Hiya, i'm bored today so learning a bit of Chinese.

Please could someone teach me how to pronounce the "r" as in "rén" - 人? i can't figure out whats going on in the mouth at all...?

it's pretty distinct, but you get the hang of it once you listened to to lot of Chinese.

In mandarin, r is a retroflex sound along with zh, sh and ch. That means you need to curl your the tongue backwards in your mouth. Start by making a japanese れ sound (your tongue tip should be somewhere around the alveolar ridge, then curl the tongue back further so that the underside of the tongue tip is behind the alveolar ridge. It may feel a little awkward, because we don't do that in English. Then try making like a french 'j' sound like in jean claude van dam or the g in genre, then start mixing in a piratey r sound into that. Basically keep listening to chinese while remembering to curl your tongue backwards and it becomes pretty natural. You also need to do it for zh, ch and sh.

Thanks!!! Does your tongue actually touch the alveolar ridge? If not, i think i might have got it (or close enough for today anyway lol).

no worries. I think it touches lightly so that it still lets air through. You should be able to hold and continue the sound (like english shhhhhhhhh... and unlike say t or k).

Say 'pleasure'. Then say it again but hold on the 's'. The pinyin 'r' is pretty close to that, with maybe a little less "buzz" to it. This is also approximately where the other retroflex initials are articulated.

It will be pronounced differently in different areas, of course. For instance in Beijing and further north, the tongue will be more curled than this. In Taiwan, the 'r' is sometimes pronounced more like a 'y' or even an 'l', and the other retroflex initials are softened considerably or even completely palatalized. But the way I described above should give you a pretty neutral, and therefore widely accepted (though perhaps not Beijing-standard), pronunciation.

ah, thanks, that's a really easy way of understanding it!!!

i dunno about chinese, but i think i've learned to speak "angry cat" now... i was practising holding onto the s in pleasure, and my cat thought i was hissing at her and jumped up and ran far away from me lol.