General American and actors

[Travis B.]

Getting the vowels wrong can even affect perception of the consonants. I think I've posted before about not being able to understand perceiving a German friend's final consonants as devoiced when, on closer listening, they clearly weren't and finally determining that what gave that impression was lack of allophonic lengthening in the lax vowels.

This is definitely true; for me people not having vowel length allophony (which for me affects both lax and tense vowels) often renders the proper perception of coda obstruents quite confusing.

[mèþru]

My mother once got into trouble because they said we brought snakes from Israel. She was trying to say snacks. She can pronounce both correctly know, but she still can't hear the difference between layer and liar. She pronounces them both as the latter.

[Vijay]

I think a phonetician would argue that it's all about the vowels, really.

Travis, your <r> just sounds like the alveolar one most Americans use to me.

[mèþru]

I think it probably has secondary articulation. It definitely doesn't sound very different from normal /r/ but it does sound somewhat different. All I know is that I can do the same sound as Travis from the velar position.

[Travis B.]

I have gotten to the point that I can make myself do a plain alveolar or postalveolar /r/, with or without labialization, as opposed to a uvular or coarticulated postalveolar-uvular /r/ with or without labialization, and it sounds almost the same as my usual /r/, but the articulation is completely unnatural to me and I cannot pronounce it easily in fluid speech.

[mèþru]

It definitely doesn't sound like the gutteral rhotics of Europe.

[Ares Land]

There are two difference with a French r that I noticed: first it's an approximant. (My r is a fricative.), and second it's noticeably labialized.

I wouldn't risk a comparison with other languages. (German r is often vocalized; I don't know what exactly is going one with the rhotic in Hebrew, but half the time I don't hear it).

[Travis B.]

It definitely doesn't sound like the gutteral rhotics of Europe.

It probably is more postvelar rather than uvular proper, it is an approximant rather than a fricative or trill, and when initial or at the start of a stressed syllable it is noticeably labialized (and it is probably labialized in other positions too, except not to as much of a degree).