Learning to roll the ‘r’ in Spanish

My Spanish student from China has been learning to roll the letter ‘r’. Being able to do that is necessary when you see a double r (‘rr’) in Spanish words like carro.

At first she did not think she could do this.

And I remember thinking the same thing as I first was learning Spanish. But I wanted to be able to do it.

So I listened and started trying to be able to roll the ‘r’. At first, it wasn’t comfortable and was hard to put into words. Eventually I got it.

She is starting to be able to roll her tongue, but the sound of ‘t’ is more comfortable.

Tone/pitch

For me, rolling the letter ‘t’ is a higher pitch and for the letter ‘r’ is a lower pitch. I can go higher in pitch than the letter ‘t’ also.

t/tr/r

The transition from the ‘t’ sound to a ‘tr’ sound may be easier than the transition directly to the ‘r’ sound. Seems like the middle of the tongue is a bit lower in the mouth going towards the ‘r’ sound.

I also found this post by Benny about rolling the letter ‘r’.

Let me know if you have any thoughts!