I saw that Cionadh posted a link to a group for learning Munster Irish. I made it to about chapter 6 in "Learning Irish", and have taken a breather while moving to China, and am now ready to learn more, and wonder if other people would be interested in a Yahoo! group focusing on Learning Irish? I already have spreadsheet with vocab of first six lessons in. I am interested in keeping an eye on Official Standard Irish vocabulary as well as Cois Fhairrge. So, for example, I have made a column in the XLS to detail divergenes, eg fuinneoig in this dialect, fuinneog in standard Irish. I am also compiling an exact phonetic transcription for all the words using proper IPA rather than Micheal O'Siadhail's transcription. I think other people could benefit from these. I will only make a group.

I meant to say in previous post: I will only make a group if other people indicate they will join.

I think it's a great idea. Although I can't give Cois Fhairrge Irish 100% of my attention right now, I'd be happy to join you and follow along as time permits.

Le meas,
Cionaodh

BTW, my wife just reminded me that there's already a "Leaning Irish" group on Yahoo (though it's not devoted to the book of the same name). Perhaps a name with "Cois Fhairrge" in it?

A Chionaodh, I joined the Learning Irish group, only to find that they recommended the O Se book and the files section is full of articles recommended the pronunciation of Foclóir Poca. Excuse me if that shoudl have been Póca!

OK. The group has been created at groups.yahoo.com/group/coisfhairrge I have made it so that members need to be approved - this will be a speedy process, but I don't want spam...

I have pasted a Gaelic keyboard installer file I created using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creater. You can run it and it will install a keyboard called English(Ireland) that you can access from the taskbar. AltGr plus any vowel will give you a fada. ` (the key to the left of "1" on my keyboard) before a letter will give you a dot for lenition. Eg `t will produce ṫ Then all you need to do to get things looking genuinely Gaelic is to use a Gaelic font eg Bunchló available on the web. This is much easier than pressing the fada buttons arranged below on the Daltaí board.

I meant to say the Gaelic keyboard installer is in the Files section of my Cois Fhairrge Yahoo group.

A Dhavid, a chara!

What do you mean by "proper" IPA? As far as I know Ó Siadhail IS using IPA with some very small alterations standard for Irish phonetics.

Me bedazzled...

Thank you, Roman. IPA is just IPA. A capital N for a "tense" N (this is a meaningless term phonetically) does not indicate any pronunciation. You are wrong: O Siadhail departs in numerous instances from IPA. s' to show an "sh" sound is just not IPA. now, you could criticise me for using a symbol for slender r that has been discarded by the IPA committee, but the transcription is still 99% IPA instead of Learning Irish's 50% IPA approach. What on earth does w' mean in IPA?

Ó Siadhail does not give phonetic transcriptions, but phonological ones. So, saying that "Learning Irish's 50% IPA approach" is irrelevant.

A Dhavid, a chara

The conventions used in LI are usual one for Celtic language. While it is true that you can express all sounds of Irish by means of IPA, it would be very difficult and burdensom. Just imagine showing all those "tense" sounds (in fact dental, in IPA - with rectangular concave underbar). So it is just a matter of convenience of substituting those expanded symbols with handier ones.The only thing which i find strange - is depiction of [j] sound as [G'] - G - Greek gamma.

Re slender [r] - this is still a mysterious sound for me. and there is a lot of misinformation on the net. The sound for sure is NOT Czech [r] with hachek. So how do you imagine what it is?

>>The only thing which i find strange - is depiction of [j] sound as [G'] - G - Greek gamma.

Again, that is because they are not sounds but phonemes...
Using /gamma'/ is coherent. Using /j/ would be incoherent...

>>Using /gamma'/ is coherent. Using /j/ would be incoherent...

The only problem is that [G'] exists (albeit not in Irish), and it is not the same sound as [j] although reportedly very similar. So using [G'] is simply confusing.

Rómán,

you persist to confuse phonetics and phonology.

sounds are between [ ]: [G']
phonemes are between / /: /G'/

As you can notice, Ó Siadhail uses / / in L.I., not [ ].

Consequently, these remarks, albeit accurate, remain irrelevent here.

A Mhaix, a chara

Learning Irish is not some scientific treatise but a teach-yourself book. so you can't expect layman to go into such intricacies as phonetics vs phonematics. notwithstanding his notation (// or []) 99% of people understand his textbook as PHONETIC, and not phonematic. And act accordingly - do you like it or not. Usage of [G'] and [w'] in my not so humble opinion is based not on phonematics but on simplicity (slender sound is denoted by apostrophe) and nothing else.

Le meas

Dear all, I personally can only learn pronunciation with a pronunciation guide that indicates the pronunciation exactly. This is why I have made my own spreadsheets of this, and yes they do include velarization, palatalization symbols and what not, but I have created a keyboard that makes it easy for me to type these. As for the slender r not being a Czech r with hacek. This has been discussed to death on this forum and Lughaidh and others insist that it is the exact same sound. We can go round in circles arguing. I have chosen to render the slender r in my own spreadsheets as a palatalized version of the Czech sound. Join my Yahoo group and you can read the PDF file in the Files section and comment further. I am very interested in any criticism of the phonetic transcription there, as I want it to be exactly right.

>>slender sound is denoted by apostrophe

Exactly. And slenderness is a phonological feature.

>>you can't expect layman to go into such intricacies as phonetics vs phonematics

That is not the point. Ó Siadhail is a linguist. You can argue as long as you want whether the transcriptions are confusing or not for laymen, the fact is that they are phonological transcriptions and that the conventions chosen to note the phonemes are absolutely coherent.

I actualy don't get why anyone would care about w' r' or any other example. You could write Gaeilge down 100 different ways and still not get it right when you try to say it. In my opinion the only way someone will ever get it is to actuly listen to it. I've been using the teach yourself irish with ó sé agus sheils for about 8 years and could not for the life of me figure out what the hell a slender m or b could possibly sound like. It wasn't until an Irishman came through my town and I asked him. So I would say if you do want learn the corrsct way. Phonetics are not the greatest not matter how well you THINK you've writtin it down. I've learned more in the passed week with Buntús Cainte by actualy hearing it then i have in eight years with anything else. OK thats all I have. Might have been a little off topic, but I thought it pointless for people to argue on differnt authors way of using w' r' etc.

A chairde --

Take a page out of the TYIMunster book and don't get hung up on phonetic transcriptions. Everyone seems to have their pet phonetic scheme, and what works for one may not work well for another. Learning Irish has audio material available (I have tapes but I hear there are now CDs for it) which learners can rely upon.
Let the recordings speak for themselves, and then when you finish the book, take a trip to the west and hear it all "live". This kind of needless contention over phonetics will make that Yahoo group far less successful than it could otherwise be.

Le meas,
Cionaodh

"I've been using the teach yourself irish with ó sé agus sheils for about 8 years and could not for the life of me figure out what the hell a slender m or b could possibly sound like."

"my opinion the only way someone will ever get it is to actuly listen to it."

I achievd a approximation in articulation closer than was deemed 'possible' unless for been a) immersed and b) been very fleunt by knowing the parametres of articualtion. I've never been to the gaeltacht and my irish is poor but for phones and for been able to sense cluase appropritness to a decent degree and knowing how to mutate for cases, possesion etc.

The point is, knowing what to do is very important, and saying (directed to a few people above) that it does not matter what codes one uses misses the point. If you know none of them nor how to do the physical work of producing the language, all one will get is failure. For pragamtic reasons the actual code is not important once it falls within a coherent system. Some systems are confusing as they are not clear, and we get a little confused as we have all been exposed to differetn methods.

The celtic usage of /j/ and /r'/ etc if used right is OK, but there seems to be a standards issue here

David, by way of a little "housewarming" present to congratulate you on your new group, I threw together a JPEG file of three of the Learning Irish covers which you might like to use on the group's home page; here 'tis:
http://www.gaeilge.org/LI.jpg
If anyone knows of any other covers this book has had over the years, let me know and I'll incorporate them into a revised JPEG.

I think having the book covers on the group's home page would visually reassure members that the focus of the group will be on the content of that book, and that no matter which cover theirs has, it's essentially the same book.

I did something similar for Kevin Riley when he started TYIMunster. In that case, we were also anxious that people not mistakenly think we would be working with Ó Sé & Shiel's 1990s-era TYI.

Le meas,
Cionaodh

PS - has anyone seen Ó Siadhail's lovely website (http://www.osiadhail.com) yet? Alas, its focus is on Mícheál's new career as a romantic poet (i mBéarla!) and only mentions LI in passing. But the trip to his site might be worthwhile if for no other reason than a glimpse of the painting on the cover of "Love Life".

Cionadh:

[QUOTE] This kind of needless contention over phonetics will make that Yahoo group far less successful than it could otherwise be. [/QUOTE]

Yes, the point is taken. My files contain my own transcription, but I don't want the group to focus on debate about transcription. I think there are plenty of other things to discuss. Some grammatical and other points are so briefly mentioned in LI that you have to read the book really carefully. On page 8 the definition of ansiúd struck me as a little bit unclear. I was wondering if the difference between ansin and ansiúd was the same as the Spanish ese and aquél? I think this is the sort of thing that could be discussed.

Personally, I would like to keep an eye on standard Irish in order not to have to relearn all vocab items again at a later date. What I mean is that I would like to make a mental note of the differences. Eg in LI the plural of leabhar is leabhartha, but I think it is good to just be aware that the standard plural is leabhair.

LI is normally very good on giving the Cois Fhairrge pronunciation of every word form you will need, but there are some gaps. In chapter 7, page 27, it is clear that bheifeá (you would be) is pronounced w'ea:, and beifear (one will be) is pronounced b'eia:r, but I was left unclear about the pronunciation of bheifí (one would be). Presumably the f is not pronounced in Cois Fhairrge Irish, but there is no note to indicate the pronunciation of this form. I presume it is w'ei:, but can't be sure.

These are the sorts of questions I will have. Thank you for sending the jpg of LI. I will paste it up tomorrow.

Dear all, the Yahoo group for learning Cois Fhairrge Irish from Mícheál Ó Siadhail's book Learning Irish now had 30 members and more than 100 messages. We are going to study one chapter every two weeks. We are still doing chapters 1 and 2, but chapter 3 will begin on March 1st. So there is still time to join if you want to start from the beginning. Go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coisfhairrge/

Regards, DJW