Does anybody else have trouble pronouncing these words? Piotr, wiatr, trwać, and drwić? I know how they're supposed to sound, and I've read many guides on how to pronounce the trilled R. But that doesn't make it any easier. Do any of you other Polish learners have trouble with these words? In English the letter R just doesn't act like this.
Feel free to mention any other Polish words causing us lousy foreigners trouble. ;-)
I had lots of difficulty cracking this... Initially, this was because I was trying to create the trill effect in the back of the throat, in the French gutteral way. A very good teacher explained that the Polish 'r-r-r-r' actually comes from just behind the teeth, with the front of the tongue flapping loose as the air passes over it. It took me ages, but she gave me this technique which eventually worked:
- right at the front of the mouth, say 't-t-t-t-t-t-t' as quickly as possible - repeat with 'd-d-d-d-d' - change to 'tr-tr-dr-dr-tr-' so that you can feel the tongue vibrating against the front palate just behind the teeth when you exhale:
Eventually this should enable you to say 'r-r-r-r-r-r' just by exhaling ('War-r-r-rszawa' was the word that first enabled me to do this. Itfeels so unnatural initially!), but I still can't manage 'g-r-r-r-r-r' or 'k-r-r-r-r' because the initial consonant sound is so far back (in my English pronunciation, anyway) that I can't change the tongue position quickly enough.
