You must promise not to laugh!

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I'm very much a beginner learner. Don't hesitate to correct me, as long as you explain why. This is how I learn best!

Okay, here we go. I randomly picked a few things from Buntús Cainte. I'm not going to tell you what I'm trying to say because I want to know if you can understand me. Can you?

http://www.fileswap.com/dl/hoTCc3eIGf/mimerim.wav.html

Am I doing the Rs right? Did I do the last sound of the last word right? Don't hold back. I can take the criticism.

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I'm very much a beginner learner. Don't hesitate to correct me, as long as you explain why. This is how I learn best!

Good

To me your r's aren't right, they sound English. Try to pronounce them (the broad ones) as in Spanish (single r), if you know Spanish.
In the middle of the recording, are you saying "gabhar"? That's how it sounds to me. If it is, it's ok except the r-sound.
I don't understand the word that follows it...

The -ch of the last word isn't exactly what people say, in Munster and Connachta it's a guttural sound ; in northern Ulster it's almost like an h-sound, as an English h (but of course, English has no h-sounds at the end of words )

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

The ch sound at the end was very nice, I thought. Less forceful than you’d often hear it in the southern parts of the country, and not quite as soft as in the northernmost parts of the country—but fairly spot on for the southern parts of the northern parts (Mayo, southern Donegal). The rest of your pronunciation, though, is more southern, so I’d work on ‘harshing’ it up a bit more if I were you.

The r’s were still quite American and ‘round’ sounding, though. Remember that it really is just a quick tap against the alveolar ridge (the foremost part of the hard palate). When you say an English r, you move your tongue back quite a lot and you kind of bunch it back a bit, so that it ends up just behind the alveolar ridge and ‘pointing’ up towards the hard palate a bit. In Irish, that whole backwards-and-upwards movement of the tongue doesn’t take place at all. Instead, like when you’re saying ‘butter’ (or was it ‘matter’ I used?), the tongue stays out front, but just flips up and quickly taps against the bottom of the alveolar ridge once. That’s all there is to it.

And yes, most of it was comprehensible. I heard, “Tá an cailín ramhar ag damhsa. An raibh sé? [meow] Gabhar. [Oiréad?]. Níor rith sé amach”. The only one I couldn’t quite make out was the fourth one; oiread, perhaps? Or ar éad (don’t think that means anything; I only know in éad and ag éad)?

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Not a native speaker.

Always wait for at least three people to agree on a translation, especially if it’s for something permanent.

My translations are usually GU (Ulster Irish), unless CO (Standard Orthography) is requested.

Another thing: you pronounce "raibh" as in Munster ("rev") but "gabhar" as in Ulster (gohr). I think you should try to focus on one dialect, as much as you can:

raibh is "rev" in Munster and "roh" elsewhere
gabhar is "gowr" in M and C and "gohr" in Ulster.

feel free to ask us for pronunciations, so that you don't mix up dialects

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

Wow! Great feedback so fast!

I'm not knowledgeable enough on the different dialects yet, what I'm just trying to do is mimic what I hear in the Buntús Cainte. I hope to learn Connacht. Not sure how that's going to happen. The different ways to pronounce things are lot to take in right now...

But here's what I'm trying to say. Gabhar should be gcarr. I must have messed that one up the worst.

Tá an cailín ramhar ag damhsa.
An raibh sé?
gcarr
aréir
Níor rith sé amach.

kokoshneta: About the tongue and the Rs. So, should my tongue stay mostly flat, almost like I have something stuck on the back of my two front teeth and I'm using my tongue to flip it off my teeth, but not touching my teeth?

Lughaidh: Can you explain what you mean by guttural? I hear those ch almost like a throat clearing sound, or a choking sound.

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I'm very much a beginner learner. Don't hesitate to correct me, as long as you explain why. This is how I learn best!

Here are two more tries to try to fix the Rs before I go to bed. I actually did this over and over but these are the best I could do tonight.
I think I know what to do. If I think of it like a D, it seems easier. Those double Ts in American English "matter" and "butter" sound more like Ds than Ts. It's just hard to do it without rolling it too much (like Spanish "perro")

Do any of these sound right? I'm only saying the 3 sentences in these clips.

Tá an cailín ramhar ag damhsa.
An raibh sé?
Níor rith sé amach.

http://www.fileswap.com/dl/qDTY5ijTF3/mimerim2.wav.html

http://www.fileswap.com/dl/f1LPobq12R/mimerim3.wav.html

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I'm very much a beginner learner. Don't hesitate to correct me, as long as you explain why. This is how I learn best!

Aha! That’s why it was hard to recognise, then: gcarr can never appear as such on its own, so it’s not something you’d listen for. It’s kind of like if you were learning English and had tried to pronounce »’re« (as in ‘you’re’ or ‘they’re’)—nobody would understand you, ’cause that doesn’t exist as a standalone word out of context.

The base word here is carr; it only becomes gcarr in certain grammatical contexts, like i gcarr ‘in a car’ or don gcarr ‘to the car’ (in Munster and Connacht—in Ulster that would be don charr instead).

The final r in aréir sounded a lot like a d, which means that you’re keeping your tongue in the right place there, but you’re touching the alveolar ridge too long, resting it against it instead of just a quick tap.


Kind of, yes.


‘Guttural’ just means that it’s in the throat, basically. Throat-clearing sound isn’t too far from it. I think your ch was produced in the right place, it just needed a bit more force and ‘spittal’ to sound right.


The r in níor rith sé amach in the first of those two is very good. That’s almost exactly how a broad r sounds.

If you can roll your r’s like in Spanish, that’s good—doing that is much closer than using an English r, and you’ll sound much more Irish with a trilled r, even if you overuse it. (The trilled r is used in Irish as well—at least in some dialects—much in the same way as it is in Spanish: for double rr and for initial r’s)

On a side note, though, in these latter two clips, you seem to be pronouncing ramhar as ‘rah-AWR’ or ‘rah-OOR’. I’m no expert on Connacht pronunciation, but I don’t think that’s right. I’m guessing it should just be ‘RAWWR’ (which is more or less the same as in Ulster).

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Not a native speaker.

Always wait for at least three people to agree on a translation, especially if it’s for something permanent.

My translations are usually GU (Ulster Irish), unless CO (Standard Orthography) is requested.

This explanation was going good until that last bit. I don't think any dialect says *don gcarr. It is don charr in all dialects. On the other hand, Connemara says sa gcarr where the standard and other dialects say sa charr.


The -amha- in ramhar should pretty much rhyme with the "-owe-" in "power". So does the -abha- in gabhar.

On the note of other vowels, the á in tá rhymes with "paw" in Connemara. Tá an pretty much rhymes with "dawn". The a in carr is the same as the á in tá.

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[hr]Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher[/hr]
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
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), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

gcarr
I should have known this. I just plucked that word out of a line of dialogue. I'll stick with full sentences until I know what I'm doing.

I've been doing Tá as Tah. I will do Taw from now on.

Ramhar is going to need some practice. I was hearing "row orr". So I will practice saying "rower" like power. Do both the front and end R get tapped/trilled?

I'm finding that my Rs are very inconsistent. Even when I speak Spanish, sometimes I can nail the rolled R and sometimes it falls dead. I think it's a muscular control that like anything you have to practice to pull off 100% of the time. Until my tongue is used to doing it, I think my Rs are going to be all over the place.

Thank you to all of you. I'm going to practice this a few days and see if I feel I'm getting any better, then maybe do another recording to see if I'm going in the right direction.

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I'm very much a beginner learner. Don't hesitate to correct me, as long as you explain why. This is how I learn best!