Re: Irish Gaelic is evil!

Carsten Becker wrote:
> Hey!

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]).



> Since we're going to deal with Ireland the rest of this
> semester IIUC, I had a look at Wikipedia for information
> about the Irish orthography (or should I rather write
> áeghtdhúaekreímfbhiagh?) and phonology. Yikes! They must be
> crazy. Now I understand the concept behind Christophe's
> Maggel and why it is thought to be a parody of (Old?)
> Irish. Wikipedia writes something about velar offglides and
> palatalization, but how is that realised? And how can I see
> if a consonant is palatalized or velarized? The chart for
> the orthography always gives e.g. c = [k], [k_j], [k_G]
> without further explanation.
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.

There are two series of consonants in Irish, slender and broad.
I'm deliberately avoiding phonetic descriptions such as "palatalized"
and something else ("plain", "unpalatalised", "velarised") since
these phonetic descriptions don't always describe it properly.
But basically consonants occur in pairs, for example /t_d/ is paired
with /c/ (or /tS/ in Ulster), but only one grapheme is used to
represent each pair (in this case <t>). Incidently, /t_d/ is the
broad member of the pair, and /c/ (or /tS/) the slender.

Vowel *graphemes* are also divided into two classes, sometimes also
called "broad" and "slender"; Basically, "broad" graphemes are those
for back vowels (<a>, <o>, <u>), and "slender" are those for front
vowels (<i>, <e>). When a consonant grapheme is next to a "broad"
vowel grapheme, it represents the broad consonant sound of the pair;
and when next to a "slender" vowel grapheme, it represents the
slender consonant sound. As for what "next to" means, there's an
orthographical rule of Irish spelling which says "caol le caol agus
leathan le leathan", i.e. "slender with slender and broad with broad".
The meaning is that a consonant grapheme (or a cluster of them) must
be flanked by *either* "broad" vowel graphemes or "slender" vowel
graphemes, so extra vowel graphemes are inserted to make it would
(giving rise to the infamous triple & quadruple series of vowel
symbols... :)). In practice there's little confusion. For example,
a long vowel always has to be a "real" vowel, rather than an extra
symbol.

Some examples of the whole process: in the phonetic transcription
I'll use /t/ for the broad value, and /t'/ for the slender value
(and so on for other consonants), rather than getting into the
complicated business of trying to explain right now which slender
sounds are paired with which broad sounds.

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.

As you can see, it's impossible to spell the impossible syllable
/f'er/. This is because the orthography has developed in tandem
with the language over a millenium and a half, and by now fits it
very closely.


> IIRC, palatalized means that you pronounce a sound with the
> tounge aiming for [j], but not touching the palate
> actually. But velarized offglide? Is pronouncing a [G] very
> shortly after another sound?

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, which brings up another advantage of the
orthography: it's dialect neutral. In fact, most of my comments
here, if we exclude the ones that deal with actual phonetic
values, apply equally to Gaelic in Scotland too. But, the examples:

To give you an idea of what the sounds are like, in other words to
explain what the wiki pages means by those palatalised apostrophes,
here are some phonetic values from one particular dialect (Cois
Fharraige, in Connemara).

grapheme - broad value - slender value
<p>  -  [p]    -  [p_j]
<b>  -  [b]    -  [b_j]
<f>  -  [f]    -  [f_j]
<m>  -  [m]    -  [m_j]

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

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

<s>  -  [s] - [S]

<ph> = <f>
<fh> = 0

<bh> - [w] - [v']
<mh> = <bh>

<gh> - [G] - [j]
<dh> = <gh>

<th> between vowels: 0
<th> elsewhere:  [h] - [h_j]

<ch> between vowels: [x] - 0
<ch> elsewhere: [x] - [C]

<h> only occurs at beginning of word: [h]

A curiousity of this dialect is that the letters <l>, <r> & <n>
each represent three sounds, not two. There's
a broad emphatic, a slender emphatic & a slender lenited form (no broad
lenited form exists). A single slender <l>, <n> or <r> not at the
beginning of a word represents the slender lenited form; everywhere
else, it's emphatic (in particular, a doubled slender <l>, <n> or <r>
not at the beginning of a word is emphatic slender. Here's what these
terms mean, though the emphatic versions feel quite "tense", and I'm
not sure how to transcribe that.

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]


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...

s.
--
To be sure                              Stephen Mulraney
   to be sure                            ataltane@ataltane.net