Probably brilliant - tricky clusters with /r/

Welcome to season 5 of English Sound Building! Today, we’re reviewing /r/, and a lot of other consonant sounds besides, to look at clusters with /r/.

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Transcript

Today and indeed for the next few weeks we’re picking back up on our work on /r/ and /l/ from the first couple of episodes this season. You may remember that I promised you an episode on tricky clusters with these sounds: here we are! Today we’re focusing on clusters with /r/. This is going to be great practice with the /r/ sound, of course, but also with the other consonant sounds /r/ clusters with, notably /b/, /k/, /d/, /f/, /g/, /p/, /s/, /t/ and /θ/. We’ve spoken about all of these sounds before, so if you find that you need to review any of them at any point, go back to the original episodes and do that. I’ll flag these as we go along.  

Now, needless to say, these consonant clusters can be tricky if your language doesn’t cluster consonants at all, or if it doesn’t cluster the same combinations as English. That said, most of my learners find that transitioning from one cluster to another is something they can achieve with practice, so I advise you to have a play while you listen to this episode, repeat often, and have fun training your mouth to do something new! Slowing down can really help if you’re struggling. We’ll also be reminded with some of these clusters that the sounds in combination can affect each other…

So, today we have a lot of word-level practice, with of course sentences with these words. Let’s get cracking! (That was one right there!).

First of all, clusters with /br/. We met /b/ just last season, in Episode 37 “Buy Pies” and again in Episode 38 “My Best Vest”. 

Listen, and repeat: bread, break, breakfast, bring, brother, brown, library, umbrella

And now a sentence with some of those words: My brother brought the brown bread for breakfast.

/kr/ - we met /k/ back in Episode 29 “Cold Gold”. 

Listen, and repeat: crazy, cream, create, credit, cry, criminal, crowded, describe

And now for a sentence with some of those words: The creative criminal described the crazy crowds.

Now for /dr/. We first met /d/ way back in season 1, in Episode 6 “Betting or Bedding?”. However, today I’ll also remind you of Season 2, Episode 20 “Cheering and Jeering”, where we saw that /dr/ clusters can result in a /ʤr/ sound. So, we’ll listen to these words read two ways:

Listen and repeat the /dr/ cluster, firstly pronounced /dr/: address, drink, drive, drop, drug, dry

And now to the /dr/ cluster pronouncded /ʤr/: address, drink, drive, drop, drug, dry

…And a sentence, which I will read with mostly /ʤr/ because that’s how it naturally comes out at speed for me. How about you? The drunk driver dropped the drugs to the wrong address!

Now to /fr/. To review /f/, go back to Episode 23 “Fewer Viewers”.

Listen and repeat: afraid, Friday, free, friend, from, front, fruit, phrase

And a sentence with some of those words (and an extra one I added in!): I’m afraid your friend from France isn’t free on Friday.

Now on to /gr/. To review /g/, it’s the same episode as /k/, Episode 29 “Cold Gold”.

Listen, and repeat: agree, angry, grandparent, great, green, grey, group, grow 

And a sentence: We agreed that the group of great-grandparents grew angry.

We find the cluster /nr/ in a few words starting with the prefix -un. You probably know that many words beginning /r/ take the -ir negative prefix, like irregular or irresponsible. A lot do still take un- though. Here are five. 

Listen and repeat: unruly, unreliable, unreasonable, unranked, unrested

And a short sentence. The unrested children were unruly and unreasonable.

Now moving to /pr/ clusters. We met /p/ back with /b/ in Episode 37 “Buy Pies”. This is a really common cluster, so I’ve included a few more.

Listen, and repeat: improve, practice, prefer, prepare, present, pretty, price, probably, problem, product, programme, project.

And a sentence: If you practice and improve your present product, you’ll probably sell for a preferable price. 

Now on to another one where the sound changes, and this time a triple cluster! You may remember that when we looked at that /p/ and /b/ contrast in Episode 37 “Buy Pies”, I explained that in a /sp/ cluster, the /p/ becomes voiced, so here we in fact get something indistinguishable from /sbr/. Let’s try a few!

Listen, and repeat: spray, spread, spring, sprinkle, sprint, sprite, sprout, 

And a sentence with some of these: The spring sprayed and sprinkled.

Next, another triple cluster, and again often involving a sound change: /str/, where the /st/ occasionally becomes /ʃtr/ - it doesn’t tend to for me. We discussed this happening with /st/ clusters followed by the /j/ sound in Episode 19 “It’s sure azure”, but not more generally.

Listen and repeat, firstly to the sounds pronounced /str/:  straight, strange, strategy, street, strong, stress, structure.

And again, this time with a /ʃtr/ sound. As I said, this doesn’t happen naturally for me: listen out to what you naturally do, and what the other speakers you hear do, too: straight, strange, strategy, street, strong, stress, structure.

And a sentence, which I’ll just read naturally. See if you can tell which variant you hear, and whether I’m consistent with it – I probably won’t be! This is a strangely strong strategic structure.

Similarly, we have just the /tr/ cluster. This may sound like you may expect: /tr/, but may also become /ʧr/. 

Listen and repeat, firstly to the /tr/ pronunciation: introduce, traffic, train, travel, tree, trip, trousers, true, try.

And again, this time to the /tʃr/ pronunciation: introduce, traffic, train, travel, tree, trip, trousers, true, try.

…And again a sentence, again read naturally. And again, see if you can tell which variant you hear, and whether I’m consistent. Try train travel for a truly traffic-free trip.

And the last group for today is a /θr/ cluster. We haven’t looked at /θ/ in a long while, you’ll need to go back all the way to Episode 2, “Teeth and teethe”. 

Listen, and repeat: three, throne, through, throw, throat, throughout

And a sentence: He threw three thrones through the window.

A few notes to end on.

Firstly, today we’ve just covered the most common /r/ clusters. Other do exist, for example /sr/ like in classroom.

Secondly, while research does show that producing consonant clusters increases your chance of communicating successfully, the good news is that there is a trick you can use if you find this impossible, and that is adding a tiny schwa sound between the two consonants: this addition of a sound is called epenthesis. For example, you might say “prefer” or “describe”, and this is unlikely to really affect comprehension. 

Making life easier is something all speakers do sometimes, and this links with some of those words with disappearing syllables, which we looked at last season in Episode 40 “Several Business Interests”. What we’re often doing here is choosing to simplify the pronunciation by making a cluster rather than adding that schwa – this is the easier choice for those of us who can make the clusters easily. “different”, “every”, “favourite”, “February”, “interesting”, and “history” are great examples of this.