kevin wrote:Ciarán12 wrote:Well "ˠ " and "ʲ" are the only two I think you'll find for Irish. Unfortunately, they don't have the same effect on all consonants, so the "broad" consonants (followed in IPA by "ˠ ") and the "slender" consonants (followed in IPA by "ʲ") kind of have to be learned off individually.
Is that true to this extent with actual phonetic transcription? I always thought there was some system behind it that and I would just have to learn what it is.
In a narrow phonetic transcription, some consonants might be transcribed slightly differently. For instance, the palatalised velar stops (phonemically /kʲ, gʲ/, or even /kʹ, gʹ/, depending on your conventions) are generally represented as true palatals ([c,ɟ]).
kevin wrote:It's generally true that "broad" consonants are followed by a short glide (a [w] if the consonant is labial and a kind of velar [w] else where) and that "slender" consonants are followed by a [j]-glide, but (for me anyway) that's not the only thing that changes in some cases.
So would actually define the difference using the glide sounds? The way I read it so far is that the difference is in the consonants themselves and the glide sounds are just artefacts that happen to occur when you pronounce a slender consonant next to a broad vowel (or vice versa).
What you say is true, kevin, but one approach the proper pronunciation is to concentrate of producing the artefacts and then try to pare back their expression until you're really only modifying the consonant itself.
kevin wrote:Also, I have many instances of neither velar nor palatalised consonants ("bean", for example - I do not pronounce this as [bjan̪], but more as [ban] (maybe [bɛ̯an̪]), but "beart" is [bjaɹt̪] to me).
Great. Any way to predict this?
Unlike Ciarán, I don't have this sort of contrast. [bjaɹt̪] sounds overpronounced to me.