Throatiness R.. how is a french child taught to say it? I'm sure they are in school and the teacher is grabbing her throat saying, down here.. .say the R down here in the throat

Here's an idea.. someone change how it sounds. Take a vote in France and get it changed. Just because somebody got hit in the neck with a rock two thousand years ago and pronounced it that way doesn't mean the entire nation of France has to

Has France ever discussed that?

They don't have to be taught it. They just learn it the same way that people learn English- they hear it and absorb it. It's perfectly easy and natural for them to pronounce things with that R sound so they wouldn't change it.

Young kids can absorb just about every phoneme. As we get older, lack of use of certain phonemes simply makes it hard for us adults to learn them again. That's why young kids learn pronounciation so fast. Case in point - most Japanese natives have a hard time pronouncing the English l.

So true, in my French emersion program I didn't have an English class until grade 5, and then it was only an English class, Math and Phys Ed, everything else was still in French until grade ten when we only had to take French, but I took some history and other classes in French because the teachers were a lot more interesting. So because I learned my alphabet, numbers and all that in French, learning them in English only by the simple fact that I grew up in an English family, I guess it was a lot easier for me to learn speak French.

I still can't speak it. Even your technique doesn't seem to be working hibby. But atleast now I can read the words and understand a little bit.

I don't even remember how I learned to pronounce it. Apparently my French teacher was better than I thought because when I started going over my French just recently I went to pronounce a few words and surprised myself that I knew how to pronounce the r. I never had much of a problem with it, though, since I often used my throat to make weird/unusual noises as a child. I have more trouble with sounds that require the use of the tongue/mouth than the throat.

And to matrix: learning a pronounciation for a small child is nothing. They hear and they do, there's no unusual or strange it just is. That's why they call it the "formative years", you absorb everything like a sponge. And that's where you need to get back to to learn new languages/new ways of doing things. The reason most people find it harder to learn new things as they get older is not really that they can't it's that they really don't want to, even if it's only on a subconscious level because they've done it one way for so long.

What? I speak perfect spanish. Just listen to me roll my 'r's. RRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRR I rrrrrrrrrrest my case. - Peggy Hill (King of the Hill)

Those things are fun, I like watching people actually try to open them with their fingers and not their teeth...

During a rugby tournament last year I went to a Tim Hortons with a friend of mine and his family. His family moved to Canada from South Africa about a year before that. My friend's father tried to play the game but couldn't roll up the rim. He asked me for help and I felt extremely proud and patriotic when I taught him. Happiest day of my life! (give or take)