"But once I sat down with a native speaker and they explained and demonstrated how the the tongue and mouth move for slender and broad sounds, I was amazed at how easy it was to get the correct (or at least one much, much closer) sound. It's too bad we we're not taught this earlier!"
-Seán M, Saturday, May 01, 2004
(part of a discussion on phonology).

Does anyone have a source or book with well rendered palletograms and tongue and mouth movements that assist the vocal mechanisms in braod and slender differentiating?

I'm making a synthetic list based on instructions given relative to braod phonlogical explanations given by text instructions and some pictures, and partly based on IPA instructions.

I must confess 2D palletogram side views of the mouth are OK, but give little feedback. (ONe can follow the instrcutions, but is one right?).

Is there any 'organic' Gaeilge instructons created by linguists from real gaeltachts?

I know "Bunchúrsa Foghraíochta" edited by An Gúm, in which you can see drawings or a mouth and where you put your tongue for every sound. The explanations are given in Irish.

Ah,
I know the one (or I think I do) I was thinking of it (I seen in in Reads, Dawson Street, Dublin) but I had no reference to refer to.

Well my irish is not really Irish as such, but I'm at a hazy reading stage and if it is like French were there are large words either in common or loaned it could be translatable and then it will be readaable -ie. if there is little text, I can learn what the words mean if the context is narrow.

thanks for the reference.

"...It's too bad we we're not taught this earlier!"

The matter of palatalization and velarization (and everything else in the Irish sound system) really is simple enough, but it is obvious that many people have gone through all their schooling without having grasped even that much. I know one who regularly pronounces "chuir sé" as if it were "cior sé." I've seen the negative prefix "neamh-" spelled "naimh-" and "Peadar" spelled "Paidir" (and heard it pronounced "Padder"). People are taught that e and i are slender vowels, that a, o and u are broad vowels, and that a consonant preceded by i or followed by e or i is slender, and that otherwise it's broad; but it seems no one has ever successfully told them or demonstrated to them what in the world any of that means, and they have no idea. It's pretty sad, to say the least.

[p'ad@r]?
yes I agree, the pronounications are cat. The auld 'x' gets a real hammering:

Chuaigh = who-ee; Chuir = kwir; Chuig = hig

Nice people must be afraid of sounding like Klingons!

Despite a native Comemara teacher in primary school, and a fluent (from the days when you had to go to the ollscoileanna beside the Gaeltachts) uncle whom I seen every week for 18 years, conscious knowledge of this was never impart -or perhaps I never listened!

But it does tell a story which is oft repeated in Ireland: that of resource wastage. Despite a god-father with a speaking ability and uncle with fleuncy in four areas (speech, writing, listening and reading) no attempt was there to pass on Gaeilge in manner that made it part of everyday life.

I think this goes on more than is thought of. I have met on a few occasions people who claimed to be fleunt who were schooled in the 50's. (From my quesioning of bits on grammer, speaking a bit, getting info on the langue etc, they seemed to have some faculty, more anyhow than the types that lie about ability whena asked by people from abroad). There was it seems a greater pool of 'lárchaint' speakers to suppliment the native speakers ay one time. Many children could ahve been brought up bi-lingual. I have heard Clare, for example has more native speakers than Cork or Kerry or Mayo, but has no Gaeltachtaí. Please correct me if I'm wrong here. Local norms there do not allow for such things, it seems.

Until Fianna Fáil ('the Republican Party') under Sean Lemass shut down the Ollscoileanna there seemed to be an OK system for producing fleunt competent speakers from the galltacht. Most importantly, these people became teachers of the langue, so there was some degree of financial imperatur pushing focus on Irish.