www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/irish/blas/education/beginnersblas/pronunciation.s html

"Another point of difference between learners and native speakers is the emphasis placed on pronouns. A learner might say Rinne mé an obair a d'iarr sé orm a dhéanamh - I did the work he asked me to. That's understandable, because mé and sé have a síneadh fada, and that usually means that they should be pronounced long. In everyday speech, however, they're much shorter. In some old manuscripts the writers went as far as to leave out the síneadh fada in situations like this, just to show that the words should be pronounced short, so that it might look like this: Rinne me an obair a d'iarr se orm a dhéanamh"

Risteard B. Breathnach (An Rinn)
p. 113 [transcription on page 112]
[middle of page]

"Is mé" adubhairt sé /s `m'e, du:r't' se:/

Well in this case above 'mé' became /m'e/. Why not sé /s'e/?

Anyway, what I desire to know is: does the quality change for the vowel? In mé vs me, is the 'e' in /m'e/ the same position in the mouth as é but shorter, or does it drop down a bit to the normal 'e' position for whatever dialect?

Unstressed "mé" is pronounced as "mea" (maybe "mah" in an English-like spelling) in Donegal.

For your case, I think it's just é but short, like a short English ay or eh sound (meh).

With your sentence, I'll give the pronounciation in NW Donegal (Gweedore):

Rinne mé an obair a d'iarr sé orm a dhéanamh

[riN´ m´a nobij ə d´iəR s'a arəm ə jænu]

Both mé and sé are pronounced with an a sound: m'a, s'a when unstressed.

This is a very interesting thread! In listening to various tapes, CDs, etc, I often hear the pronouns pronounced with short vowels, and couldn't figure it out. The postings from Robert and Lughaidh are clearing things up for this beginner - thanks.

Is this shortening of the vowel in Irish similar to what we hear in English? Mar shampla, "Give me the book." A native English speaker might very well say "Give me thə book," whereas someone new to English might say "Give me the: book." Of course, if any of us wants to emphasize the statement, thə can easily become the:

Also, are there other areas in spoken Irish where the vowels can become shortened? And if so, is it optional?

Dáithi,
this is a complex area and relates to prosody (ryhtm + intonation) and sandhi (shortening processes).

The 'short' annswer is that I cannot conprensivly answer any of your questions, but only in piecemeal.

I do know that Irish has a narrower range of 'tunes' in speaking than English. Perhaps this is becasue as English lost its cases and became very analytical (and I hope Max will agree with me, less information was encoded in explicit grammar) more informaiton came to be carried in gesture and tone of voice. It think Irish is a better scietific language for that reason -the written word is some specific than English.

Both English and irish undergo shortening in predictable ways in fast speech. In Ring, according to Breathnach the implication of a phrase is modified by extending the phrase in pitch (higher/lower than for a basic statement) or time (longer or shorter).

In terms of affirmation, the affirmative ‘atá’ /ha:/ can be in one range when non-emphatic or in a grater pitch range but same temporal range when emphatic. If I had the formattign codes for this text box, I would make an ascii drawing.

“Also, are there other areas in spoken Irish where the vowels can become shortened?”

Unstressed a, o, u’s are very often reduced to /@/. I think a lot of front vowels (i’s & e’s) can reduced to a more forward schwa too. However, glides come into the question in a complex way in some cases, so I am not full certain of all conditions yet.

I am trying to tabulate the sound changes in order to make natural speech easier for those acquiring the L2, but the drawback is that I have to look thru text, rather than go to the Gaeltacht, set up a machine, and have it output the results, as there are large technical problems in defining sandhi etc for machines.

>Is this shortening of the vowel in Irish similar to >what we hear in English? Mar shampla, "Give me the >book." A native English speaker might very well >say "Give me thə book," whereas someone new to English >might say "Give me the: book." Of course, if any of us >wants to emphasize the statement, thə can easily become >the:

Actually, I think you can make that in Irish but not with all words. For example, i don't think that the Irish articles (an and na) can ever be lengthened nor stressed.

>Also, are there other areas in spoken Irish where the >vowels can become shortened? And if so, is it optional?

In Donegal Irish, only stressed vowels can be long. All unstressed vowels are short. And in most cases (except in compounds actually), words are stressed on the first syllables. The exceptions are words like amach, amárach, amuigh, istigh, tráthnóna, etc.

So, fuinneog is pronounced ['fiN´o:g] in Connemara, ['fn´o:g] in Munster but ['fiN´ag] in Ulster.

Seilleán is pronounced with a short a ['s´eL´an]. á is never pronounced like "aw", but like an a when unstressed, and like a long open a when stressed (quite the same sound as the English a in "bad").

>> do know that Irish has a narrower range of 'tunes' in speaking than English. Perhaps this is becasue as English lost its cases and became very analytical (and I hope Max will agree with me, less information was encoded in explicit grammar) more informaiton came to be carried in gesture and tone of voice.

euh... (French filler standing for "well well well, what am I gonna say next ...?)
I don't understand "range of tune". Could you explain?
(And in fact I'm not sure I understand correctly the rest of it: could you be more specific as for what information would have come to be carried in gesture and tone of voice?)

One thing though:
- there is no reason why "analitical" would be synonymous with "less grammatically explicit".

Max,
I will answer the questions you raise with referecnes when I pull them together.

The answer makes no sense as a) it was rushed, b) there were ascii pix with it, but their formatting did not hold in the text box, so I removed them. I also seem to ahve removed some text too as I was doing it...

I will say that I was only going on what I read by professioanl lingusits, even if the outcome was a bit off.