Making the voiced fricative (versus the uvular trill)

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cetait
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Making the voiced fricative (versus the uvular trill)

Postby cetait » 2018-10-21, 6:47

I'm making this thread in inspiration of this thread:

viewtopic.php?t=36017

that I saw because I have the opposite problem; I can easily do the uvular trill, but have extreme difficulty doing the voiced fricatve (VF) or an approximant.

I'm learning French right now and it feels so disgusting pronouncing words with R's and a trill comes out. And it sounds awkward because the trill is very strong and it's not a sound that can be pronounced lightly. I haven't the slightest idea how to pronounce the fricative and I feel like I've exhausted all the resources I've been able to find on how to pronounce it, but I simply can't. I can pronounce its unvoiced variant with ease in words like trois as an example, but voiced? Have not once been successful. Either it becomes a trill, it's unvoiced, or it's not audible (according to natvies who've heard me speak). Or in other words, it sounds weird, too harsh, or is not heard at all. It is especially problematic with words that end in R, where the sound I produce becomes an unvoiced trill.

Can anyone give me tips? It really kills my confidence when trying to speak French because I'm confident on almost any other sound.

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Vlürch
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Re: Making the voiced fricative (versus the uvular trill)

Postby Vlürch » 2018-10-23, 4:09

You said you can do the voiceless uvular fricative [χ], so all you need to do is vibrate your vocal cords and you've got the right sound. I know that probably doesn't sound helpful and may even sound patronising, but make a conscious effort to not change anything else; it may be helpful to not think of it as an R-sound at all, maybe even going so far as to practise it with words from languages where it isn't considered a rhotic.

For example, say Kazakh (kk) саған /sɑʁɑn/ ("to you"), балға /bɑlʁɑ/ ("hammer"), etc. and Persian (fa) باغ /bɒːʁ/ ("garden"). Does it still come out as a trill?

Anyway, the way I taught the voiced uvular fricative to my mum (who has zero interest in phonetics) was to make her say something with /h/, /k/ and /g/ (with back vowels; I don't remember the exact words) and then do to the /h/ what's done to /k/ to make /g/. She got it right on the first attempt, so I guess it was helpful; the only "flaw" was that it was an approximant rather than a fricative (because Finnish /h/ is usually an approximant), but AFAIK the approximant is fine at least in French and German.

Obviously, though, that exact same method wouldn't work for speakers of most languages due to the allophones of /h/ being different from how they are in Finnish (and even for some Finnish-speakers because some always pronounce /h/ as [h~ɦ] or everything in free variation), but the point is that if you can make [χ] and any voiced fricative/approximant, it shouldn't be too hard to make [ʁ].

Sorry if this wasn't helpful. :para:


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