Re: NATLANG: Gaidhlig volunteer needed

On 3/21/06, Elliott Lash <erelion12@...> wrote:
> I do know Scottish Gaelic...but I'm not certain how to
> implement IPA fonts on this computer, which isn't even
> mine, but my company's
Elliott: no pressure.  I certainly don't want anyone to go to any
undue trouble.  Just pointing out the gap in case someone has the
knowledge, inclination, and means to help.

Roger's message last week spurred me to action.  Here I am trying to
come up with an interesting phonology for my conlang, and I know
practically nothing about a class of languages infamous for their
phonetic sound modifications!  I'm frustrated by my lack of knowledge
of the Celtic languages in general and the Goedelic languages in
particular.  I made one half-hearted attempt to learn some Irish back
in college, but was put off by the orthography.  (Apparently
completely different alphabets like Cyrillic were just fine, but
oddball applications of the Roman alphabet?  No, no!  Back,
infidels!!)

So I decided to try once more, armed with greater knowledge of how
weird languages can be, and greater tolerance for othographic
oddities.  (Although I must laugh when I read that a given language's
orthography is "actually easier and more regular than English spelling
once you learn it".  I mean, that's not exactly a high bar...)

I picked Scottish Gaelic to match my own heritage (1/4 Scots), and am
now trying to figure out what the dang thing sounds like.  Which ain't
easy.  Audio clips are fine for comparison, but they don't tell me how
to produce the sounds in order to have something to compare them to.
And the phonetic descriptions are all over the map.  Even the pages
written from a technical phonological standpoint seem to use some
disciplinary-standard but non-IPA orthography.

So, some dumb questions for anyone able to answer:

Are lenited |bh| and |mh| really [v]?   Not [B]?

What's the IPA symbol for a palatalized voiceless dental stop?  t with
a superscript j?  What about the aspirated version - t  with a
superscript j and a superscript h?  Is there a convention concerning
which superscript goes first?

What the heck is a "velarized dental"  (e.g. broad single initial
unlenited |l| and |n|)?  How do you do that with your tongue??

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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