Irish Pronunciation - Sligo's Connamara/Ulster mix (Was: RE: Virus Translation Exercise)

From: Stephen Mulraney [mailto:ataltanie@OCEANFREE.NET]

> On Fri, 8 Mar 2002 16:51:07 -0000
> Keith Gaughan <kgaughan@...> wrote:
>
> > I'd like to add one thing: from being down in Cork, I've noticed
> > less of a tendancy to differenciate between slender and broad
> > consonants. Cork people seem to pronounce everything as if
> > they're not palatalised.
>
> That's curious. I suppose you can get away with that kind of thing
> if the context is clear (which is the main thinh I've learned from
> looking at mandarin ;) )
When I was in college (CIT), I had an argument with a friend of
mine who can speak Irish fluently. The argument was over how the
name of one of the department servers called `spideog' should be
pronounced. I'd been pronouncing it /spIdZ_jo:g/, but she was
insistant that it was pronounced /spI.do:g/. All the southerners
who got dragged into the argument agreed with her pronunciation
whilst the northerners, and I'm talking Roscommon, Monaghan and
Donegal, agreed with me. I think it's a southern thing.

The munster dialect is odd anyway...

> > :/t_j/ is almost like /tS/ in my dialect, but I'll type
> > it as /t_j/ anyway. Stephen's palatalised [d] seems to come out
> > similar to this, but voiced.
> >
> > > "*All spik English?*"
> > >  ...................
> > >
> > > "*All spik, sor*", arsa an Seanduine.
> > >  ...............   ErsA An SAndIn_j@
> >
> >    ...............   Ersa An Sand[In_j@
> >
> > > Ansin   thug an duine   uasal mise   faoi deara  i  mo
> sheasamh ar chu'l an
> > > AnSIn_j hug  An DIn_j@  uAsOl m_jIS@ fwe: d_jAr@ I  mo
> h_jAsAv  @4 xu:l  An
> >   AnSIn_j hug  An d[In_j@ u:s@l m_jIS@ fwi: d_jAr@ i: mo
> h_jasev  Ar xu:l  An
...

> > I've probably made mistakes in places, just that's the general
> > sound of the wods in my dialect.
>
> Interesting - I notice some general difference, such as most
> obviously your use of /a/ in many places where I used /A/
> (I never used /a/ apparantly...) /A/ is a sound I associate
> particularily with Irish, so that probably means I overuse it.
> You also use /i/ rather than /I/ a few times -
>
> Was the pronunciation you gave above how you "would" say it -
> i.e. with careful enunciation, or was it a transcription of
> what you said when you were writing the mail (mine was the latter)?
I tried to transcribe it was I would blurt it out rather than if
I was being careful. I did make one error when I was doing that that
I'm after noticing: I wrote `ar' as /Ar/ when I should have written
/er/. I'd pronounce `ár' as /Ar/.

> How would you describe the pronunciations of [dh] and [gh], BTW? I'll
> thoroughly confused myself on how to pronounce them ;)
This is just a general observation 'cause they've tripped me up from
time to time too.

Broad, they're something like a /G/, slender, they're either silent or
represent a palatal glide.