Other than people who are tongue tied or whatever most people should be able to learn it. It just takes practice if your native language doesn’t have the sound, a bit like learning to whistle if you can’t already. You “can’t do it” until you can and then it’s no big deal. The experience of learning to whistle and learning to roll my r’s was very similar in that regard for me.
I like to tell people I can’t whistle and get them to teach me but I am a very bad student and just when they are about to give up I do a whistle and then get excited but can’t do it again.
I never could until I was in high school working an after school job that I would walk to, and since the walk was about an hour or more each way, I started using my commute to try whistling over and over until I finally got it. There’s no good way to learn except to try it over and over, and not for like 5 minutes and then give up. I don’t remember how many days of walking to work it took me to finally get it, but it was probably dozens of hours of just blowing like an idiot, thinking I’d never get it. Same for rolling my r’s. Hours of just sounding like a dummy (it was important that I did this with nobody around because if anybody was listening to me I would have been too embarrassed to keep trying) failing to do it before I started to get the right sound coming out of my mouth. I was several years into learning to speak Spanish and getting some fluency in the language to where the lack of rolled r was becoming a point of embarrassment for me.
Now I can do both like a champ. I only relate my experience to give some hope to anybody who thinks they’ll never be able to do it, but wishes they could: don’t give up!
Other than people who are tongue tied or whatever most people should be able to learn it. It just takes practice if your native language doesn’t have the sound, a bit like learning to whistle if you can’t already. You “can’t do it” until you can and then it’s no big deal. The experience of learning to whistle and learning to roll my r’s was very similar in that regard for me.
I can’t fucking whistle either
I like to tell people I can’t whistle and get them to teach me but I am a very bad student and just when they are about to give up I do a whistle and then get excited but can’t do it again.
I never could until I was in high school working an after school job that I would walk to, and since the walk was about an hour or more each way, I started using my commute to try whistling over and over until I finally got it. There’s no good way to learn except to try it over and over, and not for like 5 minutes and then give up. I don’t remember how many days of walking to work it took me to finally get it, but it was probably dozens of hours of just blowing like an idiot, thinking I’d never get it. Same for rolling my r’s. Hours of just sounding like a dummy (it was important that I did this with nobody around because if anybody was listening to me I would have been too embarrassed to keep trying) failing to do it before I started to get the right sound coming out of my mouth. I was several years into learning to speak Spanish and getting some fluency in the language to where the lack of rolled r was becoming a point of embarrassment for me.
Now I can do both like a champ. I only relate my experience to give some hope to anybody who thinks they’ll never be able to do it, but wishes they could: don’t give up!