Re: aspirated m?

Steg Belsky wrote:
> On Nov 25, 2004, at 3:22 AM, Stephen Mulraney wrote:
>
>> Steg Belsky wrote:
>
>
>> Another issue of the newspaper actually describes what an Ulpan is (and
>> it looks like the quote Steg found): "...na hIosraelaigh agus ulpan
>> (córas le daoine a ghaelú, i gcás na hÉireann) a bhunú i ngach roinn
>> stáit."
>> ".. the Israelites, and an Ulpan (a system of Gaelicising people, in
>> the
>> case of Ireland) to found in each state department". I'm not sure I
>> like
>> the phrasing of this one!
>
>
> Does that mean "Israelites" as in the biblical tribes of Israel, or is
> the same word used for modern Israelis?
Oops. I meant "Israelis", of course, but the Irish word somehow suggested
"Israelites" to my fingers...

>
>>> Although it looks like "Iosraelaigh" breaks the slender/broad vowel
>>> pairing rule.. i wonder what's with the |aelai|.
>
>
>> Yes, a bit strange... it's whay my dictionary gives though (well, the
>> singular "Iosraelach"). My guess is that the "ae" is just there for
>> effect - it isn't that common in Irish, and most places that I can
>> thing of that it does occur, I can identify the word as a borrowing
>> ("contae" _county_ from ?Norman French). Not all, though: there's
>> the name of the lang, "Gaeilge", where it seems to be replaceable
>> with "e" (I think).
Ah, I meant: the actual syllable peak can be replaced with /e/, not that
"Geilge" would be an equivalent spelling.


> _contae_ still follows the rule, though, right?  The _nt_ consonant
> combination are surrounded by two broad vowels, _onta_ with the _e_ on
> the end as the pronounced vowel?
> Same with _Gaeilge_... i always thought the _a_ was just there to make
> the _g_ broad.
Oh, you're probably right. I never learned at school about how the spelling
system indicated broad vs. narrow consonants by means of flanking vowel graphemes.
I mean, I understand it now, but the school system (or lack of system) is
hard to shake off - in it, it's the vowels that are "broad" or "narrow"
(ie. back vs. front), and you have the "narrow with narrow, broad with broad"
rule, but it's not obvious what it's all about. A side effect of having this
confused system floating around in my brain alongside the actual explication
is that I sometimes think that that "a" in "contae" is "really a vowel", that's
actually pronounced. In a sense it is, though, if only as a momentary glide
that accompanies the broad vowel. It seems to me that to native speakers,
these extra vowel graphemes have a phonetic reality. I guess they perceive
them intuitively as what we might call segments, though we know that they're
really (or mostly...) supersegmental.

The word "Gaeilge" looks a bit strange with the sequence "aei" (since what's the
i for? Not to make the 'l' narrow, the 'e' would do that anyway). But it's just
a spelling-reformed version of "Gaedhilge", where the narrow "dh", which represents
/j/ in most(?) dialect, has vanished.




>
>>> -Stephen (Steg)
>>>  "siúd chugaibh mary chinidh 'sí i ndiaidh an éirne shnámh"
>>>      ~ 'an mhaighdean mhara'
>
>
>> Ní thuigim níos mo ná dhá nó trí fhocal! Sílim go Gaelige obfúscaithe
>> í :).
>> (oh, my ability to form grammatical Irish sentences has withered away
>> since
>> I loaded my prize reference book to my brother.. :()
>
>
> Well, i barely ever had any ability, and none now that my dictionary
> and textbook are on a different continent :P .
> Errrm... did you say something like "i don't... two... three words! ...
> in Irish obfuscate(?)"
> Hmmm... just a guess but, does it mean "I only understand two or three
> of the words!  It's in complicated Irish"?
That's more or less the gist of it: "I don't understand more (níos mó) than
two or three words! I think it's 'obfuscated' Irish :)". I just made up
the word 'obfúscaithe' as a joke, BTW. It's common enough here for kids
in school to make up similar faux-Irish words in mockery of the language's
numerous loans from English (and even funnier, they way they're accomodated
to the phonetic system of Irish :)).

So, what does the "siúd chagaibh..." quote mean? :)


> -Stephen (Steg)
>  "hod(u/aya)!"
s.
--
To be sure, to be sure.

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