Anyone here any good at SeanGhaeilge?

How can Ó hÉilidhe be pronounced? It comes from the SeanGhaeilge word éilidhe which means claimant. (Nowadays it's éilitheoir").

I know when you have a word like chuaigh, you'll hear people say it as cú ig, whereby they pronounce the g. Other times you'll hear them pronounce it as cú í, whereby the gh has become í (like the vowel in "bean an tí").

As far as I know, it's mainly Munster that retains the ig sound, while Connacht and Ulster go for the lighter í sound. (Which I presume is because Munster emphasizes the second syllable of a word, rather than the first).

Would the "rough" way of pronouncing it be:

(I use eh to refer to the a very brief e sound, like when you're not particulary bothered about something and you say "eh, I'll do it later".)

4 syllables: [Ó] [Hé] [Leh] [Geh]
3 syllables: [Ó] [Hé] [Lig]
Are either of these correct?

And what about the "light" way of pronouncing it?:

3 syllables: [Ó] [Hé] [Lí]
4 syllables: [Ó] [Hé] [Lih] [Hí]
4 syllables: [Ó] [Hé] [Lih] [Gí]

I'm looking for the Connacht pronunciation as my family are from Galway.

Thanks a lot.

quote:

How can Ó hÉilidhe be pronounced? It comes from the SeanGhaeilge word éilidhe which means claimant. (Nowadays it's éilitheoir").

Tá fadhb ann. Ní dóigh liom go raibh ann don fhocal sin, le d(h), sa tSean-Ghaeilge. Tá mé díreach tar éis DIL agus A Guide to Early Irish Law a cheadú agus níl éilide le fáil i gceachtar acu. Mar a dúirt mé cheana, tá an briathar éiligid ann, agus is léir go dtáinig an aidiacht éiligthech ~ éilightheach ~ éilitheach agus an t-ainmfhocal éiligtheóir ~ éilitheoir uaidh níos faide anonn.

Maidir leis an bhfuaimniú, deirtí "d" i lár nó ag deireadh focail mar "th" i mBéarla "then" i ré na Sean-Ghaeilge (ca. 700-900) Ní raibh an litriú "dh" in úsáid ag an am sin.

I pronounce the following:

Dhún mé

as "Goon may". (Though I make a sort of raspy sound with the "g").

If this consonant was somewhere within a word then it would most likely be spelled as "g" or "gh".

I wonder why Ó hÉilidhe wasn't spelt:

Ó hÉilighe or Ó hÉilige

This makes me wonder if the "dh" is simply a "syllable separator"?

This page looked interesting.

http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/old-irish/labhairt.html

"éilidhe"

To my knowledge there were once 4 dental fricatives in Irish, voiced/unvoiced, and velar/plain or velar/palatised. 'dh' if the orthography is signalling what we are talking about here, would be a voiced plain dental fricative (perhaps more probably than a palatised one, altho I am having problems making it right as in this net café there are opposite arrangaments of PCs, and a girl whose workstation faces mine can see me making faces while trying to articulate the sound, so I am hiding behind the monitor...). Perhaps one can palatise it more by widening the lips really wide and and pushing the tongue forward in the mouth...

I dont have my old irish books with me, but from what I do know, éilidhe might be:

/e:l'dh'e/ or /e:L'dh'e/. (/dh'/ will have to do...). As far as I know an unstressed end vowel could be differtiated from /@/ in those days, hence /e/

Oh you mean how is 'Ó hÉilidhe' pronounced?

Long o /o:/ or 'oo' 'heylaa' or 'oo heyljaa', but with that palatised phone near the end, I could imaging 'oo haylee' or 'oo hayljee', but not maybe today

/o: h'e:l'j@/ or maybe due to the platisation /o: h'e:L'(j)@/

Thanks Robert.

Now without sounding too lazy... can anyone recommend a website where I could learn how to pronounce those IPA strings you've given me? I've searched the web a few times, but always come up with weird stuff...

Lughaidh has provided us with a set of phones, in isolation with an insualtion of schwa, that is, ahhh/t/ahhhh so one can hear the easy difference.

I tell you what, I ahve to make some more recordings for Clionadh for a little book (Anseo is Ansúid). I can make a recoding of MY pronounciation of the the name based on Edward MacLysaght's book (looking at the older version) and then newer one, and leave it on the server. i am free tomorrow to do more, so I will do it tonight and load it tomorrow with 5 more of Cionadh's recordings

I think there may eb different pronounciaitons as the 'dh' for me, suggests an attempt to signal a more 'jiy' glide to the l, so I think there is scope for manuver. Lughaidh might give his Donegal pronounciation if he sees this thread

I say this as there are no IPA for Irish only sites out there due to a neglect in teaching of the language in that department.

It is best to know how to make the sounds, so 'labiographs' (lips) and 'palletographs' (tongue positions, excuse the spelling) are useful.

this might do for the moment, but bear in mind different symbols are been used in Irish phonemic studies, to make it simpler and quicker. Added to that, Lughaidh and Peadar, especially Peadar use phonetic transcripts which are tigher and more specific. I only use a simple broad transcription.

Anyway, http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/

quote:

Lughaidh has provided us with a set of phones

Speaking of phones, you guys are both in Dublin. Why not just get on the phone and do this viva voce?

No need for phone, as it is simpler than I thought

I have noticed how I was wrong.

It should be /o: h'e:l'i:/ or /o: h'e:L'i:/

I got confused as often names are pronounced differently natioally (where they are pronounced within British parametres, me thinks) to where I come from. Seamus Heany is 'heynee', Costello is cost-elo, not costELLo as in Elvis Costello, McPartland, 'Farlin' etc

This actually changes how I percieve the Irish name, so O Healy must eb the nearer form

So is it just like the American name "Hailey", as in "Hailey's commet"?

Equivalent to: [heɪli] ?

I picked a bad word...

It's actually spelt:

Halley's comet

Its legitimate pronunciation rhymes with "valley", while most people pronounce it rhyming with "bailey".

The pronunciation I had in mind is the one that rhymes "bailey".

So it is simply:

Ó Hailey ?

éilitheoir

gives us ward "heeler"


dc

A Dhuine de mhuintir Éilidhe,

The surname is still pronounced by many decent country people of south east Sligo as Hayley, while to my knowledge, all would spell it, if asked, as Healy.

The nickname 'Sabhdán' is also used along with surname, again by those of the older generation, in the Riverstown area. 'There he is, the Sowdawn Healy' you might hear someone say, just in passing, or 'he's one o' the Sowdawn Healys'.

Sadly, the townland name, Baile Uí Éilidhe, has been assimilated and submerged into 'Hollybrook', just bordering the main Sligo Dublin road at Loch Arrow. If you've a few million handy, is féidir a cheannach faoi láthair nó chonaic mé fógra i mball éigin i mbliana.

Yes, The Sligo Champion this week:
One of the few remaining estates in County Sligo, the 275-acre Hollybrook Estate between Castlebaldwin and Ballinafad, bordered by the N4 and the shores of Lough Arrow, has gone on sale. Just €4 million!

Dream eile ar fad iad muintir na Mumhan a n-áirítí ina seacht ndream éagsúla:

Seamhrach,
Gruama,
Ceirisc < Mac Fhiarais,
Sagart,
Ceart,
Cabáiste,
Seana-Hata.

Seán Ó Conaill nó duine éigin mar é a dúirt.

http://www.inneall.net/ohealaigh3.mp3

To that end, I have produced an mp3. Now the mp3 comverter is fixed I can get back to making those recordings for Cionadh. PS if you answered my email, Cionadh, I cannot log into that email address whenever I am at this location. I dunno why.

If one is using Audacity, and cannot save as an mp3, this file www.inneall.net/lame_enc.dll can be downlaoded. When it asks for it, just click on the dll file and if will save the wav as mp3

Go raibh míle maith agaibh, a Robert agus a Sheosaimh, táim an-bhuíoch díbh as d'am agus do chabhair.

So overall, it looks like the name is primarly pronounced:

Ó Hailey

With the option of throwing in the "g" for good measure:

Ó Heyligee


Now I can call myself "Ó hÉilidhe" and not look stupid when asked to pronounce it : )

Robert,

Thanks for the link: http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/

But the sound clips do not not play for me. Does anyone else have this problem? I found another site with soundclips for the IPA:
http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/index.html

Matthew Webb