You Majored in Linguistics? or the One Where Jeff Says 'Ha!' to the Sceptics

Last Week

r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r This is the sound of me rolling my r's. Yes, I did this for 10 minutes straight. I was attempted to perfect the Russian 'r'. It's really not like the Spanish r… it's softer, but still rolled. It's so interesting to try to learn the finer points of pronunciation. But after all, without it the word charcoal becomes corner. I also practiced 't', 'd', 'n', 'ch', and the two Russian variants for the letter 'l'. I'm SO happy that I can at least hear the difference, because it makes it possible to try and work on them. I'm still struggling a lot with one of the Russian vowels. We don't have something like it in English. I imagine it's the sound you make when punched in the gut. 'ii' I can make it sometimes in a word, but not by itself.