It's manageable though. I wasn't able to pronounced a trilled r till I was 23, then I spent one year in Ireland and I had an Irish teacher who'd use the trilled r's, and I worked so much to manage to pronounce them, that I succeeded finally (actually, I didn't know, before, what you should do to pronounce a trilled r). So, I think most (if not all) people can manage them: if you can't do them naturally (ie. from childhood) you can get them if you work a bit.







it's not okay. And if you do only one kind of r instead of two (one broad and one slender) it's not okay either.



that's true. It's almost a way to know who is a native speaker and who isn't: almost all native speakers use one-tap/trilled r and almost all learners (or non-native speakers in general) use the English r's instead...
Anyway, the one-tap r does exist in American English (maybe not in all dialects, I don't know), in "better" (the tt) for instance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_tap )



yeah...

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

There are four r sounds I noticed in Munster, I'm wondering how they line up with what you say.

Basically tapped r, e.g. cara
A sort of slender tapped r, e.g. priocadh

A frictive r, e.g. rian
A slender frictive r, e.g. Laoghaire, I suspect this is the sound that most people call slender r.

Thanks for any help in advance.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

These are not phonematic/phonological.
We count 3 r's in Donegal Irish, for instance because there are 3 phonemes. But of course these may vary a bit according to the context (ie. the following and the preceding sound).

In Munster, your examples fit into 2 phonemes, which may change a bit according to the context.

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

I see that makes sense. Essentially four sounds but pairs of them are considered the same sound in different contexts. Where as
Donegal has three distinguished sounds.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Yes.
For instance, in Gweedore the slender r sounds more or less as the slender r of the other dialects when it follows a consonant, but it sounds like [j] between vowels (in general) or at the end of a word.


"bris" : phonologically /b'r'is'/ > phonetically [bʲɾ ̝ɪʃ] (well the symbol doesn't work with this font)
"deireadh" : phonologically /d'er'u:/ > phonetically [ˈdʲɛju]

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