Re: Irish Gaelic is evil!

Joe wrote:

>> If i remember correctly, _Dia duit_ (not |Día|?) was pronounced by my
>> teacher as something like /'dZ)i@ gItS)/, and everyone was really
>> confused how _duit_ could sound like "gitch"... eventually i realized
>> that it must be either an incredibly strongly velarized /d/, or what
>> happens when a non-native speaker tries to reproduce such a sound.
>>
>> I think my teacher said that _Dia duit_ and _Dia is Muire duit_
>> literally mean something like "God be with you" and "God and Mary be
>> with you", and that people who might feel uncomfortable using
>> theologically-loaded greetings could just stick to "cad é mar tá tú"
>> type 'how're you doing?' greetings.
>
>
>
> Erm...shouldn't that be 'dia dhuit'?
>
> |dh| is usually [G] (though often [j]).  And yes, you're right about the
> meanings.  O' course, 'Goodbye' is short for 'God be with you' anyhow.
>
>
It can be either "Dia duit" with a [d] at the start of "duit", or "Dia dhuit",
where "duit" starts with [G], depending on where you are in the country. The
end of "duit" can sound anywhere along the unpalatalised-palatalised-afficated
scale, again depending on location [roughly, as I said last week, moving away
from unpalatalisation asyou go north]. So "duit" can end in [t], [t_j] or [tS].
The affricate is characteristic of the extreme north (Donegal, mainly) and
(some of? most of? all of?) Scotland.

I think "cad é mar tá tú" is Donegal too. Personally, I'd say "conas atá tú".
The first means, literally "what is it you're like?", and the second means
"how are you". The form "atá" is "a" + "tá": "a" is the subordinating "that" or
"which" and "tá" is "is". You can also say "cad é mar atá tú", but I think
up there they often use "tá" where other dialects have "atá".

s.
--
Stephen Mulraney                            ataltane@ataltane.net
The best way to remove a virus is with vi and a steady hand -- me

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