Re: Silent E

Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> wrote:

> Irish is dreadful orthagraphically.  It's got all sorts of letters that
> make no sound in some places, make a bunch of different sounds, change the
> sounds of other characters...  I've never studied, so I can't give specifics,
> though I've seen some here and there; it's wicked.
Irish gets a bad rap for that sort of thing, but to a certain extent, it's
undeserved. To be honest, it's really just a throwback to the way Irish was
spelt before the spelling reforms forty years ago. To be honest, Scots Gaelic
suffers from the problem far more, and then there's English... ;-)

One of the the things that frightens people is eclipsis. Sometimes one sees
impossible consonant combinations at the start of words like `bp', `mb', `gc',
`nd', `bhf', `ng' and `dt'. These are historically (usually) due to the word
proceeding it loosing a nasal consonant and having that consonant's nasal
quality fall onto the word following it. They're not hard to pronounce and the
pattern is awfully predictable. This table shows how they're pronounced:

  Consonant | Eclipsed Form | Sound
  ----------+----------------------
  p         | bp            | b
  b         | mb            | m
  c         | gc            | g
  d         | nd            | n
  f         | bhf           | w
  g         | ng            | n
  t         | dt            | d

So, there's a good reason behind the extra consonants staying there.

Now for Lenition. I can't recall the historical reason for this feature, so
somebody can jump in and remind me if they feel like it (hint, hint...) Here's
the sound changes anyway:

  Consonant | Lenited Form | Sounds Like
  ----------+--------------+------------------
  b         | bh           | w
  c         | ch           | ch (ich-laut)
  d         | dh (broad)   | `voiced' ich-laut
            | dh (slender) | y or silent at
            |              | the end of a word
  f         | fh           | silent
  g         | gh (broad)   | (same as `d')
  m         | mh           | w
  p         | ph           | f
  s         | sh           | h
  t         | th           | h or silent at
            |              | the end of a word

Years ago, a dot would be placed above a lenited consonant to indicate that it was
lenited. Nowadays, an extra `h' is used instead because that letter is not
strictly part of the Irish alphabet.

This sort of thing (eclipsis and lenition) has the advantage of not obscuring the
root word by changing letters like Welsh does. I prefer this though it
frightens people away from the language.

Now for the really frightening thing: broad and slender consonants. These occur in
all the celtic languages, they're just more obvious in the various forms of
Gaelic. I really don't feel like explaining this right now because it's 5am and
I'm tired. If somebody hasn't explained it by tomorrow morning, I'll post
something up. I can just here my national school teacher saying `Leathan le
Leathan, Caol le Caol'...

In the mean time, here's some lessons:
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/gaeilge/lessons.html

___________________________________________________________________
Keith Gaughan,                                   In the land of the
kmgaughan@eircom.net                            blind, the one-eyed
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kmgaughan/            man is a heretic.

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