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The German L and R sounds are among the hardest sounds to master for a native English speaker. Even for Americans who have lived in Germany for a long time, the R can be a dead give-away. All the more reason to dedicate an entire German lesson to them! We shall look at all the different ways to pronounce them and tell you the details that your German textbook forgot to mention. Study German with GermanPod101 - it’s the fastest, easiest and most effective way of learning German online!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Accent Improvement . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Accent Improvement #10: Let’s Rumble with L and R!”

Anonymous says:


GermanPod101.com says:

How do you pronounce your R? Can you do the German L and R sounds correctly yet?

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Vanessa says:

L ist einfach. Ich kann R gut mit dem Zungetriller aussprechen. Manchmal kann ich R mit dem Hals aussprechen. Es hängt davon ab, was kamen vor. Übung macht den Meister!

(L is easy. I can pronounce R well with the tongue trill. Sometimes I can pronounce R with the throat. It depends on what came before it. Practice makes perfect!)

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salivia_baker says:

Hi Vanessa.
Some correction for you:
“Ich kann R gut mit dem Zungetriller aussprechen.” -> “Ich kann das R mit dem Zungentriller gut aussprechen”
I would put das in front of R to emphasize you mean a specific R (the one with the Zungentriller). However an article is optional here.
Zungetriller => Zungentriller you put in a n so it’s easier to say.
mit den Zungentriller is a explanation which R you mean therefore it belongs to R and you put gut either before R or afterwards (Ich kann gut das R mit dem Zungentriller aussprechen or Ich kann das R mit dem Zungentriller gut aussprechen)

“Manchmal kann ich R mit dem Hals aussprechen.”
Actually a perfect sentence, but I have some thoughts about this. maybe someone else has an imput on this.
R mit dem Hals would be actually R aus dem Hals. You make that R in the throat so it’s from there (aus) and not with (mit) the throat. It’s a very lame explanation, I know. I would rather “nickname” the R as Hals-R. Although I like to call it Rachen-R because Rachen (troat) itself is a word that uses the troat a lot but that’s just me.
Anyway I am not sure about aussprechen since the R in the throat is not really spoken.. it’s not wrong but if I had to build such a sentence I would probably try to avoid that word. Sadly I cannot think of something better
(I am very helpful this time :roll: )

“Es hängt davon ab, was kamen vor” -> Es hängt davon ab, was davor kam.”
if something comes before something then you use davor.
kamen is the past form of kommen for 1st&3rd person plural but you use 3rd person singular here.
past forms of kommen:
ich kam
du kamst
er/sie/es kam
wir kamen
ihr kamt
sie kamen

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Vanessa says:

Vielen Dank!

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Priscilla says:

I think this one was fairly easy for me. I speak spanish, it was my first language until I was 5. So the R comes very naturally to me…the ROLING rrrrrr’s!!!! Like in GRRROOWWWW…LOL :wink: :wink:

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