IPA reference · consonant
r — alveolar trill
The tongue tip vibrates against the alveolar ridge, driven by airflow rather than by muscle.
Also called: rolled r, rolled R
How to make the alveolar trill
Relax the tongue tip so it rests loosely near the ridge, then push a steady stream of air past it. Effort is counterproductive — a tense tongue cannot trill.
This sound does not occur in standard English. That means there is no word you can say to find it by accident; you have to build it from the articulatory instruction above and check it against a recording.
Languages that use it
Sounds it gets confused with
Most pronunciation errors are not random — they are a substitution of the nearest sound the speaker already owns. These are the usual substitutions for r, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
In Spanish the trill/tap contrast is phonemic: *perro* versus *pero*.
The English r, which is the most common learner substitution and always sounds foreign.
What this means for learners
Practise it in clusters first — *tr*, *dr*, *br* — because the preceding stop already places the tongue correctly and the release helps start the vibration.
Teaching this sound
Describing a sound in words gets a student roughly half the way there. The other half is hearing it produced correctly, immediately after producing it incorrectly, with both versions available to replay. That is the argument for recording during the lesson rather than after it: the student leaves with your model of r attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol r make?
r is the alveolar trill. The tongue tip vibrates against the alveolar ridge, driven by airflow rather than by muscle. It does not occur in standard English.
How do you pronounce r?
Relax the tongue tip so it rests loosely near the ridge, then push a steady stream of air past it. Effort is counterproductive — a tense tongue cannot trill.
Which languages have the alveolar trill?
Among the languages covered here: Spanish (perro, “dog”); Italian (terra, “earth”); Russian (рука, “hand”); Romanian (râu, “river”).
What is the difference between r and ɾ?
In Spanish the trill/tap contrast is phonemic: *perro* versus *pero*.