A chairde,

I am still strugling with Irish (just to get started) but the light at the end of tunnel is in sight already.;)

Cúpla ceisteanna agam:

1. what is exact phonetic value of /r'/? I have read those "single alveolar tap" etc many times, but it doesn't get clearer anyway. Has anyone with exposure to other European languge noticed any similar sound in other languages? Is it similar to Polish /ż/, or maybe Russian /r'/? Anyone?

2. Does /R/ still exist in any Irish dialect or it is gone for good?

3. What about nasalization (words like "lamh", "geimhreadh") - does it exist or not? is it optional/desirable/ludicrous?

4. distinction of @i/ai - Tadhg/Taidhg - is it worth imitating?

5. the same goes for ou/au - leabhar/abhainn - any opinions?

1.

Teach Yourself Irish gave the instruction that one positions ones tongue like the 'z' in 'azure', but then creates an r-sound. That us what I recall from memory, but perhaps someone has the book on hand for exact details. Going natives I hear on TG4 and RnaG many make sounds like an 'r-version' of /z'/. Make an 'sh' as in 'shhhh bí ciúnas!' (/s'/). It is unvoiced. Now voice it, and manke an 'r'. The tongue tip and blade will push forward towards the alveolar ridge. I think the tap is not that apparart in the above example. We tend to think cartoon onomatopaic 'whack' or 'tap' when faced with instructions like in the books. Thats not to say it cannot be made with an audible tap.

2.

/R/ is still in Donegal, as Lughaidh says, among older speakers. Hiberno-English speakers over 50 can be heard using it. The issue is not if people make the sound any more, more that it is no longer significent, i.e. a word will not change its meaning whether /r/ or /R/ is used. I don't think it is a good change, as any loss of r-sounds *suggests* too great a degree of influence from English (which tends towards non-rhoticity).

3.

Nasalisation tends to occur to vowels both sides of nasal consonants and clusters (/ng/, /v/ or /w/, /n/ and perhaps more often for velar and velarised (broad) consonants than slender ones). Try to be too conscious and one may over-do it, and thus yes, it might sound 'forced'. It is not optional in the sense that the velum may open in anticipation of a nasal consonant ('pre-nasalisation' of a vowel) or still not yet be closed after articulation of a nasal so 'post-nasalising' the following vowel. In other words, it is a natural feature of spoken language.

4.

For that word, no. As for that diphthong, perhaps it made a differance in some dialect at some point. Maybe it is morphologically significant to some people, but I cant think of any.

5.

With a) consonants and their polarity (velar nó palatal) and b) vowel length/quality been from one point of view of great import, short vowels can be interchanged without the meaning changing in many cases.

With /au/ given it is one among a number of lenghtened vowles and diphthongs developing from the general loss of medial nasals and spirants occuring in Irish, I would guess /au/ is more frequent in the examples you give.

A Robert, a chara,

I wish I could help you with these Irish phonetics, but I am still struggling, to the amusement of Lughaidh and others, to pronounce a palatized r. When I first heard it in the word obair in Buntús Cainte, I thought the speaker said obaid.

However, you did make a common grammatical mistake.

quote:

Cúpla ceisteanna agam:

It should be cúpla ceist agam. Cúpla requires the singular form of the noun that it modifies.

(Message edited by lúcas on July 13, 2005)

/r'/

Listening to BC just now, I see that making /r'/ their way is quiet easy as it would be for many Hibero-English natives (with just a little modification and some more practice). It seems the very tip of the tongue makes alveolar contact. By 'cartoon' I meant one reads the description, and thinks it has to be a big tap, when it actually is really little.

Have you seen 'cleachataí foghraíochta' and 'bunchursa foghraíochta'? The latter is by An tAthair Colmán Ó Huallacháin, who I believe was responsible for setting up the ITÉ (linguistics institute in Ireland). This book goes thru all the tongue positions. What is great is that the tongue positions fall in to a number of sets, with just then lip and velum changes making up the differences between phonemes in the set (at least to the degree of precision a learner would initially want)

/b'/ /p'/ /v'/ /f'/ /m'/
/b/ /p/ /v/ /f/ /m/
/d/ /t/ /N/ /L/
/d'/ /t'/ /N'/ /L'/
/n/ /l/ /r/ /R/
/n'/ /l'/ /r'/ (/R'/??)
/g'/ /k'/ /j/ /ng'/
/g/ /k/ /gh/ /ng/
/s/ /z/
/s'/ /z'/

So that is 10 basic tongue positions. Of course the pix are not here tho!

>Is it similar to Polish /ż/, or maybe Russian /r'/? Anyone?

It is the same sound as Scottish Gaelic /r'/ (except in Lewis), and as Czech ř.

>3. What about nasalization (words >like "lamh", "geimhreadh") - does it exist or not? is >it optional/desirable/ludicrous?

Older speakers will nasalise the á in "lámh". For "geimhreadh", (and most slender mh) i think that almost nobody nasalises the "ei" anymore.

>4. distinction of @i/ai - Tadhg/Taidhg - is it worth imitating?

In Donegal, we say /te:g/ and /te:g'/, so...

>5. the same goes for ou/au - leabhar/abhainn - any opinions?

Donegal: /L'o:r/, /o:N'/.

>> It is the same sound as Scottish Gaelic /r'/ (except in Lewis)

I can't agree with that. The ScG /r'/ is certainly different from the Irish (Conamara) rendition of that phoneme, which is the one I'm used to. The ScG version is very similar to English "th" as in "then", while the Irish /r'/ sounds more like the "s" in "pleasure" -- but not exactly! This is not a very scientfic explanation, granted, but the bottom line is that I've heard plenty of slender r's from Scottish Gaelic speakers from the southern islands, and they sound so unlike Irish slender r's as to be confusing at times.

> Is it similar to Polish /ż/, or maybe Russian /r'/? Anyone?

To my ear of a native speaker of Russian, I must say, [r'] (Connemara Irish) as in trócaire resembles [r'] that we have in Russian as well as in Ucrainian and Belorussian.

> What about nasalization (words >like "lamh", "geimhreadh") - does it exist or not? is >it optional/desirable/ludicrous?

May I periphrase you question, you ask whether or not the nasalisation in Irish is phonetically relevant? I.e. whether it is a distinctive feature that a learner must reproduce.
Well, at least 100 years ago linguists thought it was (e.g. Trubetskoy). These words are nasalised, but I don't think the feature is distinctive any more. You can trace the nasalisation in the word "geimhreadh" as it is pronounced as [gi:v'r'@] in Connemara. So we can say nasalised [e] developed into [i].

Le meas, Peter

>May I periphrase you question, you ask whether or not >the nasalisation in Irish is phonetically relevant? >I.e. whether it is a distinctive feature that a learner >must reproduce.

Actually i'd say that nasalisation of vowels in Irish is no longer distinctive (nasalised vowels aren't phonemes), except in the speech of older speakers. Young people don't nasalise much (at least in Ulster).
Older speakers dubh /du/; domh /du~/
Younger speakers pronounce both like /du/, most of the time.

Just mo dhá pingin faoi r'.
Does anyone remember the actress ZsaZsa Gabor? Or, how about the game Mah Zhong?
Try to say the actress' first name or the second word of the game while holding your mouth opened wide.
An dtuigin..?

It's not the same sound. I think that the sound in Zsazsa and Zhong is the same as the English s in "pleasure". The irish /r'/ isn't the same sound at all...

That's why I said to try to do it with your mouth wide open. So you can't use your teeth. You're forced to use your tongue to try to get one sound, but get the other instead.