Trouble Saying Dd + R in Diddorol

I realised, when I first saw ‘llysysydd’, I automatically said ‘llees’, then I thought it was more like ‘mynyddydd’, so I changed the sound of the first ‘y’. But of course, mynydd isn’t really any guide and llys and llyn are both ‘ee’!!
I may not know how to say words like that on first sight, but I don’t think I have any trouble saying them when I know the ‘right’ way!! Whereas, when my Sikh friends named their baby son Dipinder, I had terrible trouble!! That ‘d’ isn’t hard and it isn’t soft enough to be our dd. It is a hard ‘d’ with a tiny tongue flutter! It took me ages to learn it!! So it’s all a matter of where you’ve lived, who with and how long for!!

Isn’t @Kinetic referring to the “r” at the end of “water”? That’s how I understood what he was saying (or if not, then I didn’t understand what he was saying :slight_smile: ). However, the “r” sound in that case seems very much connected with the previous “d” sound…almost impossible to distinguish one from the other (or at least separate them), now I try repeating it over and over.

More generally (or linguistically speaking), would it be correct to think of the “r” in words like “diddorol” as a “flapped r”, rather than a “trilled r”?

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental,_alveolar_and_postalveolar_flaps

I don’t think so… @Kinetic definitely said the “T sound”.

I believe @Mererid gave just the perfect advice for all of you having troubles with that … :slight_smile:

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Yah, but now I’m confused! What has the T sound to do with no R in the middle of the word but being it at the end of it which I always, no matter whom I’ve listened to speak, heard them saying “r” not “t”

I understand your “d” in the word “Wader” explenation though @Sarah_25

And rolling R … Ooooo, you’d have plenty of problems if you’d learn Slovene then. Our language is full of them … :slight_smile: (OK, OK, not so much stressed but rather the way @Mererid suggests to say them)

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@Sarah_25 - Yes, he did refer to the “T” sound, but he says it is “like” it, not that it is exactly a “t”. If I feel my tongue when I’m saying “wader” (for “water” - more or less American style), and then afterwards say what I think of as a “flapped r” (as in “diddorol”), then I think I see what he is getting at. Phonetically it’s similar, i.e. where you put your tongue, etc.

Dw i’n falch iawn! I’m really glad!

If that’s what he was getting at, that makes a little more sense than how I understood it.

As I understand it, the reduced T sound in words like ‘water’ is considered as an alveolar tap, which is the sound many languages use for their R sound - it’s even written in the IPA using something that looks like a lowercase R - [ɾ]. However it might not be like that in all North American dialects, just a lot of them (I dunno). But in any case, one of those R sounds and a quick, soft D are very very similar sounds. And I certainly pronounce “diddorol” with that sound. :slight_smile:

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I remember speaking to a woman in Llanwrtyd Wells who trilled her “r’s” [ pthat almost soundslike a double entendre…] in all places in the word for what seemed like an age- it was a wonderful dose of Welshness!
As kinetic says, there’s a huge variation in how much the r is trilled.
This is true in even amongst native speakers.
Looking for the “right” amount of trill can be a bit of a wild goose chase- I know even members of my family do it to greater or lesser degrees!

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Actually, when children in Russia are taught to pronounce our “R” (which is most like the Welsh “R”), to make their tongue stay in the correct position to pronounce the sound, they are told to pronounce “T” or “D” first and remember the position (tip of the tongue on the upper alveoli). Then, after they remember it, the teacher asks to pronounce first “TR- DR” combinations and only then, after they master it, the pure unaided “R”.

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All this talk of “T” and “D” r-sounds is just making me very confused. @Mererid’s advice worked great for me for producing the word “Diddorol”, which I can now say every time it comes up. :smile:

I think I’m just going to stick with the way I’ve been saying “R” in the other words that have them because it seems to match what @Iestyn and Cat are saying in the Challenges, and reading this thread is just making it all seem overly complicated… :confused:

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That sounds like the ideal approach - any time stuff seems complicated, I’d recommend you stop thinking about it and just go with what happens (unless you take particular pleasure in complications!..;-)).

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