The difference between my attempts at trilling now and before was the way I was blowing the air out of my mouth. Before I was trying to blow the air out of my mouth much in the same way people blow candles out on a birthday cake but I was just putting my tongue in the way. I don’t think works because moving the air that way does not provide the necessary force to flap the tongue. The air has to be blown from the throat in the same way when you clear your throat before speaking or if you’re sick and trying cough phlegm up (Sorry about the visual haha). Just try not to blow as hard.

I’m getting better at it now. At first there was a loud hissing noise (like a cat or snake) because I was blowing so hard but with a little practice I can now almost do it under my breath. I hope this helps anyone trying to learn the trill.

I find it most enfuriating that it’s so easy to inadvertently slip and produce a similar sound in another manner.

If only the Iowa animation was 3D with controls for tempo and camera angle.

By ‘point’, I don’t mean the tongue-tip, of course. I mean the point of contact of the tongue with the mouth: tongue-back touching uvula, tongue-middle to palate, etc. and all places in between. Think of those rounded rubber-stamp things you roll onto the document, rather than bang down once. Only upside down.

I’m taking an acoustic linguistics class, and this perennial question arose. I personally could always do an alveolar, though monolingual English, but I’ve been scouring the internet for tips for those who can’t. The uvular-to-palatal-to-alveolar sounds like the best bet for those who can do an uvular trill, or even any kind of raspy, trillish, rollish, Germant ach-ish, somewhere along the way. I think what happens is, once you can work forward to some kind of ‘trill’/vibry-rasp thing at the palate, and can bend back the tongue-tip a bit at the same time, it will pick up vibrations from behind and then the practicer will be able to FEEL, get feed-back, as to when, where, and how, the tip is at its best RESONANCE configuration.

I’ve been fiddling with this method for an hour now, and without doing my own trill, just pushing a back-trill forward, it really does seem to transfer quite naturally to a forward alveopalatal trill. (The dental-trill is the sine qua non of trills. I cannot do it; it is found in Romanian, and our Hungarian-born TA does it quite easily.)

If you can’t do any back trill, don’t worry about it. Just force air out with your tongue-placement point moving forward with a rasping, scrape-a-gob-of-spit-up-and-out sort of racket. Do this a few minutes day (so as not to hurt yourself) until you can do a ‘trill’, or raspy buzzing, at the soft-palate/hard palate junction, and keep it buzzing there continuously (until you run out of breath).

Doing that, start the tongue front bent back maneouver while palate-buzzing/trilling. Keep adjusting position, buzzing, air-flow/pressure all over the place, till you feel the vibrating getting picked-up at the front of the tongue. The tip doesn’t have to be bent-back even. If it’s starting to vibrate in any configuration, that’s good. Keep it going until you can get it bent upward toward the gum ridge while keeping it vibrating.

Good luck.

I do understand your question.. when going from a uvular trill to an alveolar trill, you have to practice to get your trill higher up out of the throat and your tongue more forward; as followed:

- Uvular trill = tongue flat, trill/vibration in throat like a gargle
- Palate trill = tongue curled backwards, throat half vibrating + palate “trilling” (roaring in the tiger method)
- Alveolar trill = tongue pointing softly up, no throat vibration, no palate vibration but tongue trilling

Those are the stages I went through, so I guess, once you know how to “push” your r’s up out of your throat and make the palate trill, I would say, you passed the toughest part. Now practice by curling your tongue backwards in your mouth and pointing against your palate, so that when you make your palate trill your tongue trills with it, just to get used to the trill feeling of your tongue (this is a new feeling and new muscles that need to be used for the first time). Little by little, practice by moving your tongue from backwards slightly more forwards and “transfer” the trill from the palate more to the tongue, till you get to the moment that your tongue is pointing relaxed upwards (whether or not touching your palate/alveolar bridge) and freely trills in the air you blow out.

Once you know how to make your palate trill, use this to learn to make your tongue trill, and suddenly a switch will happen and the trill will move to the tongue.

Good luck Paul, you’re now close to rolling your r.

Well believe it or not but I am speaking Spanish now with the alveolar trill in my daily life. Sometimes I still have to consciencely produce the trill, but in general it works just fine.
I learnt that the though trills are at the leading r’s and the “rr” in the middle of a word like in “perro”; which I both now produce, one better then the other. Just note that the though Spanish r is in fact a very smooth tongue movement, so not harsh or rough at all!
The alveolar flap is still under practice, but really getting there, no trill but a single flap all based on the same principle as the alveolar trill.
The best of all… the proof that it really works; already more then once a Latin-American thought I was a native hispanohablante (Spanish mother tongue) … the best compliment someone could give me.
Bottom-line, it does work for real, a little optimism and a lot of practice and your r’s will roll as well! Good luck!