SHIRA FENYES
News Writer

The coffee is steaming and the cups are stacked — stacked against our odds.

Tim Horton’s 25th annual Roll Up the Rim to Win has coffee lovers lined up, purchasing an excess of large double doubles in hopes of being one of the one in six winners of a free honey glazed donut.

This year, however, Canadians are rolling up their rims with an added trill. Despite the campaign’s focus on rolling Rs and rims simultaneously, a new Harris/Decima study revealed that only 56 per cent of Canadians can successfully pronounce the rolled R or “alveolar trill.” Maybe not all of us are destined to be Spaniards.

While some seem to be born with the ability, the idea of this natural skill is a myth, explained Bronwyn Stoddard, a former University of Saskatchewan linguistics student and former Sheaf copy editor.

According to the U of S alumnus, there is no genetic correlation to the R rolling ability. The alveolar trill can be challenging to many but can be learned by all.

“I have successfully taught a few people to do it,” she explained, “so experience demonstrates that it is not an impossibility to learn the trick.”

Certain people are more apt to learning the technique than others. The study reveals that Quebecers are the R rolling champions of Canada.

According to Stoddard, the trill is a common feature of certain foreign tongues like the German language, for example. But if millions around the world can learn it, why do so many Canadian adults find the trill so difficult?

“The letter R is a fickle creature,” Stoddard laughs. There are thousands of ways to approach it; R pronunciation can vary even within one language. Nowhere in Canadian English do we find this in our “mental glossary of sounds.”
Nonetheless, this sophisticated sound has somehow managed to grab the interest of Canada’s trademark coffee company.

“They probably did it to draw attention to the campaign by making it sound unusual or exotic,” Stoddard guessed.

And the Harris/Decima study lends some credence to that idea. The study shows that Albertans more than people from any other Canadian region find the rolled R a “sexy” dialectic feature. Maybe there’s something ironic about the exotic sound that grabs our attention during a season that is hardly alluring by the time March rolls around.

Whether it’s the catchy purr or the $1.29 gamble, Canadians love to “rrroll up the rrrim.”