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Chaika, спасибо за ссылку, об иске между Грекой и раком!

Ё-моё да блин, it was VERY difficult for me to properly hear the difference between ALL the hard and soft consonants in Russian -- because hard/soft distinctions are not "phonemically important" in...

Hah!

As I said, I used to practice the Eddy Teddy Freddy chant while I was jogging in college -- and vigorous cardiovascular exercise that tires you out can have the same "tongue-loosening"...

Thanks, Lampada -- good to know that Russian children have trouble with the soft-R / hard-R distinction, too!

An even more difficult скороговорка has just two words:

Пароль -- «орёл».

Which...

By the way, one might logically guess that "crawfish" (речной рак) comes from crawl (ползать) + fish (рыба), thus signifying ползающая рыба ("crawling fish").

But in fact, the word "crawfish"...

Here's the entire скороговорка about Greka and the crawdaddy/crawfish/crayfish, with the soft R's in red and the hard R's in blue:


Ехал Грека через реку
Видит Грека - в реке рак
Сунул Грека...

I couldn't roll my the "R" until age 20, after two years of studying Russian, so don't feel bad!

There was an exercise suggested by one of our grad-student Teaching Assistants that did help me:...