Hello, I have the tapes to Learning Irish, and the Connaught r is definitely trilled. From searching the Daltaí archives, I thought the Ulster one would be too, but I received the Tús Maith pack and CD today for Ulster Irish, and listening to those I cannot hear any trilling at all going on. "Doras" in the Learning Irish tapes has a Spanish style "r", but in the Tús Maith CDs has what sounds exactly like an English r. Are there different "r's" across Ireland in the various dialects?

An audio clip of the word doras in Ulster Irish is at http://www.hskvocabulary.com/Ulster%20doras.wav and an audio clip of the word in Galway Irish is at http://www.hskvocabulary.com/Connacht%20doras.wav

They are not the same - and the Ulster one is much closer to the English r.

The English r is not "naturally" used in any Gaeltacht except in West Cork by younger speakers (except sometimes at the ends of words, let's say, by younger speakers again)

Normally, the broad r's are prononced with just a tap (as in Spanish "pero") except for non-lenited initial r's and for rr's - then it's a strongly trilled r (as in Spanish perro).

All non-lenited initial r's are broad.
In some dialects (Munster), a lenited initial r becomes slender (even when it's followed by a, u, o).
In Donegal, it's impossible to have a slender r at the beginning of a word: reath and rath are pronounced the same way.

If Tús Maith speakers pronounce the r's as in English, two possibilities:
- they aren't native speakers
- they are young speakers whose pronounciation is influenced by English.

Basically, the English r is a foreign sound in Irish. If Tús Maith speakers had no English, they wouldn't pronounce the r's like that, believe me.

Trill/tap your r's! It will sound more Irish, more understandable and much more beautiful. ;-)

Have you listened to the audio file I posted? Am I hearing it wrong?

The 'r' in "doras" in the Ulster clip does sound a lot like an American 'r' to me.

>An audio clip of the word doras in Ulster Irish is at >http://www.hskvocabulary.com/Ulster%20doras.wav

I had not heard the recording when I answered. The person who pronounces "doras" there, from Ulster, is not a native speaker or her pronounciation isvery influenced by English. In Northwestern Donegal, I've never heard anyone pronouncing the "r" like that, except sometimes at the end of some words. People pronounce r's like the person of the Connemara recording.

Thank you, Lughaidh, for the clarification.

Max & Lughaidh,

Ceist agam oraibh! Why are r's so unstable? The uvular 'r' seems to have conquered most of Northern Europe (and Israel). Where was its beach-head and how did it spread? There are all sorts of realization of 'r' in English dialects, and I get the impression that the "wascally wabbit" version has acquired some sort of non-posh cachet in Britain. I hear it more and more on the BBC. Nuair a chuala mé an 'r' sin den chéad uair, níos mó ná deich mbliana ó shin, shíl mé go raibh bachlóg ar theanga an chainteora!

They had the uvular r in Northumberland in England too. It was called the Northumbrian burr, but I am not sure if there are any young people using it. It may have died out.

Dennis,

I'd say r is unstable because it is badly integrated into the phonological system.
This means that the realizations of this phoneme can vary a lot without overlapping the realizations of the other phonemes (as opposed to /t/, for instance, which is stuck between /d/, /s/, /k/, /p/...)
It's a question of how much "room to manoeuvre" one phoneme has.

quote:

It's a question of how much "room to manoeuvre" one phoneme has.

OK, GRMA! Luíonn sé sin le réasún.

The uvular "r" is also used by some Hungarians, some Croats, some Serbs, some Bulgarians, some Romanians. It stinks. There ought to be a law. Oh, and there's the Portuguese "strong" r/rr (e.g. rio, carro), which can be: voiced or voiceless; alveolar, velar, uvular or glottal; a trill or a fricative. And the Spanish one, for that matter: a voiced or voiceless, alveolar or uvular trill.

David, you wrote "woshi Bingdao ren" in another thread just now, which made me stop and think. I don't know Chinese, but their 'r' sounds to me rather like the Irish slender 'r' (Conamara version, anyway). Can someone comment?

Well, the Chinese r is retroflex for a start and has no palatalized quality, and the Connemara r is, as far as I know, pronounced with the tip of the tongue. But I do see the resemblance. How many different versions of slender "r" are there in the various regions of Ireland?

Slender r? I know 2 in Donegal...

>>I don't know Chinese, but their 'r' sounds to me rather like the Irish slender 'r' (Conamara version, anyway). Can someone comment?

Chinese -r- is a retroflex fricative. It is very close to English -r- which is a retroflex spirant...
Awkward parallel:
Chinese -r- is to English -r- what lax -i- (as in "sit") is to tense -i- (as in "seat").

I received an email from the author of Tús Maith. He confirmed that 3 of the 4 Irish speakers on the CDs accompanying the course were native speakers from the Gaeltacht, but said that he regarded the fourth, from the Galltacht, as having native-speaker-equivalent competence, and said few people would realise by listening that she was not a native speaker. However, I think it is clear from the outset that there is one speaker on the CDs who cannot trill an "r". Having said that, I think the course is actually quite good. It focuses on communication - there are no declension tables in the book! And modern-style vocabulary is introduced from the outset, eg "software", "computer" etc (bogearra, ríomhaire). But the grammatical explanations are sometimes several chapters behind the texts. For example in chapter 2, a man in one of the texts addressed 2 girls thus: "dia daoibh, a chailíní". But lenition is not explained until chapter 5, and the use of the vocative particle is not explained until chapter 6. There are a lot of interesting boxes throughout on Irish culture and the derivation of Irish surnames etc. Book 1 introduces only around 500 words, Book 2 around 900 words. Book 3 is still being produced, so the 3-book text would probably give a vocabulary of around 2500 words. There is little or no phonological explanation in the text. Vocabulary items are not individually pronounced on the CDs, although the full texts are read out, and they do not have phonetic transcription accompanying them.

(Message edited by djwebb2002 on September 29, 2005)

>having native-speaker-equivalent competence,

not in pronounciation, obviously.

>and said few people would realise by listening that she was not a native speaker.

I don't agree with that. Just listen to her r's and you see that she isn't a native speaker. Anybody can notice that, given you know that English r's and Irish r's don't sound alike...

Lughaidh, the Tus Maith course has a different word for "harp" from the Learning Irish, but I can't remember offhand what it is. Is clarseach a Connaught word only?

Cláirseach. There is another word, "cruit", but actually it isn't exactly the same instrument. A cláirseach is a big harp, a "cruit" is much smaller, you put it on your knee when you are sitting, to play it ("cruit" was more what was used by bards and Middle Ages’ travelling harpers).
A cláirseach has to been put on the ground, it's big and quite heavy. I dunno any other word for "harp". Nowadays, the word cláirseach is much more common than cruit, actually I don’t think many people play "cruit" today.

I’ve learnt the words "cláirseach" and "cruit" in books. I have never heard them in Donegal Gaeltacht (because i never spoke about harps there!), so I can’t say more.

In Scotland people say clàrsach.

Yes, please excuse my clumsy spelling. Yes, cruit was the word in Tús Maith.