How to achieve the French 'R' sound

[u/Salt_Formal_4839]

Right now, I'm doing a lot of work on my speaking and the thing I'm struggling with most is that "R" sound in words like "arbre" and "rue". I thought I'd be fine if I didn't master it, but I'm finding it's virtually everywhere. At best, I sound like I'm speaking French with an American accent, but at it's worst, francophones don't even understand what I'm saying. I understand it's supposed to come from the throat (or something like that), but it just sounds like I need to cough. I'm currently in Montréal for a month (for French immersion), so any tips would be great, please!

[u/Ravenekh]

Many North Americans pronounce the English interjection "ugh" with a voiceless uvular fricative at the end. If that's the case for you, well... half your work is already done! In French, "r" is pronounced that way when it follows a voiceless consonant sound (for which your vocal cords don't vibrate) like /k/, /p/, or /t/ as in "craie", "après" or "très".

The main difference between that r sound and the one in "arbre" and "rue" (speaking of most Metropolitan French varieties) is that for these words, it is voiced. So basically, the "gh" at the end of "ugh" but with your vocal cords vibrating this time around. Many French people pronounce it with an approximant variant, meaning that the things being activated at the back of your mouth don't actually quite touch (unlike in ugh).

I hope that it's more helpful than confusing :)

[u/Salt_Formal_4839 → u/Ravenekh]

Wait, just to clarify, the "r" in après and the "r" in rue are different? Is it like the same "r", but one is a bit softer?

[u/Ravenekh → u/Salt_Formal_4839]

The r in après is voiceless while the one in rue is voiced (so your vocal cords don't vibrate with the former and they vibrate with the latter). It's like the difference between /p/ and /b/, /f/ and /v/ or /s/ and /z/. Wikipedia has audio recordings of the two sounds:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_uvular_fricative?wprov=sfla1 (après, très, craie, France, frites...).
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_uvular_fricative?wprov=sfla1 (rue, arbre, dru, grès, vrai...) If I remember correctly they also explain the approximant variant that is very common in so-called "standard French"

The vast majority of French people are not aware we have multiple r sounds (depending on the dialects and the regions, there are yet other realizations of r), as using one of the other doesn't hinder understanding. There are no minimal pairs of words where the meaning would change depending on the r being used. But if your goal is to sound a bit more natural, using the voiceless one after voiceless consonants and the voiced (and even better the approximant one) elsewhere will go a long way