Rolling your r´s in Spanish

It´s been a little over a year now that Jana and I have been in Honduras. A lot has happened in the past 12 months, including learning how to (poorly) speak Spanish from almost nothing. Jana is doing better than me, but I still have a long way to go – why didn´t I pay more attention to Spanish class in High School?

Learning vocabulary and grammar are fairly simple – start out with some rules and dictionary and practice. However, the one thing about Spanish that I still hadn´t figured out is the rolling of the r.

For example, take the following words: perro and pero. The first is a dog, and the second means ´but´. There are many words like this in Spanish that mean 2 different things, and it is often difficult to say what you mean when you can´t roll the r. Another example: carro y caro. The first is a car that your would drive, and the second means expensive. So it is possible to have a conversation with someone where you are talking about your “caro carro“.

Being a child of the internet, I decided to try google. A quick search and I came up with http://www.wikihow.com/Roll-Your-%22R%22s, a nice how-to that describes a few methods of rolling your r´s. I personally have found the “DR” method the easiest – so instead of trying to say carro, I try to say cadro. I dont know if this sounds right to everyone else, but at least it can be understoon.