How Do You Roll Your “R”s? Quick Tricks to Achieve an Alveolar Trill

The rrrolling R, which is also known as the voiced alveolar trill is used to pronounce words in languages like Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Scottish English, and more! Some people who haven’t grown up speaking these languages, however, struggle to roll their Rs—other dialects of English, for instance, don’t require the alveolar trill. Like any skill, however, rolling your Rs can be learned with a bit of practice, perseverance, and the simple steps outlined below. Let’s get the ball rrrolling!

How to Do a Rolling “R”

Find your alveolar ridge—the bumpy ridge behind your upper front teeth.
Relax your tongue so it lays flat in your mouth.
Gently raise the tip of your tongue to point at your alveolar ridge.
Make sure your lips are slightly parted.
Breathe out with adequate force to make sound.
Try adding the trill sound to another vowel or consonant like err or trr.

Section 1 of 6:

Learning to Roll Your “R”s

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1
Find your alveolar ridge by feeling the raised, bony structure behind your front teeth. In order to follow the steps to achieve a rolled “R,” it’s helpful to know exactly what parts of your mouth are involved. Specifically, it’s important to identify your alveolar ridge and the tip of your tongue. You’re probably familiar with the tip of your tongue, but the alveolar ridge is that raised, bony border behind your top front teeth and in front of your hard palate.^{[1]
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Research source} Still not sure? Try these exercises:
- The peanut butter scrape:
  - Imagine you have a spoonful of peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth. Use the tip of your tongue to reach far back in your mouth and scrape forward, like you’re trying to scrape away the peanut butter. Move slowly and observe where your tongue passes over the bumpy ridge behind your teeth—that’s your alveolar ridge!
- The alphabet:
  - Slowly recite the English alphabet, saying each letter out loud. Observe where your tongue is positioned for each letter; does it touch another part of your mouth? If so, where does it touch? Try to identify or observe on which letters your tongue touches your alveolar ridge (spoiler alert, it’s “t,” “d,” “s,” “z,” “n,” and “l.”^{[2]
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Relax your tongue so it sits flat in your mouth. Take a deep breath in and let your tongue settle naturally in your mouth. Relax the tongue to the bottom of your mouth, which should be its normal resting position. The rolling R sound requires that your tongue be quite relaxed so it can vibrate freely when you talk.^{[3]
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- Imagine smacking your stomach or upper thigh while relaxed and watching it jiggle. If you flex your stomach or leg and smack it again, it’ll jiggle less (or not at all). The same thing is happening here with your tongue! If your tongue isn’t loose enough to jiggle or is too flexed or tense, it won’t have enough slack to vibrate and give you the rolling “R” sound.
- If you’re struggling to relax your tongue, use the phrase ”tee dee va” to try to loosen it.
- Say this phrase over and over again as quickly as you can. Remember to keep your tongue relaxed and loose inside your mouth.
- Your tongue is a muscle, so you may need to practice quite a bit before you can naturally relax it enough to roll an R.
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3
Raise the tip of your tongue to your alveolar ridge. Slowly and gently raise the tip of your tongue toward your alveolar ridge—this should feel like a miniscule movement where your tongue is barely moving at all. Avoid forcing your tongue upward or pressing it firmly against the ridge—visualize ‘pointing’ at your ridge with your tongue.^{[4]
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- Keep the tip of your tongue near the front of your ridge, not at the back where it begins to slope into your palate.
- If you’re struggling with this step (and it is one of the most difficult ones if you don’t have that muscle memory down!), use the “toy” hack to get into the right position.
- Act as if you’re about to say “toy,” but stop before vocalizing it. Hold your mouth in that position and observe what’s happening—your mouth is closed and your tongue is at the tip of your alveolar ridge.
- However, you’re likely pushing too hard against your ridge at this point. Relax your tongue slightly so it’s just resting on your alveolar ridge without any tension or effort.
- Drop your tongue just a smidge more, then vocalize a sound like hrhh. This exercise should give you a rough idea of both where your tongue should be and what it feels like to roll an “R”!
Feign a deep sigh and let out your breath—let your lips settle naturally. The exact size of the gap between your lips doesn’t really matter, they just have to be open enough for the sound to come out! However, keep in mind that there’s no need to round your lips the way you must for an English “r” sound.^{[5]
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Breathe out on sounds like err, brr, or whatever’s natural to you. Now, the most important step: breathe! At this point, you must experiment with whatever variation works for you—try breathing out normally. Then, try to breathe out on a cough (keeping your tongue in its position from prior steps!). If those attempts don’t work, try a sound like err, irr, arr, trr, drr, brr, or orr. You can also try placing a th sound at the beginning of your breath.^{[6]
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- Keep practicing, experimenting, and making minor adjustments. Open your mouth narrower and wider, move the tip of your tongue forward and backward, use stronger breaths of air…just keep going!
- Whatever you do, avoid forcing the trill—remember that there’s less to the mechanics of this sound than you think, and overly-tensing or moving your tongue won’t help you here.
6
Troubleshoot any repeated issues you’re experiencing. Rolling your “R”s is a difficult skill to learn if it doesn’t come to you naturally, so it may just take time and practice to get it right. However, there are some common issues and solutions that arise for people that are practicing their alveolar trill, so check out these troubleshooting tips to see if any apply to you:
- If you’re getting an “L” sound, your tongue may be too far back or it may be making too much contact with the alveolar ridge.
- If you’re gagging or groaning, your tongue is probably way too far back.
- If you’re getting a normal breath or sigh sound, your tongue isn’t engaged enough.
- If you’re getting a ‘sucking’ sound, try gently easing the tip of your tongue down and closer to your teeth.
7
Incorporate your rolled “R” into syllables and words. Once you’re able to (somewhat) consistently roll your “R”s, practice combining your trill with vowels and consonants to create words. First, try rolling your “R” with a vowel attached: relax your mouth and say ahhhhh. Alternate the ah with the trill, attempting to eliminate the pause between the two with each repetition. Eventually, you want to achieve an ahhhhrrrr sound.
- Once you’ve mastered the vowel, try adding a consonant (aka, achieving your first real word with the rolled “R”!). Try some of these Spanish words with a rolled final “R:”
  - mar (sea)
  - dar (to give)
  - bar (bar)
  - por (for)
  - color (color)
  - pintor (painter)
  - decir (to say)

Section 2 of 6:

Common Tricks and Tips for Rolling Your “R”s

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Use the ta-da hack to roll your “r”s quickly. Say “ta-da” a few times, getting faster and faster on each repetition. Continue until you’re saying “ta-da” as quickly as you possibly can. Once you’ve got the hang of this step, try saying a word that includes a rolling “R,” but say “da” where the “R” is supposed to go.
- For the word rosa, for example, this approach may sound like “ta-da-ta-da-ta-da-rosa.”
- The accelerated “ta-da” should more or less mimic the rolling “R” sound and give you a feel for what your mouth and tongue should be doing to roll your Rs.
- Continue practicing until you can use this hack easily and roll your Rs without the preceding “ta da.”
2
Practice a tiger-like growl sound to practice vibrating your tongue. The “tiger” method helps to teach you the trick of vibrating your tongue, which is needed in order to roll your Rs. This method includes the following steps:^{[7]
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- Clear your throat on a ckh sound. While continuing to clear your throat, turn the ckh into a grr sound, like a tiger’s growl. Focus on making the roof of your mouth vibrate.
- Say the letter “L” or “N” and pay attention to the place where your tongue ends up at the end of the letter. This spot is your alveolar ridge.
- Put your tongue on your alveolar ridge and say the words “girl” and “hurl” without moving your tongue from the ridge.
- Repeat the throat-clearing sound to start the word “girl” or “hurl”, and attempt to turn the vibration into a rolled “R” (i.e., grr-girl).
3
Use the raspberry method to help you roll your “R”s. This method uses the sound that results from blowing a raspberry to help learn how to roll your Rs. The steps are as follows:^{[8]
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- Blow a regular raspberry (stick your tongue out slightly and blow forcefully until you hear a vibrational sound).
- Add your voice to the sound of the raspberry. This can be done by simply using your vocal cords to make noise.
- Lower your jaw as far as possible without stopping the sound of the raspberry.
- Move your tongue to the alveolar ridge without changing your jaw placement or anything else you’re doing.
- At this point, you should be rolling an R. If not, try the method again until you can end with a rolling R.
4
Attempt the “vision dream” method to start rolling your “R”s. This method involves speaking quite loudly, so you’ll want to try this somewhere you won’t be bothering anyone. Follow these steps:
- Breathe deeply.
- Say the word “vision.” Make the middle of the word (which sounds like “zh”) last for 3-4 seconds. As you extend the “zh” sound over those 3-4 seconds, increase the volume of the sound. The last part of the word (the ’n’) should be very short, but should also continue to increase in volume. At this point you should be quite loud.^{[9]
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- Add the word “dream” to create a phrase. There should be less than a second between finishing the word “vision” and starting the word “dream.” The “dr” part of the word “dream” should be the climax of the phrase.
- Relax your tongue when you get to the “dr” part of the word “dream.” Make it go floppy. Since you’re speaking very loudly now, the breath coming out of your mouth should make your tongue vibrate. Let this happen (and keep your tongue relaxed).
- If successful, it should sound like you’re saying something like “dagadaga."
- You may need to try this several times before you get to the point where you’re making a good rolling R sound.

Section 3 of 6:

What is a rolled “r”?

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A rolled “R” is a consonant sound made by vibrating your tongue. Also known as an alveolar trill (or just “trill” for short), this spoken sound is made by forcing air past your tongue in a way that causes the tongue to vibrate and produce a rolling, hammering sound. This voiced consonant is used in many widely-spoken languages, including Spanish, Italian, Russian, and Arabic.^{[10]
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- It’s important to note that the tongue isn’t moving of its own accord during a rolled “R.” Air is causing the tongue to vibrate, but the tongue must be relatively relaxed in order for the “R” to roll properly.
- The rolled “R” is just one type of linguistic trill—the French language also has uvular trill, which is made by vibrating the uvula (at the back of your throat).

Section 4 of 6:

What’s Happening When You Roll Your “R”s

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When you roll your “R”s, the air from your lungs is making your tongue vibrate. Before learning any new skill, it’s crucial to understand what mechanics are involved. For a rolled “R,” the mechanics are actually pretty simple! Basically, your tongue is lifted to the roof of your mouth, which blocks air from exiting. When you force air and sound outward, it’s left with too small of a gap to fit through—so something’s gotta give. In this case, your tongue gives way to the air by flapping, which is what created the rolling “R” sound! For this process to work correctly and give you a rolled “R,” three main things need to happen:^{[11]
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- Your tongue must be relaxed with the tip gently lifted—but still resting.
  - Too relaxed? You won’t be able to lift your tongue.
  - Too tense or flexed? Your tongue won’t jiggle or vibrate.
- There must be a small amount of space between your tongue and the roof of your mouth.
  - Tongue too low? Air will escape your mouth with no issue.
  - Tongue too high? Air will be blocked and unable to exit your mouth.
- There must be enough air exiting your mouth to force your tongue to vibrate.
  - Too weak of airflow? You won’t make any sound.
  - Too strong of airflow? You’ll spit on whatever’s in front of you!

Section 5 of 6:

Common Myths About “R” Rolling

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Being able to roll your “R”s is genetic. Nope! Rolling your “R”s isn’t genetic, but some people can do it more easily than others based on their linguistic background and other factors. For instance, someone who’s grown up speaking Spanish will usually have no problem rolling their “R”s.^{[12]
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- Even speakers of Scottish English may easily roll their Rs, while their linguistic counterparts in England and America (and other English-speaking countries) struggle to do so. If you had been born somewhere else, you’d probably roll your Rs with ease, no change to your genes necessary!
Conversely, your tongue actually doesn’t move on its own at all when you’re rolling an “R” (plus, it’s pretty much humanly impossible to move your tongue that fast). Instead, the tongue is involuntarily moving as a consequence of the air trying to move its way through your mouth.^{[13]
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Actually, rolling your “R”s is often overcomplicated by people who are trying (and failing) to do it. To roll your “R”s, all you need to do is lift the tip of your tongue and breathe. Now, it may take some time to find the exact right position and airflow before it becomes muscle memory, but the actual physical mechanics of “R” rolling is pretty simple!^{[14]
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The rolled “R” is just a variation on the English “r.” Confusingly, the English “r” and the rolled “r” have pretty much nothing to do with each other. In fact, the English “r” doesn’t exist in Spanish at all! The English “r” is made in the back of your mouth—when you say “r,” notice how you feel the back of your throat opening up and your tongue retracting toward the back of your mouth? The Spanish trill (or double “rr”) is made in the front of your mouth by touching your tongue to your alveolar ridge. Totally different!^{[15]
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- If you’re struggling to visualize this difference, touch the tip of your tongue to your alveolar ridge (the hard line that curves along the roof of your mouth, directly behind your teeth). Try saying “r” as you normally would in English without moving your tongue from the ridge. Pretty difficult, isn’t it?

Section 6 of 6:

Pronunciation Practice with Spanish Tongue Twisters

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Once you’ve rolled your “R”s, challenge yourself with tongue twisters! If you’re trying to roll your “R”s in order to speak better Spanish, then some Spanish tongue twisters (or trabalenguas) may help you really increase your fluency. Repeat each tongue twisters over and over, getting faster each time, with the goal of being able to say all the words (including the rolling “R” sound) without proactively thinking about the fact that you’re rolling your “R”s:^{[16]
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- El perro de San Roque no tiene rabo, porque Ramón Ramirez se lo ha robado. (“The dog of San Roque has no tail, because Ramón Ramirez stole it.")
- Erre con erre cigarro, erre con erre barril. Rápido corren los carros, detrás del ferrocarril. (“R with R cigarette, R with R barrel. Quickly run the cars behind the railway train.”)
- Tres tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal. En un trigal, tragaban trigo tres tristes tigres. (“Three sad tigers were swallowing wheat in a wheat field. In a wheat field, three sad tigers were swallowing wheat.”)
- Keep in mind that you generally only need to roll your “R” when the letter is at the start of the word (e.g., “Roque” or “Ramirez”) or is represented orthographically with a double “rr” (e.g., “perro” or “cigarro”). It’s also obligatory when a single “r” follows “n,” “l,” or “s.”^{[17]
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- The single “r” is not pronounced like the English letter—in fact, the English “r” sound doesn’t exist in Spanish at all!. Instead, the single Spanish “r” is pronounced like the “dd” sound in “udder” or “butter.”^{[18]
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  Research source} If you need help pronouncing the single R properly, listen to this video as an example.

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Is it possible for a person to be unable to roll his R's, even if his first language requires him to do so?

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Yes, it is entirely possible! Even if everyone else in your family can roll their R's, it's possible for you to be unable to do so.

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Does having large gaps between the front four teeth have any effect on rolling Rs?

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It can make the sound a bit more awkward, but I also have large gaps in my teeth, and I'm able to trill my Rs enough that people can understand. It may not be perfect, but it is possible.

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How do I relax my tongue?

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Practice tongue twisters, this will make your tongue used to moving quickly. The more you practice the same one, the looser your tongue will get, and soon you will roll your R's!

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The rolling R sound is not an easy sound to produce. It may not come to you quickly or easily. You will likely have to practice several times a day for weeks before you successfully roll an R without thinking about it. Be patient and keep trying.

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If you can’t manage to roll your “R”s, people who speak other languages will still mostly be able to understand you. In Spanish, it’s pretty important to roll your “R”s as it changes the meaning of some words (e.g., perro (dog) vs. pero (but)). However, most Spanish speakers will still get the gist of what you’re trying to say—although they’ll definitely know you’re not a native speaker!

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