Re: Silent E

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

> On Sat, 6 Oct 2001, Keith Gaughan wrote:
>
> > Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> wrote:
> >
> > > Welsh and Irish Gaelic are both Celtic languages. English (and
> > > Hiberno-English) are Germanic. Gaelic is riddled with its share
> > > of silent letters as well.
> >
> > Scots. Irish got rid of most of them 40 years ago.
>
> Well, my Irish Gaelic (however poor it is!) generally
> came from older sources. And of course, my Old Irish
> is more or less exempt from the 40 Year rule. :)
>
> No one's mentioned Manx - how does it fit into the
> mess?
Manx is essentially Scots Gaelic that's been deluded into thinking it's Welsh.

> >
> > > My own name has a silent D (or
> > > dotted D, really), for example: Padraic = /porIk/ (or "poor rick"
> > > if you don't know IPA).
> >
> > I've only ever heard it pronounced that way by people with `dort'
> > accents or foreigners who learnt that pronounciation from them. I
> > pronounce it /pO_drIg/ (`pawed-rig')
>
> I can ask where in Ireland they're from, if you like.
> One is a (now rather rusty) Gaelic speaker, the other
> I don't know.
Well, I'm from Sligo if you want a reference point.

> I know one was from the North somewhere
> and didn't speak Gaelic. What's a dort accent?
The accent of those along the Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART) line between Bray
and Dublin. The primary characteristic of the accent is elongated and extremely
mangled vowels, e.g. the word `dart' is pronounced /do:rt/. These days, it's
rather ridiculed. It was once fashionable/common amongst graduates & students
of Trinity and UCD. Bob Geldof has a weaker variant of the accent.

K.

--
Keith Gaughan                         In the land of the blind, the
kmgaughan@eircom.net                    one-eyed man is a heretic
http://www.geocities.com/keithgaughan/ [Temporarily]

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