Re: Silent E

From: D Tse <exponent@...>

> << 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... >>
>
> Tell me about it! It's also got a very unusual phonology: I believe
> it makes distinctions for velarised, palatalised, makes a
> dental/alveolo-palatal distinction, and has a crazy orthography:
>
> taoide /t_d_Gid_-_j@/ (it looks better in IPA, though)
More like /_ti_dj@/, but that's not exactly perfect. X-SAMPA's not my thing.

> _G = velarised, _d = dental, _- = retracted, according to x-sampa...
>
> Eamhain /auwin_-_j/
Ok, I've never pronounced it quite *that* way. /auwin/, yes but /auwin_-_j/, um, no!

> I can't even make some of the sounds in its phonology...
Right, the only ones I've ever seen anybody having difficulty with are `ch' and
(especially) `gh' and the fact that `t' and `d' are actually dental rather than
alveolar. The rest of it is easy and it's all rather predicable.

Then again, I am biased.

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