How NOT to Roll Your R's

Ciao amici!

Way back in August when the school year started, I was enrolled in Spanish I. I still am, and I am rather good at it. At least I am passionate for it, scratch the whole being good at it. I can stammer in Spanish, so I guess you could call it a decent grasp.

If you read my last entry, which I'm guessing you haven't and just stumbled upon this entry, you know that have recently started Rosetta Stone for learning Italian. At first, I thought it was the biggest piece of crap I ever had come in contact with. Turns out, when you try to use your internal mic on your laptop f, or more important things than Skype, it sucks major tushie. After trying my brother's xbox headphones, holding my laptop up to my lips, and screaming "horse" angrily in Italian numerous times, I got my friend from school to lend me a pair of his. Which now I can say that I can get more than a 40% on each level.

But here we go with the title. How NOT to roll your R's in a foreign language. I only have familiarity with Spanish and Italian as of 5 days ago, and I have never been able to roll my R's. I watched some videos on youtube and kind of half-assed it the whole way through and gave up months ago, when it wasn't important. But in Italian, every R you pronounce is either rolled or flipped. A flipped R is commonly used in words like "verde" or "cara". If you are familiar with the Spanish language, you know that words like "perro" have the full out "rrrrrrrr" noise. But in Italian, there are so many "rrrrrrr"s it's not even funny. So, I have recently been trying like crazy to get my tongue to work like a proper Italian. Here's a guide to be as unsuccessful as possible.

• Try it for about 30 seconds, get distracted, and end up watching 2 hours of Jenna Marbles on youtube.
• Roll it in the back of your throat, think you've done it correctly, until your friend fluent in Russian tells you "THAT SOUNDS TOO GERMAN!".
• Forget that you really should/have to do this before your trip and procrastinate it.
• Slur your R's over because you think it sounds fancy, but you really just sound like an imbecile.

There you have it folks. 4 steps to becoming a language moron. Well, I am physically incapable of doing this. So I think. But, to leave here on a happy note, here's my favorite video to watch when I'm feeling down. It'll make you and I smile on our worst days. 

Arrivederci!