My old lady can roll her r's and wobble it as well.

Not a pretty sight I assure you..

the usual version is
El perro de San Roque no tiene rabo, porque Ramon Ramirez se lo ha robado.

thing is - it doesn't have to make perfect sense - so many tonguetwisters simply don't!

I think this version is the most gramatically correct, and is understood more easily


El perro de San Roque no tiene rabo, porque the theiving Barsteward Ramon Ramirez has nicked it.

That rrrrrrrr thing reminds me of the first time I sang karaoke in one of these team bonding things...

I had recently come to the UK and was not too confident about singing in English, and the only songs available in Spanish were "La Bamba" and "Macarena".

I went for La Bamba... and in between lyrics I started doing something silly like RRRRRRRRRRRRRaaaaaaajjaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy ... a few clappings at the end (we were all quite gone by then)... and one of my friends came to me and said... "God, you ARE brave!". You are very lucky you've never heard me singing!

Many people started asking me to teach them how to do the RRRRRRRR, which I was happy to do in exchange of a drink...

Don't worry about that, I was forced to learn it over 30 years ago and it's been forced into education ever since. Castilian in rural areas is far more in danger there. Yes, very difficult language, it simply is one of a kind. It has no Latin roots and the grammar and little context differences are extremely hard to learn. Funny, but I found some similarities with Finnish!

The pintxos are fantastic, simply the best of Spain, especially because bars compete between themselves to make the best. You're not biased at all

thanks for the support! Brave man tackling Finnish. It might even give Basque a run for its money.

Replying to your comment on links between Basque & Finnish.
In Larry Trask's detailed account in his "History of Basque" (he married someone from here) he did a comparison of Basque with another language; he had a Hungarian-English dictionary in his office (he was a linguist at Surrey Uni) so spent a couple of hours looking up Hungarian words that were similar to Basque. He found over 40 within the time spent. His conclusion? That all languages will show some similarity somewhere, but it doesn't prove that they are/were connected.

Ah well, I'll just plod on with Euskera. In class we learn Batua Basque; my wife speaks with a Bizkaia accent/dialect, which is quite different.

best wishes

Oh well, I had a Finnish boyfriend many years ago and he taught me just a bit as I visited his place there a couple times. A few words were very similar to Basque. No way I would study Finnish, though, I'm already mixing several languages!!!

With Basque it's a bit as with German, Italian, Valencian or Welsh. By the time they started teaching it they had to decide what to teach, so there is a standard Basque which is different to the one people really talk in other places. In a couple generations they will only talk the standard one as they teach the same in all schools, but of course there will be local differences as it happens with any language.

with a Lithuanian yesterday lunchtime, the language doesnt sound like anything I am used to, no common words or sounds.
perhaps its just the accent!