The last
thought. An interesting fact is that both in Russian and Lithuanian the
ONLY alveolar sound is (vibrant) [r], so dropping it's vibrancy is the only
natural (?) way to achieve a semi-natural non-vibrant alveolar sound close to Am
E [D]. Please note that the 'weak d' recommendation implies weak ENGLISH
(mainly alveolar) d, not Russian/Lithuanian (mainly DENTAL).
Hope this
helps.
Sergei