Re: NATLANG: Gaidhlig volunteer needed

Mark J. Reed wrote:

> 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!!)
But it's perfectly natural! It's not as if whoever came up with the
original Gaelic orthography was trying to shovel 10kg of phonology
into a 5kg alphabet or anything... :-)

> Are lenited |bh| and |mh| really [v]?   Not [B]?
As somebody from the north-west of Ireland, both, when palatal, come out
more [B] than [v], and [w] when velar and <mh> nasalising. I'm told it's
the same with the Ulster dialect. [v]/[w] I associate with Munster. I'd
expect Scots Gaelic to be [B], but as I'm not familiar with it outside
of writing and the odd bits of it I here on TG4 (the Irish language
station here), I can't help beyond that.

K.