Dia daoibh,

I have a question about the consonant R
Sometimes I hear it rolled, making it sound almost like an L, in a fashion similar to spanish (Marco) or japanese (Mariko)
Sometimes I hear it not rolled at all, like in english (Mary)
And sometimes I hear a hard R, like in french (Fromage) but slightly more guttural.

I've read it's a difference of dialect, also that it is tradiotionally rolled but english influence made its mark and it's not rolled anymore by younger speakers, also that it just "depends"

Is there a final word on this? Any source explaining what's what?

Thanks for reading!

Broad r /r/ should be flapped (like a Japanese R), but there is a rotic element to it that masks the flap somewhat. Learners, especially anglophones, often cannot hear the flap and assume it is a rotic r.

Slender r /r´/ is a buzzy z sound in Conamara and Munster (but sometimes a y sound in Gaoth Dobhair).

Younger Gaeltacht speakers are mimicking the school Irish anglicized accent (so as not to be ridiculed by their non-native peers) and bringing it into the home with them.

Broad dh and gh both sound like a German uvular r (as you noted a little more gutteral that French r). (This often gets erroneously reduced to a g sound in school Irish.)

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WARNING: Intermediate speaker - await further opinions, corrections and adjustments before acting on my advice.
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

this is the native sound of the broad r indeed.



learners pronounce like that ; more and more native speakers, especially in Munster, pronounce like that under the influence of English (to me it sounds ugly and it makes Irish harder to understand...)



never heard that pronunciation so far...



when you listen to recordings of old speakers, the sound of the English r simply didn't exist in their Irish.






as far as Donegal is concerned, this is oversimplified: it's mainly in Gaoth Dobhair that people use the y-sound for slender r, and it's almost only between vowels and at the end of a word. In other contexts it's pronounced like the slender r you can hear in the other areas.
Also I noticed that Gaoth Dobhair people tend to use broad r's instead of slender r's in many contexts and especially when talking to non-local people - they might be afraid to sound weird or to be hard to understand, to people who aren't used to the Gaoth Dobhair pronunciation of slender r.



is dóigh liom go bhfuil seo fíor agus mo mhíle mallacht ar an fheiniméan sin... It makes just sound Irish wrong...



aye, it's not like the French r. The Irish broad gh/dh is pronounced more forward in the mouth, just in the place you pronounce a broad g actually. It's a g pronounced while letting the air going through instead of stopping it, as you do with a normal hard g-sound.
The sound also exists in native Spanish (sound of g between vowels), in Greek, in Scottish Gaelic of course... also in certain dialects of Breton (like mine ). It doesn't sound like the German r as I've heard and learnt it, though. The German r I know is pronounce more in the throat than the Irish gh/dh.

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

Right you are, fixed above.


My main point was that the sound Sionnach was hearing isn't represented by r in Irish but rather by dh or gh (even though it is considered an r sound in other languages).

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WARNING: Intermediate speaker - await further opinions, corrections and adjustments before acting on my advice.
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

A uvular trill [ʀ] or (more guttural) a voiced uvular fricative/ [ʁ]?

In "The Dialects of Irish" (by R. Hickey) a uvular r as a broad r is mentioned for Carna /kɑ:ʁnə/ in Conamara and Baile Riabhach /bal´ə ʀi:əx/ in Corca Dhuibhne.


BTW: This is the only way I can produce a rolled r (so, phonetic notations above by me, as I pronounce these names)

In French "fromage" it is rather a voiceless uvular fricative [χ], /fχɔma:ʒ/, because of voiceless /f/.



German uvular r can be either [χ], [ʀ] or [ʁ], mostly [ʁ].

In my German dialect (Berlin) there's really no difference between "r" and its variant of broad "gh"
"Rote Augen" (red eyes) is pronounced /ʁo:tə o:ʁən/ (I'd spell it "rote Ooghen")

So, I tend to use /ʁ/ for Irish dh/gh, too.
But this is not correct, dh/gh isn't a uvular fricative in Irish but a velar fricative [ɣ] , i.e. slightly more in front of the mouth.

So few non-native speakers can say my name, Bríd, correctly, such a simple word, but most say it with an English R and English D, Breed or Breege.
It's nice to see learners who want to be precise.

Thanks for the explanations!

As a learner I agree that a rolled R makes irish easier to understand than when people use an english R. For some reason it's more natural for me to roll R's, maybe the fact I'm french has something to do with it.



Now that I think about it, this is most likely the consonant combination I've heard pronounced as a guttural R.



Forgive me if I'm butchering it, but I would like to make an attempt at pronouncing your name. Would it sound like "Bleedsh" or something close?

Le "r" slender est à mi-chemin entre un z français, un j français et un r espagnol (un seul coup de langue - non roulé, comme dans "pero").
Le "d" slender ressemble un peu à un "dy" comme dans "diaphane", en plus palatalisé.

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

You can hear it here:

That's me, Bríd Eilís

https://forvo.com/word/br%C3%ADd/#ga

Oh that's pretty close to what I had in mind
Also I must thank you for your contribution to Forvo, I've been listening to a lot of your inputs on that website