RRR!

Let’s stick with the pronunciation a bit more.

I dare to assume as you’re reading this blog that you have some knowledge of Finnish and you probably have heard the language and know about the rolled r.

Can you do it? If yes, great. If no, don’t worry, I can’t either. I am a native Finnish speaker, born and raised in Finland yet for some mysterious reason I never learned how to roll the r. In my case that isn’t very noticeable, it seems like most people don’t even notice it.

This blog post won’t be much for education, I just want to take this topic as I think it’s not discussed enough.

First of all, the inability to roll the r is called ”ärrävika” in Finnish. I know, quite ironic. I also find it awfully negative. ”Vika” means a fault, error. It carries this message that if you don’t know how to roll the r, there’s something wrong with you. No, I don’t know why some of us can’t roll the r, but I certainly don’t see it as a fault. I’ve met people who think it’s so much fun to imitate my r. Please don’t. It has gotten old long time ago.

If you can differentiate r and l, it’s more than enough for you to be understood. Here’s a small exercise for you. It requires a bit of bad language, but it’ll also serve as a great way of letting out frustration and anger. Try saying this word:

Chances are that you know this word already, the rough translation for it is ”damn it”. Now, imagine that everything that can possibly go wrong, is going wrong and you’re angrier than ever.

Keep those emotions and say it:

Good job!

If you want to get perfect with rolling the r, there are a ton of lessons about it on Youtube. Plenty of people who speak for example Russian, Spanish or Portuguese have video tutorials about it. Just search for them and have a good laugh while practicing. Learning a language doesn’t have to be so serious all the time.

- Kaisa