Jay Bee wrote:
Just a few historical questions -was there ever a /R'/ vs /r'/ distinction and when did it die out (probably nobody knows) and when did the /R/ vs. /r/ distinction fall out of fashion and was it ever used in Munster?
(for anybody reading /r'/ is the usual r-sound at the end of leabhair, i.e. slender. /R'/ was a longer lasting rolled version of slender r, written with a double r, i.e. girrfhiadh, the old spelling of giorria
hare.)
/R'/ and /r'/ used to be distinguished in Old Irish and Classical Irish. There are some comment from Bards attending the schools that they had to start learning how to pronounce /R'/ correctly around 1500, which means it probably started to die out then.
It would have existed in Munster a while ago, but probably died out there first.