Rr rr — erre erre
«erre erre» is a digraph of Basque, the “Basque Latin alphabet” script, read as “long rolled r”. A long trill — the rolled r of stage Spanish or Scottish "brigh rr". For example, in the word “gerra” — war. The Basque alphabet has 32 letters in total. The pair tells words apart: gera ("we are") with the short tap, gerra ("war") with the full trill. It appears, for example, in the word “arratsalde on” — good afternoon.
In short
| Character | Rr rr |
| Name | erre erre |
| Sound | long rolled r |
| What it is | a digraph |
In our course the character comes 20th of 32: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are r and s, appears in 546 words of this site.
How it sounds
A long trill — the rolled r of stage Spanish or Scottish "brigh rr"
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- gerrawar
The character in the “soft sounds and the trill” group
ñ and tt are palatal sounds with a y-glide; they grew out of baby talk and affectionate speech (d has a rare partner to tt, met only a handful of times). rr is the only way to begin a word with a trill: a single r never starts a word.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «erre erre» it is “long rolled r”, as in the word “gerra”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 32 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Basque character rr read?
As “long rolled r” — it is a digraph of the “Basque Latin alphabet” script. A long trill — the rolled r of stage Spanish or Scottish "brigh rr". For example, in the word “gerra” — war.
What is the letter rr called?
Erre erre. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Basque script: it is called “erre erre” and reads as “long rolled r”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.
What can rr be confused with?
The pair tells words apart: gera ("we are") with the short tap, gerra ("war") with the full trill. Similar characters are best studied side by side and deliberately compared: learned on different days, they stay separate and get mixed up at their first meeting inside a word.