How To Roll Your Rs

Are you an English-speaking grown-up who never learned to roll your Rs? Do you avoid speaking beautiful languages like Spanish and Italian?

Here’s a post on how to achieve luscious Rs as an adult. The key is contained within the blooper reels of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

As a child, I had a great ear for languages. I loved them, and to this day, if I were offered one superpower by a Power Genie, it would be hard not to choose “Understand and speak every language.”

But at the age of 18, I still could not roll my Rs. And no one could describe how!

One of the cruelest phenomena in nature is that people who intuitively understand how to do a thing are the ABSOLUTE WORST at teaching it. Kids who can understand immediately how to roll their Rs (and make cool machine gun noises, too!) are infuriating to those of us who can’t.

I discovered the solution to the R-rolling problem completely by chance:

Watching Fresh Prince bloopers (as one does), I came across a scene in which Carlton, CANNOT get this line out without creating an R roll: “But it’ll cut into my trick-or-treating time.” Over and over… 💡

So I tried it. I repeated the line slowly, over and over again—

“But it’ll cut into my trick-or-treating time… But it’ll cut into my trick-or-treating time…”

You may want to do this alone. You may sound a little crazy.

Going faster and faster: “But it’ll cut into my trick-or-treating time… But it’ll cut into my trick-or-treating time…” and suddenly(!)—”BUT IT’LL” became buh-rRrRrRr. I was rolling my Rs! I was MAKING THE SOUND.

I still needed those first two words as a crutch for some time.

Within a few days I no longer needed the “Buh” sound to start. I could roll my Rs at will.

This is THE way to learn to roll your Rs no matter what age you are. It will work if you’re willing to put in just a few minutes for a few days, unlocking sound and capability forever.