Re: Irish Gaelic is evil!

Carsten Becker wrote:
> 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, maybe I was a bit hasty :). Thomas & Keith are essential
reading on this matter...


>
>  > 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.

Oh, this is in you *English* class? :). Unless your teacher is
Irish, I wouldn't expect too much! As for Irish town names
(town being the usual word; we don't have many cities), most
of them are Englishified version of Irish names, or sometimes
just pure English names. An example of the former is "Galway",
from Irish "Gaillimh" /g&L'Iv'/, using /'/ for palatalisation.
But there are a few town that are always known by their Irish
names, like "Dún Laoighire" (/d_du:n_e l_eIrE/ or something..
wavering between a broad & narrow transcription).


>
>  > 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?
Yes, well, as I suggested, you can take the broad consonants as
simply "plain", so that broad <c> is just /k/ rather than /k_-/.
I decided to give a bit more detail, though, and I had a choice
of how to transcribe it: I wanted to avoid the obvious /k_G/ since
that's what I was trying to explain, so I described another way
(probably implicit in the /k_G/) in which the broad <c> actually
differs from /k/. It probably caused more confusion, though.
Basically, the [k_-] needs to be distinguised from the [k_j],
and if you keep that in mind, then you'll probably find a natural
strategy for doing it. I think my own impressionistic trascription
of what I think is going on in my own mouth might only confuse!
But it feels to me as if my tounge is a little bit further back
that for an English [k]. It's probably just the (in Irish,
phonologically salient) accomodation of the [k] to the back vowel.
(The whole point about palatalised vs non-pal. consonants is that
a broad vowel accomodates to a back vowel, even if there's actually
a front vowel in the environment :))


>  > 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?!
Well, as I tried to describe, they're [l_e], [n_e], [r_e] as opposed
to just [l], [n], [r], that is, they're "velarised or pharyngealised",
which sounds rather extreme (BTW, this [_e]  might have been a better
choice than the [_G] we've been using above for [k_G]). They feel like
rather tense varieties of [l], [r] and [n] (really [n_d], I suppose).
There's quite a bit of tension in the tongue-teeth contact, and this
extends to the back of the tongue, which is bunched up.

These emphatics probably aren't important. They occur in the dialect I
was describing, and I decided to stick on one dialect I know fairly
well, rather than giving inaccurate info about more typical varieties.
You'll almost certainly hear some emphatics if you listen to Radio na
Gaeltachta, since a lot of their broadcasters are from around that
area (though I have no idea how widespread the emphatics are in the
Connemara dialects once you leave Cois Fharraige). Of course, you'll
also hear any number of other varieties of Irish :).

You can hear Radio na Gaeltachta at http://www.rnag.ie
If you get the Irish version of the page, "Listen" is "Éist" (that is:
"Eist" with an acute over the E, if the list mangles it). Alsom,
"Éist le clar" brings you to the archive of recent programs

s.
--
Stiofán Ó Maoilbreanainn  ataltane@ataltane.net
C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas l'Informatique
                    -- Bosquet, on seeing the IBM 4341

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