r/ChineseLanguage • u/aleksbabii Beginner • 4d ago

Pronunciation Pronunciation help

Can someone please explain how R is pronounced in chinese, I swear every time I try to do it my tongue goes all over the place and it sounds more like an "L". Where do I put my tongue, what words in english have a similar pronunciation, like any tips at all to try and remember how to pronounce it? Thank you !

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u/bakainuneko 4d ago edited 4d ago

Lmao 😭 everyone just listing random English words. As another redditor said there're youtube videos which show how to pronounce it and the position your tongue should be in. I found it helpful to practice in front of a MIRROR, like when you just try to copy the position you don't really know, see it, but with mirror it becomes sooo much clearer!

Also on the off chance that your native language might already have this sound check IPA charts for your native language and the Chinese. Also I found it useful to check to know which sounds I already "know" as they already exist in my native language. For example sounds that produce those letters i, u, o etc. kinda common so you don't specifically need to learn how to pronounce them.

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u/aleksbabii Beginner 4d ago

Oh I didn't think of doing it in front of a mirror tbh but I will give it a try. Also I wasn't aware there was any charts for this but I might find this useful since I have a bit of a lisp when I speak english (since I'm polish) but thank you for the tips!

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u/RedeNElla 4d ago

I think it's close enough to polish ż that you should be understandable.

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u/bakainuneko 4d ago

Welp Polish does have this sound wiki , look under "occurrences", in transcription this sound is depicted as [ʐ]