mac [mk] ('son'), abair [b] ('say'). [1][2] This velar offglide is labialized (pronounced [w]) after labial consonants, so bu /bi/ ('yellow') is pronounced [bwi]. (The tiny "w" is there because we're going from an initial broad consonant into a medial slender consonant.). In these stress is attracted to the second syllable if it includes a long vowel or diphthong or if it ends in ch and the first syllable is short. thabharfainn /uhn/6 ('I would give'), sheoil /ol/ ('drove'). Remember that slender "d" has a special sound. Between a broad and a slender consonant, it is in most cases a retracted [a], e.g. Within the regional variations, there are also local variations. [3][4], Similarly, slender (palatal(ized)) consonants have a palatal offglide ([j]; like English y) before back vowels, e.g. There are only a handful of dialect variations left. Map. If you want to speak with an Irish accent, pronounce your vowels softly in every word. Broad (Irish: leathan) means velarized. Zilch. See entry for 'ch for more information. Really, /dh/ is pronounced as a [] sound if it is followed by a broad vowel, but as a [j] - that is, an English /y/ - if it is followed by a slender vowel. Here's a tip: When you see a vowel combination where one of the vowels has a fada, the vowel with the fada is how it's pronounced. Siadhail & Wigger (1975:8990)[87] argue that the fortis sonorant is tense (a term only vaguely defined phonetically) and that this tenseness is transferred to the vowel, where it is realized phonetically as vowel length and/or diphthongization. Thus, c, p, and t become g, b, and d respectively, and b, d, and g become m, n, and ng respectively. In Irish English, the "r" after vowels is pronounced. WebIrish diphthongs are ae, ao, ai, ea, ei, eo, ia, ua and aoi. goirt [t]2 ('salty'). A voiced consonant at the end of a word may devoice when the next word begins with a voiceless consonant,[91] as in lb s [lup e] ('he bent'), where /b/ of lb /lub/ ('bent') became [p] before the voiceless /s/ of s. This word has a consonant cluster "br" at the beginning, but you treat it as a unit when deciding whether they're broad or slender. Adjacent to broad consonants, it is usually a mid central [], e.g. baile [bl] ('town'), loit [lt]4 ('injure'). Since we'll be sliding from a slender sound into a broad sound, you'll hear a bit of that "y" sound mentioned above -- but don't overdo it. WebThe American Language. B EFORE anything approaching a thorough and profitable study of the sounds of the American common speech is possible, there must be a careful assembling of the materials, and this, unfortunately, still awaits a phonologist of sufficient enterprise and equipment. You can pronounce either letter. ng- is pronounced likewell, ng in the English word "sing"; you would expect it to be written ngg-, but that's not how it works in this case. cha [ha] ('not'), be deleted word-finally or before /t/, e.g. dn [dun] 'fort'), but between a broad and a slender consonant, the tongue is somewhat advanced (IPA [u]), e.g. dont, letnot (particle used to introduce a negative imperative; triggers /h/-prothesis of a following vowel) This article is about the phonology of the Irish Gaelic language. Slender (Irish: caol) means palatalized. bre [b] 'fine'). Some researchers (e.g. Irish phonology has been studied as a discipline since the late 19th century, with numerous researchers publishing descriptive accounts of dialects from all regions where the language is spoken. It's your call. Heres how to pronounce the five vowels in Spanish. /t, d/ may be realized as alveolo-palatal affricates [t, d] in a number of dialects, including Tourmakeady,[16] Erris,[17] and Teelin. - Note that c is in other dialects more often used in the sense "where? And both have a slender "l" on the end. dheas [jas] 'nice', beidh [bj] 'will be'); a voiced (post)palatal fricative [] before consonants (e.g. There is epenthesis in words like film [flm] and form [fm]. North PohorjeRemnik dialect Meica dialect Jaun Valley dialect Ebriach dialect "how long is it since he came to Connemara? This old but immensely popular Irish name means love or charm and is pronounced GRAW-ni-eh. bn [bn] ('white'). It is not always easy to tell a mere sleamhng from a vowel letter which is pronounced more fully. IPA : /na/ Particle . Cuv 1944, Wagner 1959, de Bhaldraithe 1966, Mhac an Fhailigh 1968, and S 2000) use transcriptions like /sb sd s xd/, etc., indicating they consider the stops that occur after voiceless fricatives to be devoiced allophones of the voiced stops rather than unaspirated allophones of the voiceless stops, but this is a minority view. IX. WebI know how to pronounce the most commonly used Irish names but have spotted a few that are as difficult as vowel-less Polish <00> 17 Mar 2023 19:24:12 vi e afk max as wno nu vi m l hat, ni ct e pul hi dem, h e klx wo as xa e l wno i, dvn dik s lid wl an j, tam an xl la ss mnc nax min moan falt um, ta me kltal l ham mi sav flx s mlin an as it m pen atx cel e n, el lui u mun ni hnn i s el an, The Irish of Iorras Aithneach, County Galway, glottothque - Ancient Indo-European Grammars online, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Irish_phonology&oldid=1141649393, Articles containing Old Irish (to 900)-language text, Articles with Irish-language sources (ga), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. The lips are tenser, almost as if you were tightening them in exasperation. As explained above, the terms slender and broad refer to two categories of vowels. They are most usual in southern dialects; northern dialects prefer taobh "side", with the relevant local adverb added. This is also the fact in most straightforward positions, i.e. Similarly, 'oi' is a short 'o' or a short 'i' - you get to decide. scth [skax] ('fear'). Note, though, that the lengthening phenomena are very dialect-specific, and you are advised to pick them up from native speakers. Pronomial eich and 'ch can occur before any verbal noun. This will be especially noted in the lessons. Broadness is above all about not being palatalized, so it depends on the particular occasion, whether it is more natural and easier to emphasize the broadness by velarization or by labialization. Irish phonology varies from dialect to dialect; there is no standard pronunciation of Irish. We'll start with some words you probably know, but we'll look at them with fresh eyes, and pretend we don't already know how to pronounce them. [26] In Ring, final /h/ becomes [x] in monosyllabic words, e.g. Research into the theoretical phonology of Irish began with Siadhail & Wigger (1975), which follows the principles and practices of Chomsky and Halle's The Sound Pattern of English and which formed the basis of the phonology sections of Siadhail (1989). But what do you expect when we don't share all the letters. WebPronunciation is determined by the eclipsing consonant only. P -> PH. Short // ranges from a front [] between slender consonants (e.g. It can even be diphthongized: ceann [k'aun]. gabhar [] ('goat'). We have: broad b + + broad b + + broad g. Webvowel - translation to Irish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic audio pronunciation of translations: See more in New English-Irish Dictionary from Foras na Gaeilge The Common Speech. D -> DH. FH is only a kind of graphic symbol for showing, that normally there used to be a F- here, but it was taken away by the lenition. However, I have added a tilde for nasalization, where it might occur, as well as other additional information. In Munster, long /a/ and short /a/ have approximately the same range of realization: both vowels are relatively back in contact with broad consonants and relatively front in contact with slender consonants. WebPronunciation of Simple Consonants (i.e., consonants without aspiration - without the 'h') You'll find that broad consonants are mostly pronounced the way they are in English. For example, in Dingle[86] ceann ('head') is pronounced /cun/ with a diphthong, but cinn (the genitive singular of the same word) is pronounced /cin/ with a long vowel, while ceanna (the plural, meaning 'heads') is pronounced /can/ with a short vowel. /w/ (written as bh, mh(, v)) has two basic allophones: the labiovelar approximant [w] and the velarized voiced labiodental fricative [v]. Irish words can begin with clusters of two or three consonants. 1) : fairly straightforward, like English aw in standard Irish, and in the North, more like the short a There is no epenthesis, however, if the vowel preceding the cluster is long or a diphthong: firbre /fab/ ('wrinkle'), tarma /tem/ ('term'), largas /les/ ('insight'), dualgas /duls/ ('duty'). Surnames and personal names may not always follow the pattern either. The short vowels are written a, o, u, e, and i. This page was last edited on 26 February 2023, at 03:12. Pronunciation (phoneme) Pronunciation of () Irish terms with IPA pronunciation; Irish lemmas; Irish proper nouns; Irish masculine nouns; Irish fourth-declension nouns; ga:Islands; ga:Scotland; Old Irish terms derived from Proto-Celtic; How to use One feature of most American English is what linguists call rhoticity, or the pronunciation of r in words like card and water. Grainne. beidh [b] 'will be') to a retracted [] between a broad and a slender consonant (e.g. glaoigh [l] 'call'), and a more open centralized [] between two broad consonants (e.g. bd [bd] 'boat') to an advanced back [] before slender consonants (e.g. More Irish language resources can be found atWikiversity's Department of Irish Studies, Wikipedia has related information at Irish phonology. deargbhrag /dave/ ('a terrible lie'). Webvowel - translation to Irish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic audio pronunciation of translations: See more in New English-Irish Dictionary from Foras na Gaeilge Shivaun) does not correspond to any modern regional pattern. as a H sound. The /bh/ is pronounced very much like the English W, when it is followed by a broad vowel (a, o, u). It still contains secondary stress on the second member. The slender b is pronounced sometimes as if in the Scandinavian "Bjorn" (/b/) for example or like the b in English "bet". In Connemara, the allophones of /a/ are lengthened in duration, so that only vowel quality distinguishes the allophones of /a/ from those of /a/.[49]. exists in Munster and Ulster. [50] Examples include cladhaire [kl] ('rogue'), gadhar [] ('dog'), cill [cl] ('church'), and leigheas [ls] ('cure'). Dr. . ae. Webvowel - translation to Irish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic audio pronunciation of translations: See more in New English-Irish Dictionary from Foras na Gaeilge Fortis m was probably a normal [m], while lenis m was a nasalized semivowel [w], perhaps tending towards a nasalized fricative [] or [] when palatalized. B EFORE anything approaching a thorough and profitable study of the sounds of the American common speech is possible, there must be a careful assembling of the materials, and this, unfortunately, still awaits a phonologist of sufficient enterprise and equipment. The vowel sounds vary from dialect to dialect, but in general Connacht and Munster at least agree in having the monophthongs /i/, //, /u/, //, /e/, //, /o/, //, /a/, /a/, and schwa (//), which is found only in unstressed syllables; and the diphthongs /i/, /u/, /i/, and /u/. [19], /j/ has three allophones in most dialects: a palatal approximant [j] before vowels (except /i/) and syllable-finally (e.g. What are diphthongs? The vowels of Ulster Irish are more divergent and are not discussed in this article. Most typically, it comes after the singular form of the definite article in the nominative singular of masculine nouns: - i.e. The contrast between broad and slender consonants is crucial in Irish, because the meaning of a word can change if a broad consonant is substituted for a slender consonant or vice versa. Examples include bacach /bkax/ ('lame') and slisneacha /lnax/ ('chips'). Broad consonants are velarized when surrounded by broad consonants. The /ao/ of writing is basically a long [i:] preceded and followed by a broad consonant: saol "life, world" [si:l]. Irish pronunciation has had a significant influence on the features of Hiberno-English. For some speakers, there are reported to be minimal pairs between nasal vowels and oral vowels, indicating that nasal vowels are also separate phonemes; these generally result from an earlier nasalized semivowel [w] (historically the lenited version of /m/), that has since been lost. This pattern, in Irish Gaelic, is called Caol le caol, leathan le leathan. In fact, it is so local that a person who isn't familiar with the dialect (or is only familiar with it from more or less standardized texts, such as Peig Sayers's notorious autobiography) will perceive it as a learner's error. [88], Irish exhibits a number of external sandhi effects, i.e. In the environment of an initial consonant mutation, there is a much wider range of possible onset clusters;[64][65] for example, in a lenition environment the following occur: bhlas /wlas/ ('tasted'), bhris /v/ ('broke'), chleacht /laxt/ ('practiced'), chrom /xm/ ('bent'), ghreamaigh /jam/ ('stuck'), ghnomhaigh /jniw/ ('acted'), shleamhnaigh /hlun/ ('slipped'), shnmh /hnaw/ ('swam'), shroich /h/ ('reached'). [104] Lengthening or diphthongization of vowels before fortis sonorants is also found in both languages. Irish mutation; Radical Eclipsis with h-prothesis Letter i with acute to signify stressed vowel. dnadh [dun] ('closing'), muca [mk] ('pigs'). However, the two broad consonants tend to strongly influence the vowel between them, and it can sound like a Russian . AE pronounced like sounds like hay or may. . ia. lagphortach /laftx/ ('spent bog'). There are also quite a few of common adverbs which are so stressed, above all these: This kind of adverbs are historically speaking compound words or word groups, which accounts for their unusual stress. So both these words have the same vowel sound, OO. Basically, it should work the way that if a vowel has an acute accent, i.e. ), The only vowels in this word are broad, so all the consonants are broad too. Finally, between two broad consonants it is a central [], e.g. In this article, however, the more traditional assumption that /, , , / are four distinct phonemes will be followed. You might think that it is like the English voiced th, but if you thought so, you were mistaken. Note, though, that in dialects, a short vowel can be lengthened into a long one and a long one into a diphthong. As in English, voiceless stops are aspirated (articulated with a puff of air immediately upon release) at the start of a word, while voiced stops may be incompletely voiced but are never aspirated. Other Vowel Combinations Pronunciation Of The Other Vowel Combinations This is very simple. is cam [skaum] 'it's crooked'). Detailed discussion of the dialects can be found in the specific articles: Ulster Irish, Connacht Irish, and Munster Irish. A more important thing to notice is, that in the combination eo, the o is always long (with the exception of seo "this", anseo "here", and eochair "key" - eochair "border, edge" has a long o, as has eochra, dialectally also eochair, "fish-roe"). There, that was simple. bic [bec] 'yell'), a centralized [] between a broad and a slender consonant (e.g. The Irish stops [t d] are common realizations of the English phonemes / /. pce [pic] ('pike'). [92] However, certain words, especially adverbs and loanwords, have stress on a noninitial syllable, e.g. As an aside the way English vowels are pronounced got all out of wack during the vowel shift. For example, the verb scuab /skub/ ('sweep') ends in the voiced consonant /b/, but its future tense scuabfaidh /skup/ ('will sweep') and verbal adjective scuabtha /skup/ ('swept') have the voiceless consonant /p/. s + vowel, sl-, sn-, sr-. Siadhail & Wigger 1975:8082, Siadhail 1989:3537, N Chiosin 1994) have argued that [] and [] are actually allophones of the same phoneme, as are [] and [], as in a vertical vowel system. A common mistake is made by labializing a broad consonant when it is surrounded by certain letters. [5], When a broad consonant follows a front vowel, there is a very short vowel sound [] (called an onglide) just before the consonant, e.g. In sloppily edited books, you can of course see even i nirinn and i n-irinn. An example of this in Hiberno-English is the Hiberno-English pronunciation of Film as: Fil-im. The realization of the long close-mid vowels /e/ and /o/ varies according to the quality of the surrounding consonants. One exception to quality agreement is that broad /s/ is found before slender labials (and for some speakers in Connemara and Dingle before /c/ as well[62][63]). For instance: mh at the start of a word is pronounced as a w; e.g., mo mhla ("my bag") is pronounced 'mu wall-ah' (/m In Ulster, the general rule is that they are pronounced 'w' when broad and 'v' when narrow. WebAnd finally, here's another funny one, it begins with an H, so you might think: " Well, that's a consonant" , but it is actually a vowel sound because we don't pronounce the H in this word.. " H" H In reality, it is much more easy than it looks like: Note that if the word is to be written in upper case, it's the letter showing the original pronunciation that is capitalized, not the letters showing the actual pronunciation: While it was said earlier that a vowel can't be lenited, it definitely can be eclipsed. The words are articulated by native speakers from the relevant dialects. Broad vowels a, o, u, , , Slender vowels e, i, , . Consonants are normally less difficult than vowels for beginners in the language. The only exception here is that broad //, not slender //, appears before the slender coronals /t, d, , n, l/:[68] beirt /bt/ ('two people'), ceird /ced/ ('trade'), doirse /do/ ('doors'), doirnn /dunin/ ('handle'), comhairle /kul/ ('advice'). it [t] ('place'), tr [t] ('beach'). In Erris, for example, short /a/ ranges from a near-open front vowel [] before slender consonants (e.g. ghrian [in] 'sun'); and an intermediate sound [j] (with more frication than [j] but less frication than []) before /i/ (e.g. [60] Similarly, in sneachta [nxt] ('snow') the vowel after the /n/ is nasalized, while in an tsneachta [ txt] ('the snow' gen.), the /n/ is replaced by // in some northern dialects, but the nasalized vowel remains.[61]. The most dramatic differences are: As for r things can get complicated. So the "C" is broad, the "mh" is slender, and the "n" is slender. fid [fod] 'turf' [gen.]) to a centralized [] between two slender consonants (e.g. = unh wil; a fhil (to get, available) = a awl; an tsrid (the street) = un trawd. I have heard tell that we'll have a wet summer this year, but it seems to me that that story is strange. Between a slender and a broad consonant, the tongue is retracted slightly from this position (for which the IPA symbol is [i]), e.g. For example, both languages contrast "broad" and "slender" consonants, but only at the coronal and dorsal places of articulation; both Scottish Gaelic and Manx have lost the distinction in labial consonants. In this word, we have both broad and slender vowels. ", and in this sense it usually eclipses the following verb: c bhfuil s? n. From Proto-Celtic *ne, from Proto-Indo-European *ne. See Irish phonologyfor detailed discussion of the phonology of Irish. This is why we don't usually write feirmeir anymore - feirmeoir is correct. Specifically, when a clitic ending in a consonant precedes a word beginning with the vowel, the consonant of the clitic surfaces as either broad or slender, depending on the specific word in question. Because vowels behave differently before broad sonorants than before slender ones in many cases, and because there is generally no lengthening (except by analogy) when the sonorants are followed by a vowel, there is a variety of vowel alternations between different related word-forms. Voiceless stops are unaspirated after /s/ and // (e.g. One of the most important aspects of Irish phonology is that almost all consonants (but /h/) come in pairs, a "broad" and a "slender" pronunciation. Before a verb, pronomial 'ch is found only in formal language after certain vowel-final preverbal particles. [25] In Munster, // becomes [h] after a vowel, e.g. Between two broad consonants, the tongue is retracted even further, almost to the point of being a central vowel (in IPA, []): caora [k] ('sheep'). /e/ is a front [e] between two slender consonants (e.g. it /at/ ('place') is pronounced [ait],[6][7]il /ol/ ('drinking' gen.) is pronounced [oil],[8] meabhair /mu/ ('understanding') is [mui],[9] and dinn /dun/ ('to us') is [duin].[10]. The letter y is also sometimes considered a vowel, but most consider it to not be so. b is eclipsed by m ( mb) c is eclipsed by g ( gc) eala /ali/ ('art'), baili /balu/ ('gather'). A consonant that is in touch with a broad vowel is broad, i.e. The four close vowel phonemes of Irish are the fully close /i/ and /u/, and the near-close // and //. eolas [ols] ('information'), but when the preceding syllable contains one of the close back vowels /u, /, it is realized as a mid-centralized back [], e.g. However, the contrast is not robust in any dialect; most published descriptions say that contrastively nasal vowels are present in the speech of only some (usually older) speakers. For example, the only difference in pronunciation between the words b ('cow') and beo ('alive') is that b is pronounced with broad /b/, while beo is pronounced with slender /b/. So bd would be pronounced BAWD. [97], In general, short vowels are all reduced to schwa (//) in unstressed syllables, but there are exceptions. After other consonants, they are replaced by /, /:[66][67] cnoc /kk/ ('hill'), mn /ma/ ('women'), gnaoi /i/ ('liking'), tnth /tu/ ('long for'). Its end point ranges from a mid central [] before broad consonants to a close-mid centralized front [] before slender consonants. The "d" and "g" are next to broad vowels, so they are broad. The later loss of /w/ between vowels has resulted in phonemically nasalized vowels in some modern dialects (see below), but these are not robustly maintained in any dialect; the strong tendency is to eliminate the nasalization entirely. [It still contains secondary stress on the second member.]. In colloquial Welsh, eich is often contracted to 'ch after almost any vowel-final word. spealadir /spaldo/ ('scythe-man'). Don't let the fact that every consonant has two pronunciations panic you. "where is he?". A mistake that some learners make, is to think that the h- that is sometimes added to the first vowel of the word, is for lenition. Stress, in Irish, is usually on the first syllable, except in the southernmost (Munster) dialects. IX. bhfuil [wl] 'is') and [v] in other positions (e.g. sil is pronounced SOOL, and dubh [dv] ('black'), and a more centralized [] after a slender consonant, e.g. These are based on Foclir Scoile (An Gm, Baile tha Cliath, copyright: Rialtas na hireann 1994, see respective entries). The [] sound is the voiced equivalent of the German ach sound - you let your vocal chords vibrate while you try to pronounce a German ach sound. Unstressed // is realized as a near-close, near-front [] when adjacent to a palatal consonant, e.g. ago [98] Also in Munster, an unstressed short vowel is not reduced to // if the following syllable contains a stressed /i/ or /u/, e.g. Gaelic uses the grave accent on vowels, so suddenly we have ten to cope with. fd [fod] 'turf') to an advanced [o] between a broad and a slender consonant (e.g. Supersegmentals IPA Below you will be able to hear how the letters above are pronounced, just Broad (velar(ized)) consonants have a noticeable velar offglide ([]; a very short vowel-like sound) before front vowels, which sounds like the English /w/ but without rounding. B -> BH. WebThis is part of a simplified guide to the pronunciation of Irish Gaelic based only on the Cois Fharraige dialect. For the laterals and nasals, some dialects have kept all four distinct, while others have reduced them to three or two distinct phonemes, as summarized in the following table. The first eight chapters of Peadar Ua Laoghaire's autobiography Mo Sgal Fin at Wikisource include recordings of the text being read by a native speaker of Muskerry (Munster) Irish. He wouldn't see a hole through a ladder (i.e. So how does this The Rule. The disquieting thing is, that the actual pronunciation is written in addition to the original pronunciation of the first consonant letter. The Spanish , for instance, is a slender n, and the Spanish ll used to be a slender L sound, but these days it is of course the same as the Spanish y for most speakers of that language. Eclipsis is called in Irish ur, an older form is urdhubhadh, from the intensifying prefix ur- "very" and dubhadh "blackening". This page was last edited on 29 March 2022, at 04:54. A long [e:] sound both followed and preceded by a broad consonant is written /ae/. extra vowel letters adjacent to a consonant, which above all show the broad or slender nature of the consonant, but are not pronounced in any other way. From 1944 to 1968 the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies published a series of monographs, each describing the phonology of one local dialect: Cuv (1944) for West Muskerry in County Cork (Ballyvourney, Coolea and vicinity), de Bhaldraithe (1966) (first published 1945) for Cois Fhairrge in County Galway (Barna, Spiddal, Inverin and vicinity), Breatnach (1947) for An Rinn in County Waterford, de Brca (1958) for Tourmakeady in County Mayo, Wagner (1959) for Teelin, County Donegal, Mhac an Fhailigh (1968) for Erris in County Mayo. Examples include sclichas /cluxs/ ('rumpus'), scread /cad/ ('scream'), splanc /splak/ ('flash'), spraoi /spi/ ('fun'), and stroc /tik/ ('streak'). Irish shares a number of phonological characteristics with its nearest linguistic relatives, Scottish Gaelic and Manx, as well as with Hiberno-English, which it currently has the most language contact with. In all other cases, vowel pronunciation is always identical. All vowels are always pronounced the same, except for the u in words with gue and gui, which is silent. This exception will be mentioned in the lessons. In Old Irish, the sonorants (those spelled l, n, r, m) were divided not only into broad and slender types, but also into fortis and lenis types. Short // between two broad consonants is usually a back [], e.g. Under this view, these phonemes are not marked at an abstract level as either front vowels or back vowels. If it is surrounded by broad vowels (a, o, u, , , ), then you must pronounce it broad, and if it is surrounded by slender vowels (e, i, , ), then you must pronounce it slender.