30-Day Accent Challenge, Day 28

Today we looked at advanced practice for American R.   For more basic help, go to day 6 of the challenge, or see our American R playlist (below)

if you’ve learned to make the American back R, you might still have some contexts where it’s more difficult to use correctly, like words with “or,” words with both the r and l sounds, or words with both the th and r sounds.

For words with r in the middle or at the end, make sure you’re using the correct vowel.  Some words just have "er" /ə˞/, others have an r diphthong sliding from another vowel to "er," like "air, ear, ire, or, are, etc."

You can’t rely on spelling to know whether to say just "er" or an r diphthong.
For example,
er: /ə˞/ is often spelled er, as in her, or were, but it can also be spelled as ir, or, ur, or ear, as in :  bird, work, sure, learn

In addition, the letters "er" can say "air" or "ear" as in the words there, here.

Use an online dictionary to check for the symbol to know what vowel sounds to use.  I like Merriem Webster's Learner's Dictionary

and theOxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

You may find it difficult to produce words with both the r and l sounds, like :
girl
world
really
learn
rule

For those ending  in rl, be sure to use a schwa between the r and the l. For example, girl sounds like grr-uhl /g ə˞ ə l/.
World sounds like /w ə˞ ə l d/

Check out the videos in the playlist below for help with words like "really."

You may also need practice on words that have both the th and r sounds.  You can find video help for these in our American R playlist (below).