Irish pronunciation

[Ciarán12]

To move back towards the topic, the Irish word for "circumflex" is cuairín (a diminutive of cuar "curve"). How do you think that would be pronounced?

[kuəɾʲi:n̪]

Blacked-out so as not to influence anyone else's guess...

[Llawygath]

As an American in a German-speaking country for the first time

Where is this? Your sidebar says you're in Chicago.

To move back towards the topic, the Irish word for "circumflex" is cuairín (a diminutive of cuar "curve"). How do you think that would be pronounced?

Let's see...
[kuə'ɾ^ji:n^j]

Don't bother telling me I've shifted the stress; I know. I didn't bother trying to shift it back from where my head voice put it.
Edit: Added spoiler tags.

[linguoboy]

As an American in a German-speaking country for the first time

Where is this? Your sidebar says you're in Chicago.

I am. But I was once an American in a German-speaking country for the first time. I was using the gnomic present for a statement which I think has fairly universal validity.

To move back towards the topic, the Irish word for "circumflex" is cuairín (a diminutive of cuar "curve"). How do you think that would be pronounced?

Let's see...
[kuə'ɾ^ji:n^j]

Don't bother telling me I've shifted the stress; I know. I didn't bother trying to shift it back from where my head voice put it.
Edit: Added spoiler tags.

Shifting the stress makes for a perfectly valid dialectal variant.

[Llawygath]

As an American in a German-speaking country for the first time

Where is this? Your sidebar says you're in Chicago.

I am. But I was once an American in a German-speaking country for the first time. I was using the gnomic present for a statement which I think has fairly universal validity.

Whatever the heck a gnomic present is. (Yeah, yeah, look it up...) Sometimes I feel like I only deserve three stars in English.

To move back towards the topic, the Irish word for "circumflex" is cuairín (a diminutive of cuar "curve"). How do you think that would be pronounced?

Let's see...
[kuə'ɾ^ji:n^j]

Don't bother telling me I've shifted the stress; I know. I didn't bother trying to shift it back from where my head voice put it.
Edit: Added spoiler tags.

Shifting the stress makes for a perfectly valid dialectal variant.

Thought so. It seems that it comes naturally to me to do dialectally variant stress. (That sentence came out horribly wrong, but I'm not sure how to fix it.)

[linguoboy]

It seems that it comes naturally to me to do dialectally variant stress. (That sentence came out horribly wrong, but I'm not sure how to fix it.)

Having long vowels in posttonic syllables doesn't come very naturally to English-speakers.

[Llawygath]

It seems that it comes naturally to me to do dialectally variant stress. (That sentence came out horribly wrong, but I'm not sure how to fix it.)

Having long vowels in posttonic syllables doesn't come very naturally to English-speakers.

I suppose that's it.

[Llawygath]

Hi, this thread hasn't been visited in around two months but I thought I'd post a little something. I just stuck together a probably lousy transcription of Cá bhfuil an cat?:

ka: wul^j an kat^ɣ | ɪs sə t^jax at^ɣa: an kat^ɣ | ə wul^j an kat^ɣ eɾ^ɣ an l^jab^ɣə | n^ji:l^j t^ɣa: an kat^ɣ eɾ^ɣ an d^ɣoɾ^ɣəs^ɣ | t^ɣa: an kat^ɣ in^jə xod^ɣl^ɣəɣ eɾ^ɣ an d^ɣor^ɣəs^ɣ | ə wul^j an d^ɣor^ɣəs^ɣ in^jə l^ɣi: eɾ^ɣ ə hi:w | t^ɣa: | ə wul^j an l^jab^ɣə t^je^h | n^ji:l^j ||
ka: wul^j kat^ɣ an tjop^ɣə | t^ɣa: kat^ɣ an tjop^ɣə s^ɣə ɕop^ɣə | t^ɣa: an kat^ɣ ɕo: eɾ^ɣ an aɾ^ɣa:n^ɣ | ə wul^j an taɾ^ɣa:n^ɣ sə ɕop^ɣə | n^ji:l^j | n^ji: f^je:d^jiɾ^j ɕɪn^j ||
ka: wul^j an m^ɣad^ɣɾ^ɣə | t^ɣa: an m^ɣad^ɣɾ^ɣə f^ɣi:n^j gaɾ^ɣ | ə wul^j an kaɾ^ɣ t^je^h | t^ɣa: | ə wul^j an m^ɣad^ɣɾ^ɣə in^jə xod^ɣl^ɣəɣ | t^ɣa: ||
t^ɣa: ɕe: d^jan^ɣəx | b^ɣa xo:ɾ^j d^ɣom^ɣ a v^jeh s^ɣə l^jab^ɣə | t^ɣa: mo xat^ɣ in^jə xod^ɣl^ɣəɣ eɾ^ɣ an d^ɣoɾ^ɣəs^ɣ | t^ɣa: kat^ɣ an tjop^ɣə in^jə xod^ɣl^ɣəɣ eɾ^ɣ an aɾ^ɣa:n^ɣ | t^ɣa: an m^ɣad^ɣɾ^ɣə in^jə xod^ɣl^ɣəɣ f^ɣi:n^j gaɾ^ɣ ||

If someone could tell me what's wrong or inconsistent, please step forward. It's supposed to be phonemic because I'm not interested in messing with realizations of things. I suspect the vowels of being way off.

[linguoboy]

First thing that leaps out at me: an is unstressed. So all those occurrences of /an/ should really be /ən/. (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.

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/.)

In codladh, the /d/ assimilates. The only argument for showing it in transcription is that some varieties show metathesis, e.g. Ballymacoda [ˈkɔl̪ˠd̪ˠə].

I'm not sure where you got the idea that Irish /ʃ/ is alveolo-palatal rather than palato-alveolar.

There's doubtless more but I don't feel like doing a close reading of the transcription now.

[Ciarán12]

Redirecting discussion from this thread:

What about words like <bí>? Do you really have a glide after [b] there, as in [bji:]? That sounds very strange to me.

I don't have a glide; I have palatalisation. You're the one who's inserting a glide after slender consonants, according to your transcriptions.

I don't understand this. What does palatalised [b] sound like if not [bj]?

You might be hearing palatalisation before front consonants as "normal" because you have a bit of it in your English.

So now you're saying my English might not be entirely devoid of Irish influence? I thought the transfer of Irish to English in Leinster was "extremely lossy" and that palatalisation was one of those intrinsic features of Irish to be lost in Irish English...

[linguoboy]

I don't understand this. What does palatalised [b] sound like if not [bj]?

Like [bʲ]. Palatalisation is a process by which the tongue is raised towards the palate. It doesn't have to result in an offglide. In fact, some languages (notably Russian) contrast palatalised consonants with palatalised consonants followed by yod (and, in some cases, even allow non-palatalised consonants before yod).

You might be hearing palatalisation before front consonants as "normal" because you have a bit of it in your English.

So now you're saying my English might not be entirely devoid of Irish influence?

Your words, not mine. It's not unusual to finds spontaneous non-phonemic palatalisation in varieties of English. For instance, most American English-speakers will pronounce /k/ with a certain amount of palatalisation before /iː/. After all, it's a natural assimilatory process--you begin raising your tongue toward the palate in anticipation of the position it needs to be in for a high front vowel. Similarly, speakers with fully rounded /uː/ (not me; most Americans have some degree of fronting/unrounding here) will often end up labialising the preceeding consonant. It's nothing to do with substratal influence, only garden-variety articulatory assimilation.

It's not so much learning to palatalise that makes Irish tricky. It's learning to do it in front of non-palatal vowels and not to do it in front of palatal ones, as appropriate.

[Ciarán12]

Like [bʲ]. Palatalisation is a process by which the tongue is raised towards the palate. It doesn't have to result in an offglide. In fact, some languages (notably Russian) contrast palatalised consonants with palatalised consonants followed by yod (and, in some cases, even allow non-palatalised consonants before yod).

But [b] doesn't involve the tongue, how does the position of your tongue affect its pronunciation?

[kevin]

I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who doesn't understand it yet.

Once I read this for an approximation, using German sounds I'm familiar with: Pronounce the consonant in question before an i and before an u, for example German Kuh and Kiel and the difference between the two Ks gives you an idea of what it's about. Before that I never noticed that there even is a difference, but yes, now that I read it, I can confirm that it exists. Now my question is, how close do you think is this? And if the choice is between plain consonants, velarised ones and palatalised ones, which would be which and how would the third one sound?

And then there are consonants for which it doesn't work at all. I don't recognise any difference with f or m, for example. I also can't image how I could do the same thing for them as I can do for the k like above.

[Ciarán12]

I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who doesn't understand it yet.

Once I read this for an approximation, using German sounds I'm familiar with: Pronounce the consonant in question before an i and before an u, for example German Kuh and Kiel and the difference between the two Ks gives you an idea of what it's about. Before that I never noticed that there even is a difference, but yes, now that I read it, I can confirm that it exists. Now my question is, how close do you think is this? And if the choice is between plain consonants, velarised ones and palatalised ones, which would be which and how would the third one sound?

And then there are consonants for which it doesn't work at all. I don't recognise any difference with f or m, for example. I also can't image how I could do the same thing for them as I can do for the k like above.

Like you said, I can understand the difference with /k/, but /b/ is confusing. For me, slender /b/ means /b/ with a j-glide afterward.

[kevin]

Maybe I'm dreaming up things, but I think I do have a difference with b, and b was in fact used in another example that I read. The difference I (think to) notice is not as big as with k, but still a difference. However, I'm not really sure what (if anything) it has to do with the palate...

[linguoboy]

But [b] doesn't involve the tongue, how does the position of your tongue affect its pronunciation?

Your tongue is still there in your mouth, and its position during the production of the sound can and does vary. There are three stages to the production of a stop, such as /b/: catch, hold, and release. The tongue isn't involved in the middle phase, but then we don't recognise a stop by its hold (except perhaps visually), but by the acoustic qualities of its catch and release. If you open your lips with your tongue in the "neutral" position, it will "colour" the release differently than if it is raised toward the hard or soft palate. If you prolong the release of a stop enough, it will become a full-fledged glide. The same applies (mutatis mutandis) to the catch phase, although here the colouring is harder to discern.

[Ciarán12]

But [b] doesn't involve the tongue, how does the position of your tongue affect its pronunciation?

Your tongue is still there in your mouth, and its position during the production of the sound can and does vary. There are three stages to the production of a stop, such as /b/: catch, hold, and release. The tongue isn't involved in the middle phase, but then we don't recognise a stop by its hold (except perhaps visually), but by the acoustic qualities of its catch and release. If you open your lips with your tongue in the "neutral" position, it will "colour" the release differently than if it is raised toward the hard or soft palate. If you prolong the release of a stop enough, it will become a full-fledged glide. The same applies (mutatis mutandis) to the catch phase, although here the colouring is harder to discern.

Okay, but all phonological pedantry aside, there's not a massive difference between the altered sound in the "catch" or "release" and a brief on- or off-glide on the surrounding vowels, is there?

[linguoboy]

Okay, but all phonological pedantry aside, there's not a massive difference between the altered sound in the "catch" or "release" and a brief on- or off-glide on the surrounding vowels, is there?

Depends what you mean by "massive". As mentioned above, it's perceptible enough that Russian-speakers (among others) use it to distinguish otherwise identical words, e.g. съел [sʲje̞ɫ] "he ate" vs сел [sʲe̞ɫ] "he sat down". Both these words have [sʲ], but as you can see in one case it's followed by a glide and in the other it isn't. I can clearly hear the difference. That's what I was getting at when I said "[bjaɹt̪] sounds overpronounced to me." (In fact, I'd be tempted to write that as *béart.)

[Ciarán12]

Okay, but all phonological pedantry aside, there's not a massive difference between the altered sound in the "catch" or "release" and a brief on- or off-glide on the surrounding vowels, is there?

Depends what you mean by "massive". As mentioned above, it's perceptible enough that Russian-speakers (among others) use it to distinguish otherwise identical words, e.g. съел [sʲje̞ɫ] "he ate" vs сел [sʲe̞ɫ] "he sat down". Both these words have [sʲ], but as you can see in one case it's followed by a glide and in the other it isn't. I can clearly hear the difference. That's what I was getting at when I said "[bjaɹt̪] sounds overpronounced to me." (In fact, I'd be tempted to write that as *béart.)

So, the difference between palatalised /b/ and [bj] is in how short the glide is?

[kevin]

Now my question is, how close do you think is this? And if the choice is between plain consonants, velarised ones and palatalised ones, which would be which and how would the third one sound?

Can you say something on this, linguoboy?

[linguoboy]

Now my question is, how close do you think is this? And if the choice is between plain consonants, velarised ones and palatalised ones, which would be which and how would the third one sound?

Can you say something on this, linguoboy?

I'm not 100% sure what you're asking. Most consonants would be "plain", i.e. they wouldn't have any particular colouring. You don't really get velarisation in English or German (with a few exceptions, like coda /l/). Velarisation is the trickiest. It really helps if you can produce a velar approximant of the kind find in most varieties of Spanish or Catalan.

If you know the difference between dental and alveolar consonants, that's another cheat available to you. In most Irish dialects, broad coronals are dental in addition to being velarised and slender ones are alveolar. (For most languages, this is a subphonemic distinction, but there are exceptions.)