/l/ and /r/ are often a troublesome pair of letter for ESL learners. The North American /r/ is not common in the world’s languages, so it is a new, and therefore often difficult, sound for learners to make. This video and the speaking exercises will give you practice with this minimal pair.
There are two ways to make the /l/ consonant in English. The light L comes at the beginning of words. The tip of the tongue – which is this part – is placed above and behind the front teeth, which we call the Alveolar Ridge, like that. The dark L comes in the middle or at the end of words. The blade of the tongue is placed above and behind the front teeth – the alveolar Ridge – so the blade of the tongue is just behind the tip, so watch my tongue as I say these two words. If I say for example light, light so that /l/ comes at the beginning of the word and so you can’t see the tip of my tongue. Now watch if I say a different word: silly, silly. There when I make the /l/ sound, my tongue is in a different position even though I’m making the same sound. Both the light and the dark /l/ are voiced. Even though there are two ways of making this /l/ sound, don’t worry about it. After a while, you will do it normally and naturally. I’m just putting this here because if you notice that the /l/ sound is made differently, now you’ll understand why. And again, it just depends on where in the word the /l/ sound is. Let’s look at some examples. I’ll start here in word-initial position: lead, lace, lose, lost, love. If you notice, for all of those, you couldn’t see the tip of my tongue because it was behind my teeth. When I look at – when I read the next two lists, see if you can see my tongue. So I’m going to start here with medial. Now remember, these next two lists are dark L. Oh! See what I did there? Very smart, yeah? Silly, jealous, golly, hilly, yellow. There is no real difference in the sound, but my tongue was in a different place because when I said these words you could see the tip of my tongue. Let’s see if that’s also true now when I take a look at the word final-sounds. Heel, kneel, tail, soil, wool. So again you notice there you can see the tip of my tongue because it’s not hiding behind my teeth like it is when the /l/ sound comes at the beginning of the word. Let’s look at some sentences that have /l/ in them. Lily likes to look for lovely little lambs. Sally is pulling that full load to London. Notice how those two L’s end up.. those two sounds end up getting pushed together because of linking, which I’ll talk about in another video. Paul fiddled with the dial while Lance knelt lower. If you had trouble with that one, don’t feel bad because, honestly, when I was practising to make this video, it took me about five times till I could say that correctly! So if you’re having trouble, it’s not just you. /r/ which is one of the sounds that a lot of people in English or a lot of people who are learning English have trouble making /r/ is made by putting the tongue in the middle of the mouth and raising it at the back of the mouth, back here. /r/ is voiced. Here’s a tip that might help some of you. If it helps, great, if it doesn’t don’t worry about it. Start by making an oo and push your tongue back in your mouth. The result should be /r/. Something else actually just before I go ahead here, something else that I used to tell my students was…is the /r/ sounds like an angry dog: /r/ So, if you can make a growling sound like a dog, that’s what the English /r/ sounds like. Even though /l/ and /r/ are interchangeable in many languages – which means we can say one or the other and it doesn’t matter – in English, they are very different sounds, so you have to practise. One of the reasons, though, that people get frustrated with this is that sometimes – even in English – sometimes you can say either one and it doesn’t matter and other times there’s a big difference. So, sometimes people will say a word and people… the English listener will understand and they think, “Okay, I can make this sound” and then they say a different word with the same sound and now people don’t understand. Let’s take a look at what I’m talking about. If I say the word “hurry” now I just said that correctly /r/ if I say the word hurry no problem. you understand me. But I’m going to say it now with the /l/ “Hully, hully.” Wel,l there is no English word that that sounds like, so people will figure out that what you mean is, “hurry hurry.” So in that case, /l/ instead of /r/ is okay … but take a look at this word. Here, if I say this wrong, instead of saying “arrive,” I put an L sound in there, now it sounds like this word. So if we say for example, “I alive at five o’clock,” “You will be alive at five o’clock? Well that’s good news; I hope you’re alive at six o’clock too.” So sometimes even in English we can say one word… or one sound or the other sometimes we can’t and because there is a difference, it’s important that you are able to say this correctly. Okay, let’s take a look at some examples. So we’ll start here with /r/ in word- initial position: rock, rich, raw, raft, ran. Merry… oops! Sorry! Now let’s take a look at word-medial position – it just means in the middle of the word. Merry, mirror, hurry, warrant, worried. And now we will look in word-final position, at the end of the word: door, jeer, our, lure, hair. Okay? Now we’re going to put this sound in some words in sentences. Roses and carnations are my favorite red flowers. Cats purr after Randy strokes their fur. April showers bring May flowers. Because /r/ and /l/ are so difficult for so many people learning English, I’ve added a little extra exercise here. So, I’m going to say these words. I’m going to say word either from this list or word from this list. These words or these lists of words are what we call minimal pairs, which means they sound the same except for one sound. So if we see here, now this one’s easy to understand because it’s the same spelling, here I have an R and here I have an L. Now, the spelling isn’t always the same between the two words but the sound is. So I’m going to say either a word from the list on the left or one from the list on the right, and you note down which one I say and at the end I will tell you. It wouldn’t be very useful if I didn’t tell you, would it? Let’s begin: right, arrive, fry, correct, race, belly, free, lake, splat. Okay, so now I’m going to show you which words I said. The words that just got bolded, those are the words that I said, okay? So I’ve got another list, we’re going to do exactly the same thing. Ready? Here we go: long, lamp, grammar, lighter, lock, lot, play, late, rain. Okay, and once again here are the answers. The words that I said are the words that just got bold. So, if you’d like more practice, look below because I’ve made some more exercises for you.