be the case when she speaks English though so I’m guessing it’s more a learning thing.

  6. I’d like to know what thought process led people to use this abomination called here “guttural r”. I mean, WHY??? What’s wrong with rolled r?

  7. I don’t know if it’s related but I noticed that Germans truncate the R in some words, for example they pronounce “Richter” as “Richta’ “

  8. There is also an English R in Dutch, mostly associated with posh people from ‘t Gooi, but due to TV/radio personalities being from that area it’s (imo unfortunately) becoming more and more common among the younger generations.

    Often it’s only the R at the end of a word though, like ‘raar’ would start with a rolled R and end with and English R. But like I said, depends on the area you come from.

  9. As someone who’s poked around with learning Swedish, it’s not the pronunciation of r’s that get me, it’s the k’s. Sometimes it seems totally normal to me, like ‘svenska’ but then sometimes you have words like köttbullar or sked and my mind just melts out my ears.

  10. NGL a lot of people from all over Europe have been pointing out flaws here and I don’t just wanna dogpile on OP but…

    I’m from Ireland and a couple of things strike me as weird. The retroflex r is actually more standard in Ireland even places like Kentucky with a lot of Irish heritage have that very strong r sound (unlike most English accents which are non-rhotic). In the Irish country side its not uncommon to hear the guttural r but the trilled r is really quite rare, it does exist (around Tipperary) but its one of those tiny dialects that’s probably dying out fast so its a weird choice for the whole country. Some Dublin accents use the dotted r but that’s its own thing. Also kinda weird to but the r boundary right on the border since most Donegal accents are very hard to distinguish from say Derry.

  11. Additional word on the Scottish case: Scots is a minority language in Scotland, spoken by different percentages of people in different parts of the country. The different R pronunciations are a holdover from when Scots was the main language in Scotland (it started to decline after the Act of Union with England), and heavily influence Scottish pronunciation of English words.

  12. It’s funny how French and German are so far apart, they’ve got very different melodies and stereotypes attached to them but when it comes down to the actual sounds, there are some really big similarities. Which is why French people usually do a pretty good job at pronouncing German words when they try.

  13. This would be cool if it was correct. At least, Norway and Portugal should be two-toned.
    Sweden is accurate though. And it’s the source of a lot of ridicule/hazing.

  14. To explain Sweden – it’s dialectal. In Stockholm they have the “english r’s”, in the most southern regions (Skåne and somewhat in Småland) we use the guttural r’s but the rest of sweden uses the rolling r’s. In some rare dialects you can hear two but never three.

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