German has uvular fricatives!

[pne]

Hm, up till now I thought that German /x/ was [x]... but after listening to this page, I'm convinced that it's actually [X] (and that my /r/ is [R], not [G]).

(Also, my attempts at rhotic trills seem to be closer to an [R\] (uvular trill) than to an [r] (alveolar trill). Heh. My trills suck, and I blame my frenulum.)

Comments

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

Can you pronounce alveolar flap sounds? Once I got the hang of that, I didn't have much of a problem with the trill either, even though in combination with some other consonants I can't pronounce them.

Hmm, I actually wanted to try to explain how to make this sound, but I guess I can't. :/