What sounds do Irish people, who are non native speakers of Irish, struggle to pronounce? In other words, how would you hear that an Irish person was a non native speaker?

Please give an example word to which the sound belongs. Better still, perhaps the word is available to listen to online here: http://www.forvo.com/languages/ga/

Also, please state the relevant dialects in your answer!

GRMA!

I think a lot of learners have a problem with the Irish R.

http://www.forvo.com/word/br%C3%ADd/

I've been called "Breed" way too often.

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It is recommended that you always wait for three to agree on a translation.
I speak Connemara Irish, and my input will often reflect that.
I will do an mp3 file on request for short translations.
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I agree with that. The 'ch' as in 'teach' doesn't exist in English, but we learn that in school generally. Somehow the 'r' sound that Bríd refers to flies under the radar.

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I definitely agree about "r"!

Non-native speakers also seem to struggle with broad "l" (and I freely admit that I still struggle with both "r" and "l"!)

Also, while they're not particularly difficult sounds, I find a lot of learners seem to avoid pronouncing broad "t" and "d" properly, with the tongue against the back of the teeth. There seems to be a fundamental laziness about these sounds...as if, because they're not difficult to produce (and because speech is understandable without them), learners can't be bothered with them.

Redwolf

They struggle with not only the sounds (by way of articulation A) and contrasts (by way of difference B)

The sounds you won't hear:


bi-labial sounds
A: except for b, p, m and w (the same as English), but lacking secondary articulation (except for stereo typified works like 'buí') and 'feoil' (for glides). The slender varieties are missing exceot when marked by a glide
B: /w'/ as English 'v' and /w/ as English /w/. No broad slender for words beyond pairs learned at school like 'buí' and 'bí' and even here, the b in bí is plain

dental & alveolar sounds
A: As Redwolf says above, tendency to lack dentals and even then, to omit the velarisation unless they're they have a type of Americanized speech and that would be just down to accident and not the same as natives anyway; /d'/ and /t'/ nearly always like 'j' and 'ch' in English; 's' and 'sh' are the same as English, the broad s not velarized. The sh in both languages are not easy to distinguish (tho with old people it would be easier as they, even in English have a range of realisations (including a whistle sound!); /r/ and /r'/ are missing, as is the velarisation on the broad r, with only the speakers usual English r here; 'l' and 'n' are missing most of the time, replaced by their dark English versions or a lighter variety, varying as in English (even tho all 4 original l and n sounds can be found in some English dialect, and most people have 3 in some capacity, ex: pill, pull, million, but they don't consider them different)
B: broad and slender only where English maps onto Irish with the nearest equivalent -the rest missing

made mostly with the palate
A: Apart from people from the old Ulster Irish area, slender c and g are missing, but even hey don' have the broad, or have a more English-like broad form or vary them word by word depending on context; /x'/ is gone to it's reward, totally (most probably don't even know it exists) yet they can make it in English (...); /j/ exists, again because it is in English; slender /ng'/ doesn't get much of a look-in
B: /c'/ and /g'/ only contrasted by accident for people in or near Ulster; no contrast of /x'/ and /j/ to their broad sounds below; maybe a /ng'/ to broad contrast, depending on how apparent the connection is. Young people in Ireland often have variable ngs in English

velar/uvular sounds
A: plain or maybe broad /k/ and /g/. Maybe a velar 'ch' now and again. Usually, ch is uvular to me and gh probably is too. Ch and gh usually replaced by k and g from English
B: No real contrast here to anything

glottal
-'h', yes!


So, basically, to give you a short answer, it's almost ANY sound not in English, BOTH in terms of articulation and ESPECIALLY in contrast. And since people are not told the sounds are different (look on the net, most 'pronunciation guides' say Irish and English are much the same), they don't know to say them right

As an example, look at the top results for 'how to pronounce Irish':

http://angaelmagazine.com/pronunciation/consonants.htm -says there is a difference, and gets a number of them, but the .wav format is not browser friendly, and many will ignore him for being an American

http://www.standingstones.com/gaelpron.html#Cons
Irish has fewer consonants than English. As you can see, most of them are pronounced very much like English. Actually, for the purpose of simplicity I am leaving out a few subtle differences. Like the whole thing

http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaeilge/donnch ... ishsp.html
Spoken Irish has only a few sounds not found in some dialect of English. You'd think SMO would be more on the ball and they even go on to contradict themselves by saying further on: all Irish consonants come in two flavors, called “broad” and “slender”. Basically, broad consonants are pronounced with a “-w” off-glide, and slender consonants are pronounced with a “-y” off-glide. which is not true (if so, both languages would sound different to how they are and more like each other)

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Irish/Pronunciation
Starts off with mentioning the complete difference between pronunciations in Irish and English and then later talks about broad and slender before confusing the issue with In most cases, the difference between the broad and slender pronunciation is subtle and then giving the old reliables d/j, t/ch etc

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/irish.htm
Lists the differences (but no /x'/!) and misses the 3rd existent l and n sounds before messing it all up by having a recording of that Cavan bollox with the language software to muddle it all up again

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

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It is recommended that you always wait for three to agree on a translation.
I speak Connemara Irish, and my input will often reflect that.
I will do an mp3 file on request for short translations.
___________________________________________________________

I have to add that I missed the stipulation in the original post ("Irish people who are not native Irish speakers"), so my comments pertaining to broad "t" and "d" apply mostly to American learners (who also tend to be lazy with "ch"). It bothers me sometimes that even fairly fluent speakers can be lazy with these sounds. Often I can tell a fellow American simply by how he or she pronounces "tá" or "loch."

Redwolf

All the Irish sounds that don't exist in the native language of the learner, are difficult to him

kʲ
kɰ
dɰ
gʲ
gɰ
lʲ
lˠ
ʎ
ɲ
nˠ
nʲ
ɾ
ɾʲ
tɰ
χ
ç
ɣ
ŋ and ŋʲ at the beginning of words
...
even non-diphthongated (?) vowels are hard for english speakers: instead of eː they say eɪ, instead of oː they say ow, and they donˈt manage to pronounce the irish diphthongs: instead of uə they say uː, instead of iə they say iː, etc.

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Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne