Re: 'Slainte': pronunciation?

On Tue, Oct 24, 2006 at 07:10:23PM -0400, Sally Caves wrote:

> This is extremely helpful, Keith.  What *I* would like to know, because I
> can NEVER remember it, is how consonants are palatalized and velarized.
Oh, that varies! I remember getting into a (good natured) argument with a
friend of mine over the pronunciation of the word 'spideog' ('robin'). To
my ears, she pronounced the _d_ as /d/ (alveolar), whereas I pronounced it
/dZ/. She's from Cork and I'm from Sligo, and the dialects spoken there and
here are about as intelligible as standard Irish and Scots Gaelic and that's
the least of the differences. Really.

> have a vague sense that d and t become /tS/ and /dZ/, but others have told
> me that they are merely pushed up closer to the teeth.
I'm guessing that was just a typo as you got the sounds reversed, but yeah,
for me that's pretty much correct, though it does vary quite widely. For
me they're /dZ/ and /tS/ respectively, and that's that.

> Could you, after your extraordinary efforts, be moved to go through the
> affected consonants for us?
Sure, but you have to understand that this is how they're pronounced where
I'm from, rather than what you might find further afield.

    Consonant  Velarised   Palatalised
    b          /b/         /b_j/
    bh         /B/         /B_j/
    bh (clus)  /w/         /w/
    c          /k/         /c/
    ch         /x/         /C/
    d          /d_d/       /dZ/
    dh         /G/         /j/
    f          /f/         /f_j/
    fh         -           -
    g          /g/         /J\/
    gh         /G/         /j/
    l          /l/         /l_j/
    ll         /K/         /L_j/
    m          /m/         /m_j/
    mh         /w/         /v/
    n          /n/         /J/
    nn         /N/         /J/
    p          /p/         /p_j/
    ph         (see 'f')
    r*         /4/         /r/
    s          /s/         /S/
    sh         /S/         /h_j/
    t          /t_d/       /tS/
    th         /h/         /h_j/

All of the palatalised consonants have, at the very least, a slight off-glide.

_r_ is a bit special. Before _n_ and _l_ it ends up as [r\].

By (clus), I'm indicating where _bh_ occurs as part of a consonat cluster,
such as _bht_ in _dabht_.

> There are also some consonant clusters that
> are silent, but still represented, I think.
In a small, very specific set of words, yes, but not in general. Those words
are just freaks you have to learn off.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something though...

> Also, what if you have a
> slender vowel before a consonant but a broad one after it... if that is
> possible? If it is, which vowel decides the pronunciation of the consonant?
No. In older orthographies, you did find that, and if I remember correctly,
it was the vowel after the consonant that determined its quality.

> Not to mention the entire headache over initial mutations!
Ach, not at all! I think that's the easiest part of it! You just have to
learn when stuff gets mutated and that's it.

K.

--
Keith Gaughan -- kmgaughan@eircom.net -- http://talideon.com/
Somewhere out there right now, Martin Fowler is suffering a migrane headache.