Moderator:kevin
Ciarán12 wrote:..., but bare with me.
kevin wrote:Ciarán12 wrote:..., but bare with me.
Sorry for the off-topic, but isn't it "bear"?
Ciarán12 wrote:I'm obviously not very good at explaining what I mean, but bare with me. Here is a chart of certain sounds that I have found to occur in what I think of as palatalised , velarised and "normal" forms. I'm sure you'll tell me that I'm wrong in assigning those terms to those groups of words, but can you deduce whatever phenomenon it is I am actually talking about from the chart?
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.
But I thought it was phonemically /an/. Ciaran seemed to be saying it was. I'm not marking stress because I'm not entirely clear on which dialect does what and I'd probably make a mess of it.linguoboy wrote:First thing that leaps out at me: an is unstressed. So all those occurrences of /an/ should really be /ən/.
I'll have to assume neutral consonants. I'm not marking any stress yet as explained earlier, so no luck there.linguoboy wrote:(Or even /ənˠ/, unless you're assuming a class of "neutral" consonants who take their broad/slender quality from the adjoining segment--which will make it tricky to deal with cases like an ionga [ɪˈnʲʊ̟ŋə].) Alternatively, you could indicate stress (which can otherwise be assigned mechanically) and assume a rule whereby unstressed vowels reduce to shwa.
Whoops. I wasn't sure if it was a glide or palatalization. Why is it /u/? Is there a rule for that?linguoboy wrote:An tsiopa should be /ən(ʲ)ˈtʲupˠə/. (That is, however you decided to deal with stress and assimilation, there's no phonemic glide and the stressed vowel is /u/.)
Okay then, I won't show it.linguoboy wrote:In codladh, the /d/ assimilates. The only argument for showing it in transcription is that some varieties show metathesis, e.g. Ballymacoda [ˈkɔl̪ˠd̪ˠə].
Everything else I've read says it's alveolo-palatal. Where did you get the idea that it was postalveolar?linguoboy wrote:I'm not sure where you got the idea that Irish /ʃ/ is alveolo-palatal rather than palato-alveolar.
Llawygath wrote:On the other topic: whatever other errors Ciaran made in his chart, there can't be any such thing as a distinction between broad and plain /g/, /k/ and /x/. No way. What would that even mean? Nobody could pronounce that. If you did have a distinction it would have to consist of some sort of glide after the consonant, which wouldn't really count.
Sorry. I'm not sure I understand either, but the gist of it all seems to be that a palatalised* consonant has the /j/ pronounced at the same time as it and a consonant with a j-glide after it has the /j/ pronounced immediately after instead, and same for velarized/ɰ-glide consonants.Ciarán12 wrote:Llawygath wrote:On the other topic: whatever other errors Ciaran made in his chart, there can't be any such thing as a distinction between broad and plain /g/, /k/ and /x/. No way. What would that even mean? Nobody could pronounce that. If you did have a distinction it would have to consist of some sort of glide after the consonant, which wouldn't really count.
I refer you back to the earlier confusion on my part about what the difference is between a palatalised consonant and a consonant with a brief j-glide after it and a velarised consonant and a consonant with a brief ɰ-glide after it. I still don't really understand.
Llawygath wrote:Sorry. I'm not sure I understand either, but the gist of it all seems to be that a palatalised* consonant has the /j/ pronounced at the same time as it and a consonant with a j-glide after it has the /j/ pronounced immediately after instead, and same for velarized/ɰ-glide consonants.I refer you back to the earlier confusion on my part about what the difference is between a palatalised consonant and a consonant with a brief j-glide after it and a velarised consonant and a consonant with a brief ɰ-glide after it. I still don't really understand.
Llawygath wrote:[off-topic]I'm vacillating on how to spell stuff. I think I like -ise and -yse better than -ize and -yze, but I was brought up with the latter. I also can't decide on theater or theatre &c. The list goes on.[/off-topic]
Llawygath wrote:But I thought it was phonemically /an/.
Llawygath wrote:I'm not marking stress because I'm not entirely clear on which dialect does what and I'd probably make a mess of it.
Llawygath wrote:Whoops. I wasn't sure if it was a glide or palatalization. Why is it /u/? Is there a rule for that?linguoboy wrote:An tsiopa should be /ən(ʲ)ˈtʲupˠə/. (That is, however you decided to deal with stress and assimilation, there's no phonemic glide and the stressed vowel is /u/.)
Llawygath wrote:Everything else I've read says it's alveolo-palatal. Where did you get the idea that it was postalveolar?linguoboy wrote:I'm not sure where you got the idea that Irish /ʃ/ is alveolo-palatal rather than palato-alveolar.
ʃ This is a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative and corresponds to ʒ in formation.
ʒ This is a voiced palato-alveolar fricative formed with the tip of the tongue against the lower teeth, the blade being raised toward the back of the teeth-ridge, while the front is raised toward the hard palate.
(Ó Cuív, The Irish of West Muskerry, Co. Cork, p. 41.)
Ciarán12 wrote:I refer you back to the earlier confusion on my part about what the difference is between a palatalised consonant and a consonant with a brief j-glide after it and a velarised consonant and a consonant with a brief ɰ-glide after it. I still don't really understand.
ʲ[*], a glide having the spread-lip position and the tongue-raising of a palatal consonant. The tongue-raising is less before more open vowels than before more closed vowels. Thus before uː, u, the tongue is raised towards the iː position, e.g. fʹʲuː fiú, tʹʲuv tiugh, while before oː, o, etc. it is raised to approximately the e position, e.g. bʹʲoːrʹ beoir, bʹʲog beag. It should be remembered that the tongue-raising for the ʲ glide is less than for the fricative consonant j before the corresponding vowels.
What are you talking about? It's completely possible to have palatalized velar consonants. Polish, Greek, Russian, Icelandic and Scottish Gaelic all have them. They aren't any harder than any other palatalized consonants are.On the other topic: whatever other errors Ciaran made in his chart, there can't be any such thing as a distinction between broad and plain /g/, /k/ and /x/. No way. What would that even mean? Nobody could pronounce that. If you did have a distinction it would have to consist of some sort of glide after the consonant, which wouldn't really count.
Talib wrote:What are you talking about?On the other topic: whatever other errors Ciaran made in his chart, there can't be any such thing as a distinction between broad and plain /g/, /k/ and /x/. No way. What would that even mean? Nobody could pronounce that. If you did have a distinction it would have to consist of some sort of glide after the consonant, which wouldn't really count.
mōdgethanc wrote:Doesn't it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_Irish seems to be an attempt at a pan-dialectal accent for transcribing words, and this is the accent I see prescribed in the books on Irish I've looked at (admittedly not many). Of course native speakers are going to speak with whatever accent they grew up with, and non-natives might pick one to imitate, but this looks about as standard as it gets to me.Irish doesn't really have a "standard" accent, only a standard grammar and orthography. <á> as either [ɑː] or [ɔː] both look okay to me. Word-final /j/ as [ɟ] is a Munster feature, yes. He sounds pretty native to me.
I suppose the point is it's not based on one particular dialect but is a (somewhat artificial) abstraction of all of them.Ciarán12 wrote:As I'm sure you well know, there's a difference between phonemic and phonetic transcription, so it's entirely possible to transcribe the phonemes of Irish in a pan-dialectal way, but there realisations are going to be different. Irish phonemics have a standard version, but not their phonetic realisation. I'm not sure what dialect specifically it is that they've taken as "standard" for that chart, but there are definitely some things I find strange about it. Firstly, /ɣʲ/ is not [j] for me at least, and I don't recall hearing it as [j] often, so that's kind of weird. /n̠ʲ/ would be [ɲ], /ŋʲ/ would be [ŋʲ] and /ɾʲ/ would be [ʐ] (and definitely not [ɾʲ] like the chart suggests!).
As for the vowels <a> and <á> just being short and long versions of the same sound hasn't been the case in most of Ireland since Old Irish, or possibly Middle Irish. Where that chart has /ɔ/ and /ʊ/ I have [ʊ] in both cases. That chart looks anything but standard to me. And all of the Irish learning materials I've come across have taught different dialects, with different pronunciations (one of the things that make learning Irish so difficult is the lack of a standard pronunciation that is generally followed by textbooks).
mōdgethanc wrote:I suppose the point is it's not based on one particular dialect but is a (somewhat artificial) abstraction of all of them.
mōdgethanc wrote:I don't know what you think the slender counterpart of /ɣ/ is; it makes sense to me that it would be [j] or maybe [ʝ].
mōdgethanc wrote:I understand dialects vary on how many nasal and lateral sounds they have, since there were four kinds of /n/ and four /l/ sounds in Old Irish and they merged with each other in different ways, so all have at least /nˠ/ and /nʲ, and some might have /ɲ/.
mōdgethanc wrote: I haven't heard any have /ŋʲ/, but Scottish Gaelic does, so maybe. I always thought /ɾʲ/ was exactly what it looks like, but if I understand righly you say it's [ʐ] in every dialect, not just Munster.
mōdgethanc wrote: As for the vowels, I think the long /a/ is usually backed to [ɑː], but they both have a lot of allophones.
mōdgethanc wrote:The short vowels /ɪ, ʊ/ and /ɛ, ɔ/ seem to alternate a lot too.
mōdgethanc wrote:I suppose the point is it's not based on one particular dialect but is a (somewhat artificial) abstraction of all of them.
Ciarán wrote:Well, the way I speak (and also the only way I'm aware of in any dialect) has [ɲ] for /nʲ/. Some may also have [ɲ] for /ŋʲ/ (I have [ŋʲ] for /ŋʲ/). As for differing /n/ phonemes, I think some dialects have a separate /n/ for <nn> (I think I remember linguoboy saying in Munster it was [ŋ]), but for me <nn> only changes the pronunciation of a preceding <a> or <o>. For example, to me <sin> ("this") and <sinn> ("we") are both [ʃɪɲ] (but maybe some dialects differentiate between them).
It's probably because it's intended for foreign learners who might not have access to native speakers, I guess.Ciarán12 wrote:I'm just not familiar with what particular abstraction this is. It's not a standard I've come across before.
Maybe it varies between dialects, or maybe they're in complementary distribution. Hell, Spanish has both [ʝ] and [j], why not Irish?It's [ʝ] for me.
Is this [ɲ] a true palatal, or is it alveolo-palatal?Well, the way I speak (and also the only way I'm aware of in any dialect) has [ɲ] for /nʲ/. Some may also have [ɲ] for /ŋʲ/ (I have [ŋʲ] for /ŋʲ/). As for differing /n/ phonemes, I think some dialects have a separate /n/ for <nn> (I think I remember linguoboy saying in Munster it was [ŋ]), but for me <nn> only changes the pronunciation of a preceding <a> or <o>. For example, to me <sin> ("this") and <sinn> ("we") are both [ʃɪɲ] (but maybe some dialects differentiate between them) .
mōdgethanc wrote:It's probably because it's intended for foreign learners who might not have access to native speakers, I guess.Ciarán12 wrote:I'm just not familiar with what particular abstraction this is. It's not a standard I've come across before.
mōdgethanc wrote:Maybe it varies between dialects, or maybe they're in complementary distribution. Hell, Spanish has both [ʝ] and [j], why not Irish?It's [ʝ] for me.
mōdgethanc wrote:Is this [ɲ] a true palatal, or is it alveolo-palatal?Well, the way I speak (and also the only way I'm aware of in any dialect) has [ɲ] for /nʲ/. Some may also have [ɲ] for /ŋʲ/ (I have [ŋʲ] for /ŋʲ/). As for differing /n/ phonemes, I think some dialects have a separate /n/ for <nn> (I think I remember linguoboy saying in Munster it was [ŋ]), but for me <nn> only changes the pronunciation of a preceding <a> or <o>. For example, to me <sin> ("this") and <sinn> ("we") are both [ʃɪɲ] (but maybe some dialects differentiate between them) .
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