There's no reason we should be able to do a kickflip, either. And yet, here we are.

I'm certain that I have read a book about this, because I'm not smart enough to come up with a plausible theory by my self, but I seem to recall a hypothesis that languages developed at least in part by attempting to mimic sounds from the local naturally occurring sounds, particularly animals.

Raise your hand if you are sitting there trilling your tongue. Brownie points if someone in the room is looking you like you’re nuts.

My wife and my son cannot do it, but I can. When my son tries, he just raspberries instead.

Tongue trills feel wild because we didn’t evolve to do them they’re a side effect. A rolled R isn’t rapid muscle movement; it’s aerodynamic vibration. You hold your tongue in a barely stable position, push air, and physics takes over, like vocal cords buzzing. Evolution selected for a tongue with extreme flexibility, fine motor control, and precise airflow for speech. Once you have that setup, trills become possible whether they’re “useful” or not. Languages later adopted the sound because it’s distinct and stable, not because it was biologically intended. You set the conditions; the air does the work.

Voice teacher here. It’s not that we push the muscle, it’s about relaxing the muscle and using air to vibrate the tongue the same way you vibrate a reed or any other thing that makes noise.

If it makes you feel any better I can’t do it

The amount of people laying in bed right now, trilling, is definitely more than one.

Not everyone has the ability to "trill"

it really is weird and what's also weird is i forget how to do it and i fail over and over and then suddenly remember in certain contexts and i can do it

In singing we had to do that but while singing. Can you do it unendingly and while singing? It really works well for preparation to sing and you can do it kinda quietly. Just singing scales

I suspect it's just a product of language development and music ceremonies. And it's very handy as a warning sound.

I do it as my main vocal stim. It's actually soothing.

I started French immersion and rolling my Rs when I was four. Came pretty easily. Unfortunately my kids could not take French immersion but started basic French in gr 5 and I cannot teach them to roll their Rs for the life of them.

As a Latina with a last name that requires the rolled R, but who hasn't ONCE in her life been able to roll her Rs- I am very, extremely, irrationally jealous of every non-Latino who learns to do it in an afternoon as an adult.

I can't. I just physically can't do it. Which sucks even more because then people always assume I'm ashamed of my last name and that's why I "Americanize" the pronunciation of it and any other double-R words. I am not ashamed, I just cannot do it. 😭

 we can do it instinctively just by doing a super vague "push" thingy with our tongues and it sorta just happens

wish I could relate 🙃

Speak for yourself, I can’t do it at all.

I for one can’t do one :(

Not everyone can do it, which is so interesting.

I’ve never been able to roll my Rs and my Spanish teacher always gave me a hard time for that if anyone has any tips or tricks I still would like to know how to do this damn thing

i cant do it and ive tried so many times

Also strange that not everyone can do it.

I can’t do it.

Never could . But the punchy thing in my throat can make that sound and I can talk while doing it consistently. Sounds like I’m underwater . Heard others can’t

I cannot and have never been able to make that sound.

I've never been able to do it. One time when I was drunk I figured it out and was rolling my r's like crazy. Woke up the next day and couldn't do it anymore.

As someone who couldn’t roll an R to save their life, it’s black magic to me 

You should hear me try to trill my tongue. I sound absolutely ridiculous. For some reason, it really bothers me that I can't do this. I'm jealous of you trillers!

I've never been able to do it. I've tried my whole life. Everyone around me has always insisted that "everyone can do it" and I just need to learn. No, my tongue is simply not capable of it.

I actually can't do it. Drove me nuts in Spanish class.

Much to the dismay of both my high school Spanish teacher and my college Spanish teacher, I was never able to roll my r’s.

I can't do it, been trying since Spanish class in 9th grade but I just can't roll my R's. Just tried now and still can't do it almost 40 years later

I am one of those people who can't do it. Maybe it's a skill issue...

Me and my husband can’t do it, nor can most of my family. But my one year old daughter does it for fun constantly! It’s been a mystery to us all lol.

In my language (Afrikaans) we use “hard Rs” trilling your tongue as you say. I couldn’t do it when I was young, I had to go to a speech therapist to help me learn it.

We use those R's in swedish a lot, i cant do it though so i learned how to do the french R instead which is in the back of your throat instead lol.

I am one of the peoplr that can"t do that. I studied Spanish in high school and college; trilling the tongue is part of the Spanish language, but I was never able to do it.

I can’t!!! I think it’s because I have a tongue tie. I’m jealous of everyone who can and grateful I speak a language that doesn’t require it.

Your tongue does not literally become a rattlesnake tail, nor is it insane. It’s also not instinctive - it’s a learned lingual articulation, and equal to any others you use. 

I recommend the writing of David Crystal if you find this sort of thing interesting. 

I’ve never been able to do it and it makes me so sad.

How about "click" languages? Modern humans have vocal cords, what advantage does clicking have?

How high are you, bro?

But what is the reason you have that we shouldn't be able to do it? Evolution is over such a long period of time. Who knows what we might have used it for in the past.

Ironically enough my tongue can't do that 😆😆

Hold up, it's the tongue that's used to do that? I thought it was done in the throat or vocal cords.

Isn't it because we evolved to be able to mimic almost any animal for hunting reasons? We aren't as good as some birds but we can make sounds so similar to these animals that we confuse them/call them over/rage bait them.

Off topic but I new a person who could make the perry the platapus sound. Blew my mind

That sound is used in lots of languages. It’s not that mystical for non-English speakers.

There's no reason we should be conscious either yet someone/thing somewhere decided to go ahead and make us conscious

I dunno how I feel about that, I get that we can develop and grow and stuff but it also feels a bit like a dick move.

My tongue does not literally become a rattlesnake tail.

right?? it is basically built-in beatboxing hardware and we never question it..

your tongue just decides to become a vibrating engine on command, no training, no instruction manual. evolution really said “you might need this someday” and refused to elaborate..

I can't do this. My evolution missed that class.

... I do not roll my r with air? what? I can close off my throat and trill, I just did it for most of this sentence.

Ask your wife if it’s a necessary human ability

Rolling R's and languages that use them are very cool.

Weak-ass English soft "r" is weak and lame, it has no character to it.

I cannot do a tongue roll for Rs.
I CAN make a similar trilling noise in the back of my throat 😅

"Your tongue literally becomes a rattlesnake tail. "

No, it does not literally become anything except a tongue.

Strange, I always thought 'rolling your Rs' meant pronouncing them like how Americans pronounce them. Are you sure trilling is the same as rolling Rs? Because I've always known them to be opposites.

I'm Indian btw, we don't roll our Rs, we always trill.

Pine warbler and swamp hen hunters use this technique to devastating effect.

Lol I just had to try to see if I could do it!

Flutter tonguing is essential for jazz flute, so I’m glad I can do it.

And why do men have nipples?  Shouldn't they have been removed through evolution

It's always fun to see the face of native speakers when confronted with sounds alien to their language. I like to offer native English speakers the spanish tongue twister "¿Cuántos robles roería un roedor si los roedores royeran robles?", which is full of that sound and it's extremely easy for Spanish speakers to say, but oh boy, if you are not accustomed to it...

What amazes me is that babies learn all the relevant sounds of their mother tonge quite fast and easily, and disregard the rest, so when you grow up it's really hard to learn them if you suddenly need them. I gave up on French, I just couldn't get even close.

Since we can all do it, what is so incredible about it?

I don't remember learning how to do it, I've just known as long as I can remember. And I wouldn't be able to explain how to do it.

I can't fathom a reason for WHY we can do it from an evolution standpoint.

Because there's no negative pressure pushing it out of the genre pool. 

Huh? You hold your tongue against the roof of your mouth so air pressure builds behind it, and when the air pushes through, the tongue tip passively vibrates. Like a flag in the wind. You’re not actively shaking your tongue; you’re just setting the position and airflow, and the vibration sustains itself. It’s not evolution at all.. we do it naturally when we sneeze.

If your French you roll your R's from the back of your throat, like your clearing phlegm.

Theres also like 4 or 5 different phonetic "clicks" that are used in a bunch of different languages.

I suspect stemmed from times where we'd have to warn off predators like showing your teeth. As we have evolved we've lost alot of of our animal instincts that we possessed to keep us alive. Even animals have different abilities so not surprising some humans are able to manage things others are not. And some humans can trill and others can't.

Bird calls = more successful hunting

If I concentrate, I can trill with the tip of my tongue and the middle of my tongue -- which is ironic, since I only picked it up from listening to my two brothers who both play flute discussing trill techniques. I can do double glottal stops too, and that's also ironic because I learned that to speak farsi, but my ability to retain foreign languages is nil. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I can’t do it. Of German and Scandinavian heritage if it matters.

I can do a gargle/roll thing that lets me do a dove impression or like a jetsons space car noise and I can never tell for sure if that’s the same or not. It can make that noise on its own but is clunky in words, and I don’t know if that’s because it’s wrong or because I haven’t practiced it that way.

I taught myself how to do it in college by saying Prussia.

It is thus that we might have Xena.

I have spoken.

Not literally a rattlesnake tail. Metaphorically one though, yes

Kids make animal noises in late elementary school/middle school instinctively, I think: for hunting and whatnot. Same for whistling and trills

Need it for certain animal calls.

The only reason I learned how to do it as a kid was because I had Guinea pigs and they purred so that was our love language.

Hilariously trying to explain it my 7 year old with no real explanation for why I can, just had me cracking up so hard every time he couldn’t do it and I said it’s easy dude you just grrrrrrrrrt

If you’ve ever seen the edge of a flag flap in the wind, you’d know it’s not that strange that we can mimic that with wind on our tongue

I went to a Spanish immersion elementary school in the US, and because I started speaking Spanish at like 5, I could do it. I was always so shocked that nobody in my white family besides me and my sister could do it. As I grew up and didn’t continue speaking Spanish after elementary school, I could no longer do it. I still can’t anymore. Very disappointing :(

I physically cannot roll my R’s. My tongue just does not move like that. But I know in Spanish that the difference between a rolled and not rolled R can be the difference between a normal conversation and an insult, or just nonsense gibberish if the wrong R is used. If I ever find myself needed to converse in Spanish I’m going to have to resort to vocalizing “er er” whenever I need to say a “rr” word. I know it will be wrong, but I hope I can explain well enough why if it comes to that.

r/yethereweare

I can't do it. :(

It's just an interesting accident of design and physics. You've got a highly flexible organ that has been selected for an ability to alter airflow through the oral cavity to produce a variety of effects and one of those configurations is that cyclic oscillation of the tongue tip caused by partial obstruction against roof of mouth and teeth causing the pressure buildup to flick it down and elastic recoil of the tongue muscle flipping it back to immediately repeat unless you change the tongue tension or position. And depending on whether it's voiced or unvoiced, you get either the rolling 'R' or a trilling 'T' sound.

It's no more unusual than the various clicks used in Khoisan, Xhosa and other African languages. Once we evolved the basic anatomy for speech it created a large capacity for varied sounds and pretty much all of them ended up as part of a language or dialect at some point. Even whistling - see the Silbo Gomero language of the Canary Islands, for instance.