Voted Best Answer
Oct 31, 2014 - 09:27 AM
Hi Chris. How to trill the Spanish R is a problem for many native English speakers. Some people are able to grasp the sound with practice, while others never seem able to master the sound (as you noted about the Spanish teacher you met). In terms of whether or not the ability to make that sound is important, I would say ... in general, no, it's not. It's akin to a foreign speaker not being able to make the TH sound so commonly used in English. Sure, we can understand them, but sometimes it takes a little work on our part. There are also a few occasions in Spanish where the inability to make the double-R sound can cause a bit of confusion. For example, if you intend to say "perro (dog)," but it comes out sounding like "pero (but)," it may be a bit of a head scratcher for the listener until he figures out the context of the sentence.