Reduce Your 'Rolled R's!

A podcast for English learners!  Improve your listening skills, practice your pronunciation, learn new vocabulary!     

This episode, I'm chatting with Risto and Carolina from the Stick With Us podcast!   We chatted about the influence of US and UK sitcoms (with a great reference to the UK sitcom “The IT Crowd”), hosting their own podcast and misunderstandings in English...

Pronunciation tip = Many learners roll their 'r's ... in English, it's not necessary!      


Presenter =  Sam @_emaileng (Twitter, IG), @emaileng (TikTok)     

Music = "Baby Bloodheart" by Mara Carlyle  @MaraCarlyle    www.maracarlyle.bandcamp.com     

Artwork = Penny Rossano  @pennyrossanomusicart (IG)    www.pennyrossanoillustrations.com     

Guest = Risto & Carolina, Stick With Us Podcast = https://podtail.com/fi/podcast/stick-with-us/

Transcript

EPISODE 22 = REDUCE YOUR 'ROLLED R’s! 

Hello!  And welcome to Chat ENG – a podcast where people chat about how they learn and use English.  My name is Sam, I’m a CELTA teacher and a performer, and I have a particular interest in pronunciation and expression.   

In each episode, non-native and native speakers will chat about their experiences with English, share their advice and, at the end, I’ll give some pronunciation tips for you to take away and practice.   

So – ready?  Let’s get Chat ENG!

This episode, I’m chatting with Risto and Carolina - my first chat with a couple!  Risto is originally from Finland, while Carolina is Italian and is originally from Brazil.  Like many international couples, English is the language in which they communicate - so I was interested in finding out more about this, as there are so many couples in the same situation!  

We chatted about the influence of US and UK sitcoms (with a great reference to the UK sitcom “The IT Crowd”), hosting their own podcast and misunderstandings in English, but I started by asking Risto and Carolina to tell me a little bit about themselves…

Interview

R: so my name is Bristol I am a finished native and I have been working in Dublin for 1 1/2 years and now I’m back here… 

C: No, you worked!

R: I worked!  And now I’m back here, and as you can maybe notice, I’m not a native English speaker but I have of course, like, worked in the UK and also I talk every day in English with my wife and with my work. 

C: And I am the wife Carolina! The one that was mentioned before, and I don’t speak Finnish – well, not much Finnish that would be enough – so English is our language of communication. And I am not a native speaker as well - I am Italian and I was born in Brazil and Portuguese is my mother tongue, and I speak other languages as well - Italian and Spanish, trying Finnish and Swedish - so there’s a lot of languages that..

R:  “Não falo português” = I don’t speak Portuguese!

C:  So we have to make do with English, because it’s the language that we both have in common for our communication, but sometimes things like this happen that we mix other languages - it’s kind of like a melting pot in my own apartment!

S: Ok!

C:  Oh, and by the way my name is Carolina - I just joked about being the wife but I have a personality too!

S:  Okay, so I’m really interested in this journey you’re on together, speaking English - have you ever compared how are you started English, like, have you ever discussed how you learnt English at school? Did you either one of you have more of a US influenced English than a UK influenced English, or have you had similar journeys?

C: I would say that I am the US person, because I actually lived in the US for a year - I was studying English in New York - and I have always been kind of, you know, influenced by American music most of the time and programmes and Risto is more like.. have always been more like the UK kind of person. 

R: Yes, I find the dry humour in those sitcoms - it suits me a lot because it’s like - even if there is no laughter track or something, it’s like those.. you have to watch between your fingers like “I cannot watch! I cannot watch! It’s too frustrating or too embarrassing!” but like… 

C: And some of your favourite comedians are actually British.

R: True, true…

S: So, Carolina - are you now more influenced now by Risto’s love of UK sitcoms, or Risto - do you start now watching more US sitcoms? 

C: I think it’s like … it goes both ways because I started watching… I liked some British comedies before - I have always been a huge fan of the IT crowd, and we always make jokes because this is Risto’s area of work…

R: “Have you tried turning it off and on?” 

C: It’s every day - it comes every day!  And also Risto has started watching more of the American comedies with me as well  

R: Caro knows so much about the US popular culture, and even the alternative culture that sometimes even like the most common reference or like a joke to something - not even so, like, old movies, old TV series or something - it goes way over my head but Carole knows because she has this in encyclopaedia on her head!

C: Oh come on! And you said… because we had, a few years ago, I had a friend from New York visiting here and you said that I was different when she was here.

R: In my opinion, your accent or your way of speaking English turns more to like mirroring the person who you are talking with. 

S: Oh that’s interesting!

R: Let’s say Sam is from Australia, you would be “talking Australian!”  I don’t know how you do it, but in my mind it starts to sound like..

C: Yeah!

S: Do you think then, Risto, that Carolina has more of a Finnish English way of speaking now, if that’s sort of your base?

R:  Yeah, I think you got a lot of influence from me, because in Finnish we have like… if there’s like 15 minutes - a quarter, so in my language I get the ‘rr’, I get the “quarrrter” it’s “verrry verrry quarrrter”, so sometimes Caro gets that, for example…

C: But I don’t think that you have that – what do you think, Sam?  I don’t he has that heavy Finnish accent.

S: No, I don’t!

R:  “very much indeed” it doesn’t sound so much in my opinion at least.

C: Yeah, I don’t think so.

S: No! Have you lived anywhere else apart from Finland together? Any other English-speaking country?

C: Yeah, we lived together in Dublin for a while (very nice!) and then we were both, like, sometimes “are they speaking English really?” because we were so unprepared for the thick, you know, Dubliner accent that sometimes it was like “ok - did I really get what they said or what?”

R: Yeah and I liked when we got like… because I worked at Facebook at the time, and so there was a lot of, let’s say there was a Portuguese team and they had their own accent, and then there was the Finnish time and they had their own accent, and everybody had their own accent, but when we got like, I don’t know, a plumber visiting, they were really really thick accents from the local area, so I was like “Excuse me what?” “No, no - your plumbing is fine.” “Okay, got it!” 

C: But people had always… this is something that you cannot complain about Ireland because people were always very willing to repeat or to tone down a bit so that everybody could understand -  I think Irish people seem very open and very social.  I have never talked to you in my life, but there we are there in the bakery, queueing up, and then start talking about, you know, “so what’s up with you?”

S: So apart from the ‘r’s then (the rrrr), is there anything else when you’re speaking English that you personally think “I wish this was better” or “I find this tricky”? 

R: Well, in my opinion it feels like sometimes I’m like “okay, what is the word,, the thing that..?” it’s not a complicated word as such but I don’t want to say “I like cars” I would like to say “I am a fan of automobiles” like… more like eloquently… like I don’t wanna say so basic words, I think that’s more like about my vocabulary or something like that.

C: I just think that after studying Finnish and living in Finland, I have zero complaints about English at all!  I’m just thankful that it exists, and I love it and I cherish every single day of my life!

S:  Without getting too personal, do you … have you found that your English at home has developed into a ‘Carolina and Risto’ type of English, or are you quite strict with how you speak the language?

C: We are not native speakers, so I think that when we are very tired or very busy, it starts showing through the language abilities - that they start decreasing, and then it comes like… the Finnish and the Portuguese and Italian starts coming through, and then you have mixed things that you wouldn’t understand but then Risto and I understand and how it works!

R: Yeah, sometimes it’s like when you’re really tired, for example, or, I don’t know, when you get really emotional about something, your native tongue kind of pops out… like sometimes Caro, for example, is I don’t know, very busy “give me the bottle of”, I don’t know, “water” and then you just say it in Portuguese, like “oops!”

C: But sometimes, depending on what it is, we know what it is.

R: It’s like, of course, the gestures, pointing and showing what you mean, but sometimes we have the words that, like, are synonyms or how do you say… 

S: Between you, have you ever had any misunderstanding in English, where you haven’t understood the person? 

C: Daily! 

S: Daily?! 

R: Yeah, quite often!

C:  No, I’m joking! but quite frequently…

R:  Like “what do you mean you wanna do something next week? Next week is now.” but in Portuguese, I think you understand next week, doesn’t it start on the Sunday or what is it?  

C: Yeah, there’s always this debate here – “where does the week start?” you know? because if I am.. it’s already Friday for me - if I say next week, it’s Monday onwards because the weekend doesn’t count, but in Risto’s head “no, no the weekend still counts”.

R:  “We’re going to meet Sam next week” “no, no, it’s like ,I don’t know, this weekend though” “yeah, but next week” “no, it’s still this week” “okay, what day - give me the numbers” so…  

C:  It’s always like, for me, the week starts on Mondays and that’s that, but Risto finds it that “no, for me it starts on Sundays”, so…

R: Yeah and I think sometimes it’s like “Turn left. No, not my left, the other left!” like – yeah – it’s still the same, it’s left, but it’s like - how do you look at it?

C:  Yeah, sometimes when I say “Take the left”, you look at me like I’m speaking, like, gibberish and I say “no, you turn” “what do you mean when you say take?” “You Turn. Take left, you turn”. 

R: I mean, I don’t know if it’s like we don’t understand what we are saying, but it’s just - for example in Portuguese or maybe in your country, or I don’t know where it comes from, but like more cultural thing.

S: Tell me a little bit about your podcast - you guys have a podcast together. What type of things do you discuss?

C:  It’s almost like, you know, grabbing a cup of coffee and just talk about stuff.  We don’t have, like, a theme or, you know, something that is like goes through all the episodes - it’s more like “let’s talk about something” … because we did that before the podcast - we would just sit down and talk about something that we both read on the news or saw on TV, and that would come through as well.

R: Because we don’t like… I saw they’re like True Crime, for example, is very popular - there is always a theme, for example, it’s like one episode is one case or whatever, like if it’s a sports thing there is like - now there is the football going on, so obviously you will talk about the football that is going on  - yeah, it’s more like this, I don’t know is it a global issue or more like a universal issue anyway that – okay, I don’t like thing X, what do you think about thing X? and you have opinions about thing X and then it will come out as like - how would you say - a conversation for a podcast. 

C: Exactly, and we talked about everything and anything at the same time, so anything could happen – it’s just like a couple of people talking over a cup of coffee!

R: The only thing we had a little bit of censorship is because sometimes the topics that we have in mind are a little bit, like, black-and-white as many things are nowadays, so we don’t want to go to “I don’t like thing X” and there is half of the planet that thinks the other way around, so it’s like - maybe we wanna keep it more light, we don’t wanna talk about things that people have very passionate opinions about…

C: Or too sensitive in a way… 

R: Too sensitive, yeah.

C:  Risto and I think that we have this dynamic that we just, like, start a conversation about whatever (yeah!) and it goes through, but I guess that’s not the case with anyone really.

S:  Final question, then - as you have both worked and lived speaking English for a long time, what advice would you give people who are trying to improve their English?

 R:  Not to be ashamed of their skills – like, just… it’s okay – like, even if I was horrible horrible at English, I could say “give me a drink” like, you would understand that the guy needs a drink!  Maybe it’s also that you are not comfortable talking in public or you’re not comfortable talking in general, but if you’re going to… if you want to learn your English and get more familiar with the talking part, you kind of have to talk!

C:  Just like for whoever needs to practice English - just do it, you know! You don’t have to be perfect - if people can just like… if people can understand you, you’re making your point and people “okay this is it” it’s fine, you will refine it with time but it will better if you don’t try it, you know?

R: And I would like to add that even if you are, let’s say, an American English speaker by your.. where you’re from, sometimes your English isn’t, like, as good as the people who are, let’s say, immigrating, so just - go there and do your thing and don’t be, like, so tense about the skill level.

S: I think that’s fantastic yeah I totally agree thank you so much!                        

(Music)

Don’t be ashamed of your English and, in the words of a very famous sports company, just do it!  Great advice from Risto and Carolina! Their podcast is called Stick With Us, and there is a link to it on the Chat ENG podcast page 🙂

There was an interesting point raised in our chat about understanding ‘this’ or ‘next’ week – when does the week start for you?  To make it easier, think about it this way -  ‘this’ is for the closer of the two points and ‘next’ is for the further of the two points – so, if it is Monday and I say ‘next Wednesday’, I understand this to be in 9 days’ time.  If I say ‘this Wednesday’, I understand this to be in 2 days’ time. 

So - this episode's pronunciation tip is about sounding the letter 'r' in English.  Now, The ‘rrr’ is called a ‘rolled r’ sound, and - as Risto said - in Finnish and, indeed, many many languages, there is a ‘rolled r' sound for the letter 'r’ at the beginning or in the middle of words -  for example, you might say 'I read terrible romance novels'. The thing to remember is this - in English, we don’t tend to roll our ‘r’s!   Instead, we place the top teeth very lightly on the bottom lip and the sound is forward but in the throat - try for yourself = 'r'.  So, to help you reduce the ‘rolled r', I have 3 sentences with useful r - words for you to practice:

First: the modifier “really” and the colour “red”.

Try this sentence: "That car is really red!" 

Next: the verbs "to rain" and "to return", and the word “tomorrow”.

Try this sentence: "I think the rain will return tomorrow.”

Finally: “road” (what you drive on), “regular” (like frequent) and “route” (the direction from one place to another).

Try this sentence: "Your road is on my regular route."

Bonus sentence: Try this mix of 'r's at the beginning and in the middle of words for extra practice:

"I'd rather read terrible romances than rubbish crime stories."

It's not terrible if you speak English with a ‘rolled r’ – just think about resting your tongue!

Over to you to practice!

So, there we are – the transcript of this episode is available to read on the podcast’s webpage, so take a look!  

Join me next time for more pronunciation and grammar tips, more advice and – most importantly – more chatting! 

My thanks again to Risto & Carolina, and - for her music - a massive thanks to the wonderful Mara Carlyle.  Bye for now!