Re: samhain?

joshua tanaka wrote:

>     why is 'samhain' pronounced 'saUen' ?
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Irish has a very, very complicated spelling system, to cut a long story
short(though quite regular).

'mh' is [v] in Irish, as well as [w] in some positions, in some
dialects.  It's spelt like this because it's a lenited version of /m/.
Another feature of Irish spelling is that, in any given series of
vowels, only one of them need represent the actual vowel spoken.

I'm not clear on whether it's pronounced /savaJ/ or /saviJ/(J being a
palatal nasal, I think), but the (orthographic) vowels surrounding a
consonant affect its pronunciation.  Vowels are divided into to
categories for this purpose:

broad vowels - a, o,u
slender vowels - i, e

As I said, these change the pronunciation - slender vowels palatalise a
consonant, broad vowels velarise(or don't affect) it.  But, to avoid
ambiguity here, if a slender  (phonological) consonant is followed by a
broad phonological vowel, a slender (orthographic) vowel is inserted,
and vice versa.  If it's /savaJ/(am not sure if it is), the spelling
'Samhan' would be wrong,  because the palatal /n/ would not be shown.
If it's /saviJ/, it would be potentially ambiguous to have 'samhin',
because, in some dialects, broad <mh> is pronounced /w/, as opposed to
/v/, and this distinction would be lost(and it would break the rules,
anyway).

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