u/Acceptable_Sell_6695

My friends (a German couple, let's call them Hans and Katharina) speak German and Italian. Katharina speaks very good Italian and has no issue trilling the r. Hans has just started learning Italian, but he cannot trill the r. It struck us as peculiar, since his dialect of German does have the trill. In a recent conversation, he told us why he has this rhoticism: His frenulum is too long, so he can't reach his palate with his tongue!

This lead to a conversation where we talked about speech impediments in Italian. It led to several questions on which we offered our views but could not settle firmly:

1. Does the trilled r distinguish semantics of words like in Spanish? (I'm thinking of pairs like perro and pero in Spanish.)
2. Does rhotacism in Italian impede listening comprehension for speakers of Italian?

And finally:

3. Can Italian-speakers with rhoticism still produce geminated r's? I mean, apart from isolated words, is the gemination still realised?