Re: [embonpoint] was once a completely positive term in France

 Ar an séú lá is fiche de mí Deireadh Fómhair, scríobh Peter Moylan:

 > [...] Pronunciation of the letter r seems to vary wildly between languages. I
 > can do both alveolar and uvular r in most positions in a word, if I
 > concentrate, and that covers a fair few languages, but it does require
 > concentration. Certainly I can pronounce Irish dearg and déag so that
 > they sound different. The difficulty for me is more about hearing the
 > difference.

That’s a surprise to me. Can you pick up traces of an Irish accent among
Australians? This fellow: https://jamohanlon.com/science/ , for example, was on
Quirks and Quarks, a Canadian radio show I listen to via podcasts on long
drives, and his Australian has a lot more more post-vocalic Rs together with
the Northern Ireland [œʏ] for <ou>; if you can pick that up, you can hear the
difference.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/this-spider-scientist-wants-us-to-appreciate-the-world-s-8-legged-wonders-1.7358310
for the full broadcast.

 > I can also do a flapped r before a vowel, but to my great annoyance I am
 > unable to do any sort of trilled r. Exception: when singing the Edith Piaf song
 > with
 > the lines
 >     Balayé les amours
 >     Avec leurs trémolos
 > I do make an effort to do "trémolos" with an uvular trill, and sometimes
 > I succeed.

Great.

It took me, I think, a year, certainly many months, to get the alveolar trill
right. What worked for me was attempting to make a [h] at the same time as my
normal /r/ sound (while going on walks and in other contexts where no-one was
listening); this lowered the back of the tongue, which makes the anterior end
of the tongue more likely to trill, and eventually I could pronounce pero and
perro distinctly in Spanish without problems.

--
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)