Re: Irish Gaelic is evil!

On Friday 18 February 2005 21:06 +0100, Stephen Mulraney
wrote:

 > First: "Gaelic" or "Scots Gaelic" (pronounced ["galIk])
 > is the name of the Goidelic language of Scotland. In
 > Ireland we call our Goidelic language "Irish", not
 > "Gaelic" or "Irish Gaelic". The word "Gaelic" is still
 > used (e.g. in the name of the Gaelic Athletic
 > Association), but it's then pronounced ["gajlIk]).

OK, I didn't know that. Sorry.

 > Well, the chart is incomplete. Actually, if you take into
 > account the "context" column of the vowel chart, you can
 > figure it out, but it helps if you already understand the
 > system.

As Thomas Leigh already explained, yes. I guess I have been
too much distracted and baffled by the trigraphs and such
to actually figure out a system :-/

 > [...]

Thank you! Also to Thomas Leigh.

 > The word for "man" is /f'ar/. Obviously our spelling will
 > start with something like <far>; but this doesn't
 > indicate that the <f> represents a slender sound, so we
 > insert an <e>: <fear>. But could be analysed as /f'er/,
 > too? Well, I don't think that's a possible syllable;
 > although /f'e:r/ is. In the case of /f'e:r/, we could
 > begin to spell it with <fér>, and finalise it with the
 > insertion of an <a> to keep the <r> broad: <féar>. The
 > <é> has to be a "real" vowel sound, since you'd never
 > insert a long vowel for purely orthographic reasons.

Ah! OK. Heh, I'm curious how our English teacher will
explain that to us. She said when I asked her if she'll
explain how to pronounce Irish city names and such in that
book, she said she'd have planned to have a lesson about
that.

 > No. It's easiest if you forget all about this
 > "velarisation" stuff. If you concentrate on
 > differentiating the slender sounds, mostly palatalised,
 > from the broad sounds, which you can think of as "plain",
 > then you'll do better.  Note that the dialects vary
 > widely in their phonology,

Wikipedia said that, too. But the velarization stuff is
pretty confusing there. So good to know.

 > <t>  -  [t_d]  -  [c]
 > <d>  -  [d_d]  -  [J\]

Interesting.

 > <c>  -  [k_-]  -  [k_j]
 > <g>  -  [g_-]  -  [g_j]

"_-" means "retracted" -- does that mean I have to pull back
my tongue a bit?

 > [...]

OK.

 > grapheme - broad emphatic - slender emphatic - slender
 > lenited <n> - [n_e] - [n_e_j] - [n_j]
 > <l> - [l_e] - [l_e_j] - [l_j]
 > <r> - [r_e] - [r_e_j] - [r_j]

And what are emphatics?!

 > Phew! I hope I've got everything. Except the vowels, that
 > is. It's more than you asked about, but at least I can
 > use it as a reference the next time the subject comes
 > up...

Thank you very much!

Carsten

--
Edatamanon le matahanarà benenoea eibenem ena
15-A7-58-11-2-4-28 ena Curan Tertanyan.
» http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri

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