stressed "or"

>>Oh. That's what makes it even more confusing when attempting to learn X-sampa. The fact that some people here apparantly have "weird" r sounds. So your "r" sound is an unusual "r". I have [r\] as I have the usual "r" sound in the United States and thus [A:r\]. I'm curious as to what this [R] sounds like though. Is it a rolled r? tapped r? French r?<<

Actually, what [R] marks is actually two different things, more specifically [R_o], a uvular approximant, and [R_r], a uvular fricative. Most French and (in prevocalic positions) German dialects today have [R_r], whereas [R_o] shows up in some things such as Scanian dialects of Swedish and in intervocalic positions in Standard German. What I myself have is [R_o].

>>Oh, so [:] when put after a vowel marks vowel length?<<

[:] marks a given phone as being explicitly long. Note that things such as [::] can be used to mark phones as being overlong, while things like [_x] can be used to mark phones as being extra short.

>>Well, I sure have been learning a lot of new terms from visiting this forum. What the heck is final devoicing?<<

Final devoicing is the devoicing of phonemes at the ends of words. For instance, German (aside from Yiddish), Dutch, Russian, and Polish all have final devoicing. My dialect does have final devoicing, but on a more limited basis than said languages, as it really only applies such consistently to words ending in fricatives of affricates, and even then such very often does not occur if the following word starts with a vowel.

<<Actually, what [R] marks is actually two different things, more specifically [R_o], a uvular approximant, and [R_r], a uvular fricative. Most French and (in prevocalic positions) German dialects today have [R_r], whereas [R_o] shows up in some things such as Scanian dialects of Swedish and in intervocalic positions in Standard German. What I myself have is [R_o].>>

Actually, I've noticed in (Quebec) French that post-vocalic r is often little more than an approximant, perhaps a [6] vowel like in German. Perhaps a non-rhotic variety of French is developing, as in Danish?

It's hard to generalise about Quebecois French because so many (most?) roll the R with the tongue while others have a uvular R . But the strange thing is they also seem to have an American English sounding R for -eur ending words (e.g. masseur) and English words (e.g. rocker.)

Both Rs in "rocker" (for the example above) woud be pronounced just like an English-type R.

<<It's hard to generalise about Quebecois French because so many (most?) roll the R with the tongue while others have a uvular R . But the strange thing is they also seem to have an American English sounding R for -eur ending words (e.g. masseur) and English words (e.g. rocker.) >>

I learned French by immersion starting from age five, and I grew up with the [4] or [r] variant (ie. not the uvular R). I've since taught myself to use uvular R (R grasseyé in French), but I can't say I've completely mastered it. I hope to be able to produce it consistently by practicing it, because it is the 'prestige' form, and if I visit France I don't want to stick out too much, but once I have, I expect I'll return to my semi-native [4]. I can't say I've ever heard the American r in any native French words, but certainly it is common in English borrowings. While the French will use a standard [R] in these words, Quebeckers tend to use [r\] (though I think it may be more velarized than in English). I think the [R] variant is actually more common these days in Quebec, having connotations of the urban, sophisticated, middle- to upper-class, whereas [r] is associated with the country and/or lower-class workers. The uvular R is nearly universal in the media.

>>I can't say I've ever heard the American r in any native French words, but certainly it is common in English borrowings.<<

Well maybe not an American R exactly but it's not [r] or [R]. It could be a non-rhotic type vowel as you suggested earlier but it's not [6] either. I notice it on native French -eur word endings. These endings have a diphthong? or are lengthened, so "masseur" would sound like [mas9:] This applies only to Quebecker French.