I'm after making recordings of all sounds of Irish (hope i've not forgotten any!), in Wave format.
I have pronounced each consonant between two a's - a consonant is more clearly heard when between two vowels.
You'll hear /aba/ /ab'a/ /aka/ /ak'a/, etc.

Even if [aba], [ata] etc aren't Irish words, i thought it would be easier in that way to compare sounds: only the consonant changes.

To whom can I send these recordings, so those who are interested can download them?

Thank you.

(Message edited by Lughaidh on August 28, 2005)

Rinneadh a leithéid anseo, freisin:
Such a thing has been done here, too:
http://nagaeilmagazine.com/pronunciation/introduction.htm

I don't understand how they present that in that website. I clicked on "ch" and i heard loads of /k/ sounds but not broad ch.
The broad r the man pronounces is just the English one.
For b, he pronounces "ba, be, [bja]", but i don't konw any Irish word where you would get [bja]...
For broad t, he pronounced an English t (with postaspiration, which doesn't exist in Irish), then an English unvoiced th (doesn't exist in Modern Irish either). Why? Is it about English pronounciation?

Their explanations aren't clear - they are just trying to give the closer English sound.

And it takes forever to download any consonant.

I prefer mine :-D, I just give the sounds I've learnt with Donegal native speakers.

(Message edited by Lughaidh on August 29, 2005)

I have space, if you would like to post them on my website -- (www.phouka.com) (and they fit!). How large are the files?

Let me know if you think it would be an appropriate place -- or are you looking for a more Irish-specific place?

I don’t care, I just want it to be easy to find for learners. I thought it would be well to put them on this Daltaí website. But on your website it would be good, given you give the link and given it’s easy to find for those who want to use the recordings.

The whole set has 10,9Mo, (they are all in Wav format), but i can convert them to mp3 so it’ll be smaller (but the sound won’t be as good, i’m afraid).

A Lughaidh,
i would be very interested in hearing them with a view to putting them up on a webpage.

My email is: .

Mp3 format is OK,
regards,
Robert

Maith thú Phouka, your site is beautifully designed and Lughaidh's sound files would be a great addition.

I wold love to have those files Lughaidh, my Email is:


(Message edited by dan on August 29, 2005)

Perhaps you like this sound examples:
http://www.fiosfeasa.com/bearla/language/sounds.htm

Lars

A Lughaidh, I checked my space/bandwidth, and I can certainly host them. I'd prefer high-quality MP3s, just to shrink them a bit, if possible, but if you want to drop me a note at , we can coordinate things.

And thank you, Asarlaí. Wait until you see the pictures from Ireland!

If they're the ones you learnt from Donegal, wouldn't they be the sounds of Donegal Irish? I doubt someone in Muscraí would pronounce things the same.

"As mentioned above, there are far more speakers of Irish outside the Gaeltacht, but generally with limited ability. They enjoy only limited opportunities to use the language, and those opportunities are in a restricted social range. They suffer all the limitations one might expect from a lack of significant contact with authentic speakers. The Irish language movement has also suffered from a regrettable obsession with avoiding vocabulary borrowed from English, leading to a neglect of every other aspect of language ability, most notably pronounciation, but also idiom, syntax, stress patterns, and so forth.
"There is some degree of tension between native speakers in the Gaeltacht and committed speakers in the Movement. The latter envy the former for their command of the language and their community support in speaking it. The former envy the latter for the institutional support they have, and sometimes even suspect them of making money from the language. People in the movement object to the liberality with which native speakers borrow words from English, considering it lazy and bad for the language. Native speakers resent learners telling them how to speak their own language properly, particularly when the same learners generally have terrible pronounciation."
http://www.fiosfeasa.com/bearla/language/social.htm

"Pronunciation is one of the hardest things for a learner of any language to get to grips with. The sounds of Irish and the sounds of English are very different from each other, and there's always a temptation for the learner of Irish to use the English sounds closest to the Irish ones - that slender 't' for example in words like teach or tiocfaidh, it sounds a bit like 'ch' in 'church' or 'chapel' so maybe it'll do instead. And it's not just individual sounds, Irish has its own intonation, and a different stress upon certain words. My experience of teaching pronunciation is that it brings out resentment in some learners. They see it as an attempt to change their accent, or as someone once said to me, to get them to speak 'like Donegal ones'. Of course your accent is an important element of your personality, and it's no surprise that people get touchy about what they regard as criticism of how they speak. But that isn't really the proper way of looking at it. You can speak Irish with whatever accent you want, as long as the sounds are correct. I know very good speakers who have a strong Glens of Antrim twang, or a fairly heavy Dub accent. But they speak Irish very clearly and precisely because they do certain things right."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/irish/blas/education/beginnersblas/pronunci ation.shtml

I was going to add this link as well, it is in my opinion the best one available for hearing the sounds of Irish and I've always recommended it to beginners who have asked for sound recordings.

http://www.fiosfeasa.com/bearla/language/sounds.htm

>If they're the ones you learnt from Donegal, wouldn't >they be the sounds of Donegal Irish? I doubt someone in >Muscraí would pronounce things the same.

Most sounds are the same: here i don't pronounce words, but just sounds. In all dialects you'll have broad and slender b's, broad and slender d, o, a, i, í, etc.

But some of the sounds can be different: actually: slender d and t.

And some of the sounds I made don't exist in all dialects:

the full set of 4 r's, 4 l's, 4 n's only exist in Donegal Irish (in the speech of older speakers).
In Munster you'll have only 2 n's, 2 l's, 2 r's, in Connemara 3 l's, etc.
So, for these dialects, just don't listen to the sounds that don't exist in them :-)

For slender t and d, I should make the Munster pronounciation but since i don't speak that dialect I'm afraid I won't make them perfectly. Maybe Jonas can help you for that.

What about the voiceless liquids, Lughaidh? And remember Mayo and North Connemara have a lot of the features that you associate only with "Donegal Irish." Mayo has four voiced l's, four voiceless l's, four voiced n's, four voiceless n's (not counting the velar and palatal-velar nasals), two to three voiced r's and two voiceless r's.

"In the clusters hl(′), hr(′), and hn(′), the sonorants are devoiced; this
does NOT mean, however, that Irish has voiceless sonorant phonemes,
as Maddieson (1984) and Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) imply."

Antony Dubach Green
http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=196
[page 54]

I was under the impression there were voiceless l's, n's and r's too, as in 'mo loch' /mo hlox/ when there was no fortis /L/ to soften down to a lenis /l/; that is where there is fortis (strong) consonants one lentions to the lenis (weaker) form, and where there is lenis only (relative to the classical gaelic), one devoices and articualtes with some aspiration, hense /l/ become /hl/.

You know i was feeling kinky in my graph, so I added /hR'/...

Said "clusters" in the modern language are often not clusters of two distinct members, but simply voiceless liquids. "Mo loch" is not an example of this, but "mo shláinte" is.

Of the velarized laterals /L/ (dental) and /l/ (alveolar), the former is the unlenited phoneme, the latter its lenited counterpart. Lenition does not involve devoicing of initial liquids, but when initial /sL/ and /sN/ are lenited the result may be represented by /hl/ and /hn/ (or by /l/ and /n/ with a small circle under them), which are simply: a voiceless velarized alveolar lateral, and a voiceless velarized alveolar nasal.

Where /L/ and /l/ have fallen together, /L/ is generally pronounced for both; and likewise /N/ serves for both /N/ and /n/ where these have fallen together.

>What about the voiceless liquids, Lughaidh? And >remember Mayo and North Connemara have a lot of the >features that you associate only with "Donegal Irish." >Mayo has four voiced l's, four voiceless l's, four >voiced n's, four voiceless n's (not counting the velar >and palatal-velar nasals), two to three voiced r's and >two voiceless r's.

That is true. But are they really phonematic? I think you’ll find them in future and conditional forms, most of the time...

>"In the clusters hl(′), hr(′), and hn(′), the sonorants >are devoiced; this
>does NOT mean, however, that Irish has voiceless >sonorant phonemes,
>as Maddieson (1984) and Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) >imply."

>Antony Dubach Green

?? what does it mean then? :-)

>I was under the impression there were voiceless l's, >n's and r's too, as in 'mo loch' /mo hlox/ >when there was no fortis /L/ to soften down to a lenis /l/; that is >where there is fortis (strong) consonants one lentions >to the lenis (weaker) form, and where there is lenis >only (relative to the classical gaelic), one devoices >and articualtes with some aspiration, hense /l/ >become /hl/.

Never heard that. It seems a bit strange: no voiced consonant is devoiced when lenited, as far as I know. What are your sources?

In Donegal, i think younger speakers (say, younger than 40 years old) pronounce shnuaidh as nuaidh, shláinte as láinte, etc. I don't know how older people would pronounce.

Ring (page 55)
Breathed r’s

An example is ‘a thríail’ (tríáil (trial?) in older spellingz according 2 de book) /@ h’r’i:al’/

Also: ‘throid sé’ /hred’ s’e:/.

They are not frequent

Cois Fhairrge has:
‘shloig’ /hLig’/ and ‘shlánuigh’ /hLa:N@/. We are told that speakers who have both /L/ and /l/ devoice the /l/ mostly, such as ‘shloig’ /hlig’/.

‘thréig’ /hr’e:g’/, ‘threabh’ /hr’ow/

Other areas have similar, and generally after ‘sh’ and ‘th’ (/h/).

It would seem I over generalised from /R/ to /r/ etc and did not consider the context in which the lention was occurring, so extended the pattern from /r/ to /hr/, where it was not appropriate.

As both ye said above sh is one of the contexts, so does not count

But are they really phonematic?

I'd say that in initial position they are, and that in medial positions they're phonemic in some cases and allophonic in others.

Every speaker knows that /hnã:β/ shnámh is the lenited form of /SNã:β/ snámh, and we could say that the initial sound represented by /hn/ contains the "underlying" phonemes /h/ and /n/, uttered simultaneously and thus constituting a different phoneme.

If anuraidh is pronounced indifferently as /э'nori:/ and /э'norhi:/ within a dialect, the voiceless r in the latter form may be considered an allophone of the voiced r in the former. On the other hand, if in the same dialect uirthi is always pronounced /orhi:/ and oraibh is always /ori:/, the voiceless /rh/ in this case is one phoneme and the voiced /r/ is another.

I wonder if there's a real difference in sound between the 4 devoiced r's, the 4 devoiced n's, the 4 devoiced l's.

I'll make new recordings for these sounds, but at the beginning of a word, i think there won't be so many phonemes, since the devoiced sounds come from the lenition of t/s before the n/l/r.

I'll record: devoiced l, l', r, r', n, n'.

Now if you find examples for the other sounds, tell me :)

Superb link, Jonas. Thanks for posting it!

Not only are the pronunciations helpful, but the narrative information is wonderful. I'm still having some trouble distinguishing some of the broad consonants from their slender counterparts, but this link sure does make it easier!

Thanks again.

the 4 devoiced r's

There are only three of those at the most, if the palatalized trills /R'/ and /hR'/ are in fact long gone from all the dialects. /rh/ sometimes replaces /r'h/ (as in uirthi /orhi:/) and sometimes it doesn't (as in cuirfidh /kur'hi:/, /kir'hi:/).

Éamonn Mhac an Fhailigh wrote that when he first began working with his informants in Erris he had "real difficulty" in hearing the difference between /L/ and /l/ and between /N/ and /n/, but that after a few weeks he could readily distinguish them and found that their distribution generally corresponded to the historical opposition between tense and lax sonorants. I assume his experience in that regard was similar in the case of the voiceless (devoiced) ones.

"if the palatalized trills /R'/ and /hR'/ are in fact long gone from all the dialects"

Well Lughaidh, you have said that /R'/ is in Donegal as an /r'/ with greater force.

Here disagrees:
http://www.akerbeltz.org/beagangaidhlig/gramar/grammar_historyofLNR.htm

As does the 'flawless' Wikipedia:
"The difference between /R(ʲ)/ and /r(ʲ)/ may have been that the former were trills while the latter were flaps."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Irish_language

So, like what is the probable articualtion of /R'/. In my palatograms, /R/ is more forward in the mouth than /r/, so if /R'/ is more forward and dental relative to /r'/ it would seem to me an odd sound if you made it roll. I ahve made two sounds in that one is fricative, and the other a 'wavering fricative'. Neither, I would say it the historical /R'/. I also would imagine a flapped /R'/ as almost 'darting', and one woudl need tongue training just to aprroximate it.

One other thing. If it is not even an allophone in the current dialects, and gone completly, it must be out of Irish for a long time. What other lanaguges have a simialr sound? Can it be reconstrcuted?

/R(ʲ)/ and /r(ʲ)/

That is /R(j)/ and /r(j)/. Pesky glides made a diappearance.

I have heard /R’/ in the speech of an old seanchaí from NW Donegal.

I think that the /R’/ sound must have survived in Gweedore Irish because they have replaced /r’/, in many cases (at the end of words and between two vowels) by /j/. So, slender rr between vowels or at the end of a word must sound like /R’/... I don’t remember having heard it, but actually it’s a quite rare sound. You can find it in the genitive of words ending with rr: cairr, bairr, etc.

"Éamonn Mhac an Fhailigh...had 'real difficulty' in hearing the difference between /L/ and /l/ and between /N/ and /n/...I assume his experience in that regard was similar in the case of the voiceless (devoiced) ones."

No, I don't, now that you've made me think about it, Lughaidh, because in Erris Irish the unlenited liquids N, N', L and L' always have at least a voiced onset, although devoicing occurs before their release in future and conditional verb forms, as you mentioned, and in some other words.

Thus:
feannfaidh [φ'aN-Nhi:]
roinnfidh [riN'-N'hi:]
dallfaidh [daL-Lhi:]
caillfidh [kaL'-L'hi:]
fionnfadh [φ'iN-Nhu:]

So, my revised count of Mayo liquid phonemes is: four voiced l’s, two voiceless l’s, four voiced n’s, two voiceless n’s (not counting the velar and palatal-velar nasals), two to three voiced r’s and two to three voiceless r’s.

"in Erris Irish the unlenited liquids N, N', L and L' always have at least a voiced onset"

Always, provided that they're not substituted for their lenited counterparts, that is: hN- for hn-, hL- instead of hl-, etc.

Peadar,
that is a great book on Erris, especially its grammitcal suppliment and thier phonemics. Something like that should have been in the other books.

Lughaidh,
are their many speakers with that sound? Would it be easy for you to get a recording of the sound? If not, where would one go oneself to record it?

"Gweedore Irish because they have replaced /r’/, in many cases (at the end of words and between two vowels) by /j/."

Hence (in English) Moya for Máire /ma:j@/. Enya for Éibhne occurs too?

With /R’/, i don’t think so. In normal speech, I think there's just one slender r for most speakers in Donegal; in some cases and places (Gweedore), certain slender r's are pronounced as /j/ as I said, but it's just a variant form of /r'/.

Yes, Máire is often transliterated in Moya in English. Enya is Eithne, not Éibhne. Éibhne would be pronounced /'e:v´N´ə/ in Donegal (we never drop -ibh-, unlike Munster speakers). Actually, many dialects in NW Donegal pronounce Máire as /'mæ:jə/, even outside Gweedore (I heard it in Rann na Feirste and Gort a' Choirce).

"that is a great book on Erris, especially its grammatical supplement"

I agree. Now if someone would just use it as the starting point for the creation of a complete text-and-audio course!

Everything is linked, and all of Lughaidh's recordings are here: http://www.phouka.com/gaelic/sounds/sounds.htm

Please let me know if there are any problems or if things should be moved around a bit.

quote:

Please let me know if there are any problems

Bhí cuid acu "Not Found" nuair a bhain mé triail astu.

A Lughaidh, tá do "broad ch" an-soiléir ar aon nós! Tá beagán níos mó tonnchreatha ann ná mar a chloisim de ghnáth. Mar a sin a deireann na Breatnaiseoirí é. ;-)

"Bhí cuid acu "Not Found" nuair a bhain mé triail astu"

Ou est mo /R'/? [Like a toddler at din-dins] "I want my /R'/"! rr for Robert!

Go raibh míle maith agat a Phúca :)

http://www.phouka.com/gaelic/sounds/sounds.htm

Fúca, good job.

Lughaigh,
may I ast about some vaguries in the text linked to?

broad bh & mh (munster) ‘An bhfuil’ Is it the ‘@ vwil’ (English fonetix), you know with the top teeth at the base of the bottom lip. Is there residual nasalisation on both the braod and slender mh’s?

broad bh & mh (Donegal/ Munster) Are any or all of these ‘mh’s is the rare diaphragmatic ‘mh’?

Closed/open vowels –what do you mean exactly? -in relation of mouth opening or vowel space betwixt mouth roof and tongue, or something else?

Devoiced broad n & r. Do these become ‘l’? It is not clear in this part

Slender gh & dh, except at end of word (Connacht & Munster): Meaning that they are dropped, I expect

>broad bh & mh (munster) ‘An bhfuil’ Is it the ‘@ vwil’ >(English fonetix), you know with the top teeth at the >base of the bottom lip. Is there residual nasalisation >on both the braod and slender mh’s?

Maybe in older speakers' speech, yes, at least in Donegal (elsewhere i don't know). Remember that in native Irish, the v and f sounds are not labiodental, but bilabial: your teeth don't touch your lips. Like b and p sounds but without stopping the air, u see.

>broad bh & mh (Donegal/ Munster) Are any or all of >these ‘mh’s is the rare diaphragmatic ‘mh’?

I don't understand your question.

>Closed/open vowels –what do you mean exactly? -in >relation of mouth opening or vowel space betwixt mouth >roof and tongue, or something else?

mouth opening. Open o: sound that is symbolised by a kind of upside down c in the IPA.

>Devoiced broad n & r. Do these become ‘l’? It is not >clear in this part

They don't become l, why do you say that?

>Slender gh & dh, except at end of word (Connacht & >Munster): Meaning that they are dropped, I expect

Ok, final unstressed -igh and -idh are pronounced /ig'/ most of the time in Munster. They are pronounced like /ə/ in Connemara, and like /i/ most of the time in Ulster.
In that page i just wanted to give the sounds and some examples, not to explain how you pronounce every letter in every context - it would be much longer to explain.

" Remember that in native Irish, the v and f sounds are not labiodental, but bilabial: your teeth don't touch your lips. Like b and p sounds but without stopping the air, u see".

I asked as 'Cúrsa Tosaigh Foghraíochta' by Séamus Ó Murchú (p 35) and 'Bunchúrsa Foghraíochta' by Colm Ó hUallacháín (pages 62 & 64) have them, and I was wondering were they Munster forms. Maybe Jonas can chip in.

" Like b and p sounds but without stopping the air, u see"

I have those visemes/palletographs drawn out too.

"I don't understand your question"

I ahve read that the nasalised /v/ in irish is not produced by expressly pushing out the air in a sigh, but but muscular ingress of the diaphram. I am aware that the diaphram is used in both cases, but the distinction si that one can blow air out, or one can pull in the diaphram and the air comes out less forcfully as if pushed a little. I cannot find the referecne. When I do I will post it here.

"They don't become l, why do you say that?"

Because the page says that, and I find it odd. Between the enteries for 'devoiced broad n' and 'devoiced slender n' for Ulster and Munster you can see it.

"In that page i just wanted to give the sounds and some examples, not to explain how you pronounce every letter in every context - it would be much longer to explain."

Oh, I know, it is just that it was a little vague, and I was troubleshooting in order to see any issues for the reader. I am aware that there are permutations.

>"They don't become l, why do you say that?"

>Because the page says that, and I find it odd. Between >the enteries for 'devoiced broad n' and 'devoiced >slender n' for Ulster and Munster you can see it.

Oh, should be a "copy-and-paste" i have not corrected, LOL! gabh mo leithscéal!

"that the nasalised /v/ in irish is not produced by expressly pushing out the air in a sigh, but by muscular ingress of the diaphragm."

I can only make sense out of that by assuming it doesn't refer to the thoracic diaphragm, but to the lowering of the soft palate. There is no special breathing or effort involved; lenition is nothing but relaxed articulation.

The nasalized bilabial fricatives (consonantal mh) are just like unlenited m's except that the lips are not fully closed, so that some of the air being exhaled goes out between the lips, with audible friction.

During the articulation of unlenited m the velum or soft palate, the boneless diaphragm of flesh separating the posterior part of the roof of the mouth from the nasal cavity, is lowered so that the air can escape through the nose while the oral passage is sealed by complete lip closure.

In the articulation of the nasalized bilabial fricatives, the soft palate is likewise lowered so that some of the exhaled air goes out the nose at the same time that some is expelled between the lips. The bilabial friction produced is thus simultaneous with nasal resonance.

"Ex : /L/ (broad ll) does exist in Connemara and in Donegal Irish, but not in Munster Irish. In Munster, it is replaced by /l/ (broad l)."

Wrong, if it refers to the sounds rather than the symbols. The broad lateral used in Munster, as far as I know, is absolutely unlenited /L/, but they transcribe it as /l/ since the two phonemes have been reduced to one.

For me here, /L/ = dental broad L. As far as I know, broad l isn't dental in Munster.

“Laethanta Breátha” a thugaimísne mar leasainm orthu, ainm sheanabhlastúil, mar dhe ná raibh aon fhocal eile Gaeilge ina bpus ach an beannú so a dhéanfaidíst ar an mbóthar duit leis an dá fhocal — “Lá breá!”
Is minic, nuair a chuimhním ar an scéal ó shoin, a deirim liom féin dá gcuardóidíst an teanga ó cheann ceann gur dheacair dóibh aon dá fhocal a tharrac chúchu ba dheacra dhóibh a rá ó thaobh na foghraíochta ná an dá fhocal chéanna, go mórmhór agus an “L” mór leathan atá againn i nDún Chaoin a thairgímíd aníos amach as ár sceolmhaigh, agus an tsuaithinseacht foghraíochta a leanann an focal “breá” againn.

— Pádraig Ua Maoileoin, "Na hAird Ó Thuaidh"
____________________________

l — This is a velarized voiced lateral consonant, formed by pressing the tip of the tongue against the upper teeth, leaving a passage on both sides of the tongue for the escape of the air. It corresponds to d with regard to lip-position and glides...The 'dark' or velarized quality of this l is particularly noticeable in final position.

— Brian Ó Cuív, "The Irish of West Muskerry, Co. Cork"
____________________________

l — The principal sound represented by l differs very little from γ. Indeed some speakers make no distinction between the two sounds. The tip and blade of the tongue are lowered so that there is no closure in the middle of the mouth, and the back of the tongue arches upwards towards the soft palate. Usually the mouth passage is narrowed sufficiently, by this raising of the back of the tongue, to cause audible friction. The vocal chords vibrate. l has a quality approximating to short u or half-close o:.
For most speakers this l-sound is distinguished from γ by its lip position. l tends to be pronounced with a rather rounded lip position. The rather vague term "tense" seems also to be applicable to this sound: there seems to be a sort of tightening or constriction in the pharynx...

— Risteard B. Breatnach, "The Irish of Ring, Co. Waterford"

"...you know with the top teeth at the base of the bottom lip'...Bunchúrsa Foghraíochta' by Colm Ó hUallacháín (pages 62 & 64)"

That's the one thing I hate about that book, which is otherwise excellent.
____________________________

The symbol v' may be said to represent a diaphone comprising both bi-labial and labio-dental voiced fricatives...The bi-labial sound...is commoner, amongst older speakers in particular.
...
The sound represented by v in intervocalic position...may be described as a voiced bi-labial fricative, with non-palatal quality.
...
...f' may be described as a breathed bi-labial fricative, with palatal quality.
...
The symbol f represents a breathed bi-labial fricative...

— The Irish of Ring, Co. Waterford
____________________________

v' — This is a palatalized voiced bilabial fricative...
v — This is a velarized voiced bilabial fricative...
f' — This is a palatalized voiceless bilabial fricative...
f — This is a velarized voiceless bilabial fricative...

— The Irish of Muskerry, Co. Cork
____________________________

v' is a palatalized voiced bilabial fricative...
...
f' is similar to v' in formation except that it is voiceless...
...
w represents a voiced bilabial...In intervocalic position in word or phrase w is weakly fricative; in terminal position the friction is more perceptible...
...
f is a velarized voiceless bilabial fricative...

— The Irish of Erris, Co. Mayo

Ins na sliochtaí thuas a luaigh tú ní léir go bhfuil an L leathan déadach ach i Múscraí.

Lughaidh, I just downloaded the files you sent.Go raibh maith agat!!!! thanks for all the hard work to make those files available to me
ps now i get "it" when you talk about Irish sounds with an English mouth. every little bit helps Slán

Peadar,
" can only make sense out of that by assuming it doesn't refer to the thoracic diaphragm, but to the lowering of the soft palate. There is no special breathing or effort involved; lenition is nothing but relaxed articulation.

The nasalized bilabial fricatives (consonantal mh) are just like unlenited m's except that the lips are not fully closed, so that some of the air being exhaled goes out between the lips, with audible friction.

During the articulation of unlenited m the velum or soft palate, the boneless diaphragm of flesh separating the posterior part of the roof of the mouth from the nasal cavity, is lowered so that the air can escape through the nose while the oral passage is sealed by complete lip closure.

In the articulation of the nasalized bilabial fricatives, the soft palate is likewise lowered so that some of the exhaled air goes out the nose at the same time that some is expelled between the lips. The bilabial friction produced is thus simultaneous with nasal resonance."

I am aware of all of the above, but that does not stop me asking questions.

I tend to ask questions from what I have read, so I can only plead I saw it in some fashion, somewhere, even if it is wholly incorrect. That is why I asked about it.

I also have heard labiodental /v'/ been used in speech. It may have been historical too, as early hiberno-english used it (seen in the book 'Rambles in Teigue-land', author not remembered -bad habit...)

If labio-dental is so no-no, why was it put in to those books? Preference with no reference to the sppken tongue?

· Ins na sliochtaí thuas a luaigh tú ní léir go bhfuil an L leathan déadach ach i Múscraí.

Ní léir go bhfuil sé ailbheolach ach a leath-oiread. Tá sé i bhfad níos cosúla le /L/ ná le /l/ ins gach ceann de na trí ceantair.

· Robert, I'll quote some more stuff on the labial fricatives later. Southern Connacht now has both the bilabial and the labiodental ones. The latter are a recent development in Irish, though not so recent in Scottish Gaelic.

>Ní léir go bhfuil sé ailbheolach ach a leath-oiread. Tá >sé i bhfad níos cosúla le /L/ ná le /l/ ins gach ceann >de na trí ceantair.

Leis an fhírinne a ráidht, ní chluintear mórán duifir eadar L leathan déadach agus L leathan ailbheolach. Níl ach duifear beag eat’ra.