Of all the sounds which I feel people have trouble with in Irish the slender 'r' seems the hardest.

Even in native dialects there seems to be different solutions, in Scotland some people add 'th' as in English proncation ie. air sounds something like the English word earth.

In Gaoth Dobhair you will find it often dropped. In Ceathrù Thaidhg it is a z.

I many dialects I have studied an initial slender r is normally reduced to a broad consonant.

Some learners I know imagine a slender r with an slender s attached -air they imagine as airs. Not a bad effect.

But if you can't managed it I would go with the pronoucation they have in Fòd Dubh and Eachlèim - /rz/.

Image a /z/ sound at the end of the word and I think you will achieve a good effect - you will be understood.

Purists may reel, but let them produce practical solutions says I.

quote:

I many dialects I have studied an initial slender r is normally reduced to a broad consonant.

This has nothing to do with the slender r. It used to be a R' which quickly merged with R - in fact, in all positions. That's the reason why some dialects at least until recently maintained pairs such as an rí (Nom) /Ri:/ (from /R'i:/) - a rí! (Voc) /r'i:/. (see e.g. A Concise Comparative Celtic Grammar by Lewis & Pedersen).

quote:

In Gaoth Dobhair you will find it often dropped.

No it isn't dropped. At the end of words it is pronounced like a y-sound. Between vowels, most of the time it is pronounced like a y-sound too. In other contexts (eg. after a consonant), most of the time it has the sound of the slender r as it is found in most other dialects.

quote:

Purists may reel, but let them produce practical solutions says I.

What about learning to pronounce Irish as it is pronounced by native speakers? I managed to learn to pronounce slender r's, so why other learners wouldn't? :)

I read the following bit of advice somewhere - I can't remember where - about pronouncing this sound:

Think of how a c. 1930's "received pronunciation" English speaker, e.g. one of those cut-glass accented BBC announcers ("...from Alexandra Palace"), would pronounce the word "very". It could almost be written "veddy".
Reasonably close to a slender "R".



Another thing:
Is anyone here familiar with the sitcom "The Royle Family"?
In one episode the family are watching "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" featuring a female Scottish contestant.
The answer she gives to one question is "green", on hearing this Dave turns around and imitates her pronunciation - almost "g-deen" - to the great amusement of the rest of the family.
The point is this "gr" sounded virtually identical to a slender "gr" at the beginning of an Irish/Gaelic word i.e. "grín".
Just something I found interesting.

I think of slender r as being something like the /ʒ/ in French "je", the R in Dvorak, or zh in Chinese. But it is impossible to explain without hearing it.

So, here is a soundfile of sample words that I believe will be helpful to learners to hear the distinction:

http://www.awyr.com/ayrish/saewndfaylz/r_leathan_agus_r_caol.mp3

(The pronunciation is my best attempt at Conamara dialect - apologies to native speakers for any deviation therefrom. Please let me know if there are errors and I will attempt to correct them.)

The words in the sound file are:

ríomhaire "a computer" (notice that r is always broad at the beginning of a word, so this is my favorite example in class)
/ri:wər'ə/

fear "a man"
/f'æ:r/

fir "men"
/f'ir'/

leabhar "a book"
/L'aur/

leabhair "of a book"
/l'aur'/

leabhairín "a booklet"
/L'aur'i:n'/

múinteoir "a teacher"
/mu:N't'o:r'/

múinteora "of a teacher"
/mu:N't'o:rə/

múinteoirí "teachers"
/mu:N't'o:r'i:/

Máire (girl's name)
/mɑ:r'ə/

Muire (the virgin Mary)
/mir'e/

maraí "a mariner"
/ma:ri:/

mair "to live, survive"
/ma:r'/

maireachtáil "living, surviving"
/ma:r'əxtɑ:l'/

Let me know if there are any other pairs or sets of words that you would like to hear contrasted and I will try to oblige.

quote:

I think of slender r as being something like the /ʒ/ in French "je", the R in Dvorak, or zh in Chinese. But it is impossible to explain without hearing it.

The French j is pretty close but to me the French z is closer. The Czech ř is almost the same sound as the Irish slender r.
The Mandarin Chinese zh, though, is a retroflex ch-sound so it's a different sound.

James Murphy, a look at Gimson's (the authoritative text on British English pronunciation) shows that the RP pronunciation of the r between vowels was what would be a broad r in the Irish context - a flapped broad r.

Similarly, your other example is of a broad r. A slender r in green could not possibly be similar to "g-deen".

In fact the English r is much more similar to an Irish slender r than is the broad r of Scotland.

I listened to your pronunciations and they are very good. Máire and Muire are particularly accurate although I doubt if many non-native speakers know of the existence of slender r. North Mayo is the place for slender rs. Their speech sizzles with them.

The only pronunciation that puzzled me was "maraí". It sounded a bit like Scottish "Mairi" but since it is a rare word unknown to most of us that's OK. It might be better to use:

"Muir" and "Réalt na mara".

A thought that occurred to me while listening to the list is that there is no guarantee that slender r will have the same pronunciation from word to word. For example in "Máire" it is very distinctive and easily heard whereas in "Maireachtáil" it is less prominent. I don't know much about these things however.

Isn't it a wonderful world now where we can listen to each other from opposite ends of the earth!

quote:

In fact the English r is much more similar to an Irish slender r than is the broad r of Scotland.

The English r make no tap, so it's different.
The Irish slender r sounds more like English z or s as in "leisure".

Breandán,

You did a really good job. But to my ear, your slender r' sounds too "zh"-ish. I think you're on the right track but are overemphasising the "zh" part. I believe that the Connemara slender r' is more of a flap and the friction part is very short. I also notice that your glides are too strong - particularly the final off-glide in "múinteóir". Another thing, I hear you stressing the second syllable in the "múinteóir" examples, I'd give the initial syllable the most weight. My final comment is about the slender t': I believe the friction part should have a "s" quality rather than "sh" - something that I hear in your file.

Ok, I don't have great equipment where I am now, but that's what I recorded using your list - link (an mp3 file for download stored under my account).

(Message edited by Peter on January 31, 2010)

quote:

....the RP pronunciation of the r between vowels was what would be a broad r in the Irish context - a flapped broad r.

I was probably wrong describing it as RP, I think the advice referred to the accent of a particular type of "toff" character which would have been familiar to people at the time.
I recognised what the author had in mind myself and found it helpful.

quote:

Similarly, your other example is of a broad r. A slender r in green could not possibly be similar to "g-deen".

No, I'm confident it wasn't the usual Scottish R. It sounded very "slender" which is why it struck me so much.
"G-deen" was a rough representation of Dave's exaggerated pronunciation rather than the contestant's but it shows that the peculiar sound which stood out to him was not the typical Scottish R.

I can't even pronounce 'ríomhaire' without getting tongue twisted...

Thank you for your feedback, Taidhgín and Peter.

Taidhgín, I will have a look at doing the words you mentioned later.

Peter, I plead guilty as charged.

When creating a recording file to help beginners learn how to differentiate new sounds, I feel slow and distinct pronunciation, i.e., careful enunciation, is important.

When dealing with beginners, I think it is better to overshoot the mark than to undershoot it. That is, it is better to maintain a strong broad and slender distinction than to have the learner lapse into pronouncing everything broad.

When practicing for a sport or a martial art, you start off slow and with somewhat exaggerated movements aimed at overcoming bad habits and build up speed later. In linguistics, you are similarly exercising your tongue and your ear in preparation for new sounds. You can build up speed later.

In rapid speech all sounds are fudged somewhat due to a lack of time, and mine wouldn't sound this strong in the context of a sentence or conversation, but I feel starting with a rapid, smudged sample before the beginner can hear or imitate the distinction isn't particularly helpful. It can defeat the purpose of the exercise. Beginners need slower grounding first.

Bear in mind also that sound equipment can distort the sound, especially of fricative sounds. With slender t, I aim for a /t^j/ as in BRP "tune", "Tuesday", but in a recording it often sounds more like /tʃ/. I have often redone phonemes only to find them still inaudible or indistinguishable in the recording. This is another reason that strong enunciation is sometimes required.

Thanks for your recording, I hope more people will come forward with samples. However, in the end, recordings from Australians, Americans, Russians, French, and Urban Irish, however proficient, can only be of limited value - a stepping stone to the real thing. It would be great to have some real native speakers put their sound files up using the words I have given - or their own alternative sets, of course.

For beginners starting out in Irish, I highly recommend the pronunciation guide recording attached to Mícheál Ó Siadhail's Learning Irish, even if you aren't interested in studying the whole text and learning the Cois Fhairrge dialect itself.

quote:

I can't even pronounce 'ríomhaire' without getting tongue twisted...

Pronounce it as in Gaoth Dobhair, ie. ree-weh-yeh :-)

A Bhreandáin, nice work - thanks! To see the change from a regular r sound to a slender r sound is very helpful.

quote:

The French j is pretty close but to me the French z is closer.

Lughaidh, could you give an example of a French word with z that is closer? Thanks.

David

Forgive my ignorance but is a slender r where you tap your tongue briefly?

Breandán,

I understand you point about beginner-friendly recordings. However I find this approach to be faulty. Unnaturally slow pronunciation distorts sound properties - in both relative and absolute terms. You cannot possibly elongate a plosive and preserve relative durations of segments thereof (you can only prolong the occlusion phase). Similarly with flaps and trills: the mechanics of a flap presuppose a specific length; trills are limited to a couple of periods, etc. So, coming back to the Irish slender r', I feel that you distorted proportions of the sound components to the extent that it doesn't sound like a Connemara slender r' to me any more.

In general, this also concerns intonation patterns not found in the target language (say, my intuition is that Connemara Irish speakers would use a wide falling tone on isolated words - unlike Russian and possibly English speakers).

Think of the recordings in "Learning Irish". The texts are read really fast - in fact, at a natural tempo which allows the learner to hear Irish intonation patterns and elision at work. I actually believe this to be one of the major advantages of the book.

P.S. In Irish, I basically use Russian r' and r, as I hear them as close enough approximations. So, I proudly think of myself as having quasi-native-speaker competence in that one :)

(Message edited by Peter on February 01, 2010)

quote:

Lughaidh, could you give an example of a French word with z that is closer? Thanks.

Any word with the z sound : base, bizarre, maison...
The word "aise" sounds a bit like the word "air" in Irish.

quote:

Forgive my ignorance but is a slender r where you tap your tongue briefly?

Behind your upper teeth.

quote:

is a slender r where you tap your tongue briefly?

Yes, but this tap movement is only part of the whole gesture producing a slender r'. The broad r also involves a tap (flap) movement.

>Peter said: Yes, but this tap movement is only part of the whole gesture producing a slender r'. The broad r also involves a tap (flap) movement.


Peter, what else is involved in the slender r' other than the place of articulation that Lughaidh mentioned? Do you mean the mouth must be closed to give a palatalization?

You implied that the Irish r' was similar to but not the same as the Russian r'. Can you explain how the Russian r' is sounded? What is the difference between Russian r' and Irish r'?

This has been discussed numerously on this and other fora. Briefly, the major contributor, as you rightly point out, is the position of the tongue resembling /i/ or /j/. Once you have it, you pull back the front part of the tongue so that, in passing, the tongue blade briefly touches the alveolar ridge. The occlusion is very brief (otherwise the release results in a burst typical of stops).

As for the Russian r' phoneme, it has a number of distinct allophones (both a flap as above and trills, voiced and voiceless). I think I mainly use the flap allophone as described above to imitate the Connemara Irish r'.

A chairde, Dia daoibh,
As I hear on my recordings of Munster dialect, Pimsleur, and Gael-linn, the slender 'r' is very close to the Scottish trilled 'r', but the trill is raised in frequency almost to a buzz.
To form the trill, you set your mouth to pronounce broad 'd', and then slightly relax the tip of your tongue so that as you pronounce the sound, you rapidly alternate between a 'd' and a voiced english 'th'.
So as you tighten the tip of your tongue to increase the frequency of the vibration, the two sounds will tend to merge. The sound as I hear it is much closer to English voiced 'th' than it is to 'z', but we notice that some foreigners to English, trying to produce the 'th' sound, instead, produce the 'z' sound.
This then could be the reason why some people hear the 'z' sound.
Is mise le meas,
Déyv.

I don't know enough about Irish phonetics to say too much, but I have heard many times people on RnaG trilling their "r's" quite strongly. And by trilling I mean trilling and not slighty tapping, flapping, or anything else. Their trills would make an Italian proud.

There was a blonde lady, or at least a photo of a blonde lady on the page for some talk show from Donegal. She is the one that I am thinking of in particular.

Come to think of it, my wife is from Derry and she slighty trills her "r's" at the start of words. In the middle, or at the end, I don't really notice her "r's" so maybe this is a Northern thing like mentioned above?

A chara, Dia duit!
It is said, and I believe there is some weight in the suggestion, that in some senses, Munster, Ulster, and Scottish Gaelic have close connections, to the exception of Connacht.
This might be one of those connections.
Is mise le meas,
Déyv.

quote:

Come to think of it, my wife is from Derry and she slighty trills her "r's" at the start of words. In the middle, or at the end, I don't really notice her "r's" so maybe this is a Northern thing like mentioned above?

She trills her r's in English?

By the way, trilling the r's is an Irish Gaelic thing, actually.
Now the pronunciation has changed a bit, people don't trill them as much as before, except old speakers (like seanchaíonnaí) and most dialect have only two r's, slender one and broad one with one tap.
Not long ago, I think in most dialects you'd have a third phoneme, the broad trilled r (with several taps).

Even older speakers don't trill all r's, but only in some cases and clusters : rr rn, rl, rd etc. Normally single r's or r's outside these clusters, have only one tap (and I think it was true even long ago). It's more or less the same in Scottisg Gaelic. They don't trill their r's more than Gaeltacht older speakers, I think.

A chairde, Dia daoibh!
If you put your mouh to pronounce a broad trilled 'r', then move your mouth to slender, the sound changes to an English voiced 'th', or something very close thereto.
Is mise le meas,
Déyv.

A Déyv, agus cairde eile,

I have experimented in the area and discovered that when I exaggerate the frontal tongue shift associated with my native E, I and Y vowels, I can produce a slender set of noises, including a somehwat crisper and more Z-ish (but still trilled) R. I have hard time reducing the trill count under 3 in either broad or slender mode, but perhaps that just takes practice. Whether this is anywhere near the right kind of slender R for Irish, is perhaps a different matter.

No...lol

She doesn't trill her "r" in her English. At least not until she is making fun of the Scottish.

When I first met her, Her Derry accent was very stong and difficult to understnad. However, her accent isn't as strong as it used to be. I think we are wearing it down here in Iowa.

My wife is an intersting tale. She is not a native speaker herself but rather a fluent speaker. She actually went to Queens to learn it to become a teacher. She fell in love with it late in life so she doesn't really have the flow that comes from the Gaeltacht. But don't tell her that if you value the straightness of your nose...LOL

I wouldn't say she does it all the time, so I don't know if I can say it is a regular feature to be honest. I notice that she tends to do it more with broad "R's."