How to Pronounce 'R' in British English **When is the R silent?**

hi welcome back to pronunciation with emma in today's video we're going to look at how to pronounce the r sound and also the rules for when we do and don't pronounce it let's start firstly with how do we pronounce the r sound so this is how i normally explain it to my private students i want you to imagine that you're eating some peanut butter okay now peanut butter is very sticky right so your mouth it gets stuck and all the peanut butter gets stuck inside your mouth right just imagine that now let's imagine that there's peanut butter stuck on the top inside of your teeth so here the top inside parts of your teeth how are we going to remove that well we're going to use the sides here the sides of our tongue we're going to take the sides of our tongue we're going to lift them up and we're going to try and rub away where that peanut butter is on the top inside of our teeth so that means that the outside parts of our tongue as i showed you here come up to touch the inside the top inside part of your teeth got it so far well that there is the position of how your tongue should be when you're doing the ra okay so you can't really see it from the outside but your tongue inside your mouth imagine you've been eating that peanut butter it's stuck on the top inside parts of your teeth and you need to try and remove it with the outside parts of your tongue so your tongue should be curled only slightly just so it's touching the inside parts of the top teeth now that you've got the tongue position let's have a look at the mouth position now again the way i tell my students is i want you to imagine that you're going to take a selfie and it's going to be a very flirtatious selfie okay so you're going to pout like this and do a duck face like this you don't need to exaggerate it so much when it actually comes to doing the ra but bear with me here okay imagine you're going to take a nice flirtatious selfie for someone who you really like okay so you do this duck face and that is more or less how the mouth should be placed when you do the wrap so let's combine that peanut butter try and remove that peanut butter inside your mouth shape with your tongue so your tongue should be like this and you're taking that flirtatious selfie with the duck face you should get something like like that okay if we release it it sounds like and that is the english now there are some varieties of british english where they do pronounce the r and they may trill it so they may some say something like a sound that's very normal just understand that there are different ways to pronounce the ra there are many different accents across the uk what i'm showing you is in rp a modern rp so yes i just wanted to make that very clear before people started asking about different raz that they've heard across the uk just remember you're trying to get that peanut butter off the top inside of your teeth and you're taking that flirtatious selfie make sure that the tip of your tongue is not touching the top of your mouth otherwise you're going to get something like ra and that's not the sound that would that's not the sound we're going for for today so now we know how to pronounce the r let's have a look at some words and practice together red red so make sure the tip of your tongue is not touching the top of your mouth make sure the outside parts of your tongue are touching the top inside parts of your teeth remember that peanut butter we're trying to get the peanut butter yeah red red another one really really really now in the middle of a word already already already and the last one through through through notice how i pronounce this one i kind of join those two sounds together my mouth is already in that kind of pouting duck face position when i'm doing the thu that voice th if you're not sure how to do the two th sounds that we have in english take a look i have a video down in the description that you can have a look at but here what you need to do is try and put your mouth in that dark shape as i keep saying and um start with the the right so through through through okay now we know how to pronounce the r we've pronounced it in some words let's have a look at those rules that i mentioned before so there are three rules for when we don't and do pronounce the r i'm going to focus on the two first rules as they focus on when we don't pronounce the r now as i said before there are some accents in the uk where they do pronounce the r even in these rules in these contexts that i'm going to give so that's just something to be aware of all right so the first rule is the r sound is silent if we have a consonant sound coming after it for example in the word first first notice that i don't pronounce the r here and we have a s coming after that r first first another one is park park i don't pronounce the r again because the word ends with a cut park park and the last one here cad cad i don't pronounce the r because the following sound is a duh it's a consonant sound the second rule is when we have r at the end of a word so nothing comes after it for example in the word care care care another one is and the last one four four four now there is an exception to this rule and that is the linking r this means that when we have a r so we have an r at the end of a word and the next word starts with a vowel sound we can link them together with a r sound for example in car alarm car on its own i wouldn't pronounce the r normally okay some accidents may i personally don't car alarm however in rapid speech this would come together and we would use the linking r car alarm car alarm car alarm now the third and final rule is when we do actually pronounce it and we pronounce the r when we have an r and then we have a vowel coming after it for example in the word hairy hairy notice the position getting that peanut butter taking that pouty selfie harry harry harry another is foreign foreign foreign and the last one here horror horror horror so notice that i pronounce the one in the middle i pronounce those two r's in the middle because they are between vowels but i don't pronounce that final one because it's at the end now this video wouldn't be complete without some sentences for us to practice so what i've got here are a mixture of sentences where we pronounce the r and where the r is silent before you ask in the comments even though i say that the r is silent in some of these words you can still pronounce it it doesn't matter and as i said there are many accents across the uk where they do pronounce the r so don't worry too much about it roy has a red car roy has a red car roy has a red car where were you on thursday where were you on thursday where were you on thursday the programme starts at three the program starts at three the program starts at three it's far away it's far row way it's far away so in this example i am using the linking r normally we would say far but here because away starts with a vowel we're going to link it with a r it's far away it's far away and that's it for this video i hope you've enjoyed it and you've learned something new if you have please remember to press the like button it's a nice free way to help me out as usual and if you haven't already please subscribe to my channel i post new videos every single week i hope you have a fantastic week and i will see you next lesson bye you

Channel: Pronunciation with Emma

Views: 76,722

Keywords: how to pronounce r, r pronunciation, how to pronounce r in british english, r british english pronunciation, how to pronounce /r/, r sound, r sound pronunciation, when is r silent in english, when is r silent in british english, silent r, silent r british english, silent r sound in british english, r pronunciation rules, /r/, /r/ pronunciation, english pronunciation, pronunciation teacher, pronunciation with emma

Id: gP2_C9H6r5U

Length: 10min 47sec (647 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020