Does anyone know wher I can find a good pronunciation guide for Irish? Memorizing the given pronunciations of words doesn't seem practical, and the Dhaltai one confuses me.

Thanks!

-Katie

(Message edited by autumnmusic on June 24, 2006)

On this site http://www.philo-celtic.com/PII/Progress.htm you can find MP3 recordings of every lesson of Progress in Irish. You might find it easier to listen to the words being said then to learn a pronunciation guide...
(There is a pronunciation guide included though, and it is a very educational site.)

-Seán-

Here's my beginner's two cents:

The pronunciation guide contained here at Daltaí is a good representation of the Irish sounds, but I think that if you get either the Foclóir Poca (Pocket Dictionary) or the Foclóir Scoile (School Dictionary), you'll find in either of them a more comprehensive, five-page pronunciation guide. Although some students prefer to use a phonetic system based on English words to describe the Irish sounds, I think that these dictionaries' use of a simplified International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is the way to go for beginners. Of course, if you can move to Ireland and immerse yourself for a few months that would be better. :) But in lieu of that I think it's important to learn the pronunciation guide in either of these dictionaries because you can then read any of the headwords in the Irish-English section of either dictionary and be able to pronounce them exactly or pretty close. This is especially true in regard to learning the differences between the broad and slender consonants and sounds in Irish that don't exist in English.

The Foclóir Poca (Pocket Dictionary) is just a miniature version of the Foclóir Scoile and hence is lower in price.

Again, just my two cents, but I think EVERY student who can afford one should have a dictionary, especially one that contains the pronunciations of words. If you buy a dictionary other than the two described above, you'll get translations galore, but NO pronunciations of any of these words - kinda like buying an anchor without a ship:)

There is also a "Foclóir Póca Cassette/Pronunciation guide" available at irishbook.com on cassette.

Anyone know what is on it? I assume it would help greatly in conjunction with Foclóir Póca or Foclóir Scoile.

quote:

The Foclóir Poca (Pocket Dictionary) is just a miniature version of the Foclóir Scoile and hence is lower in price.

Go raibh maith agat, I didn't know that.

When I bought my "Foclóir Póca" a few years ago, it came with a "Pronunciation Guide & Cassette". The Pronunciation Guide has three native speakers - one for each of the three main dialects. Whenever there is little or no variation in a particular word, then only one speaker is heard. The music between each section is not very good (you'll see what I mean) but besides that, the cassette and booklet are great!

(Message edited by wee falorie man on June 24, 2006)

A Aaron agus Wee Falorie Man,

Go raibh maith agaibh. I've always wanted to get the cassettes that accompany the Foclóir Póca or Foclóir Scoile, but didn't know where or whether they were any good. I think I'll buy them and then convert them into CD's because cars don't come with cassette players anymore. Oh, how I long for the days of 8-track players for cars. :)

P.S. Could someone advise me as to my usuage of the genitive plural with my name? That is, I would like to say "Student of Dictionaries." So, is it "Mac Léinn Foclóirí" or "Mac Léinn na Foclóirí?" I think it's the former, since the latter would mean "Student of THE dictionaries." But I'm not sure if there's something in Irish, perhaps idiomatic in nature, that requires me to use "na."

P.P.S. Even though they're the same, Is b'fhearr liom Foclóir Scoile, since the print is bigger and easier for me to read.

I made a mistake when I said that the Foclóir Scoile and Focóir Póca are the same in regard to content. From www.irishbook.com I just learned that Foclóir Scoile is a "larger sized, amended version of Foclóir Poca, with more readable print." I use both of these dictionaries on a regular basis, one at work and one at home, and I haven't noticed any differences in content, especially in regard to their phonetic guides and the pronunciation of all Irish headwords.

To put some cold water on your enthusiasm:

Foclóir Póca and Foclóir Scoile is absolutely the same thing - only format is different. And the idea that there are 3 speakers from main dialects on the tape is a utmost rubbish! The dictionary is based on lárchanúint - completely artificial mish-mash of Irish dialects, therefore it was wholeheartedly rejected by both native speakers and learners alike. The pronunciation is simply ridiculuos at times - see infamous "anois" pronounced "ah-nosh" which is current NOWHERE in Ireland. So don't get overly excited with their pronunciation guide. Your pronunciation will be stilted and unnatural.

quote:

And the idea that there are 3 speakers from main dialects on the tape is a utmost rubbish!

Thanks for the cold water, Róman!

The booklet that comes with the tape says that the three speakers are native Irish speakers from the three major dialects so, of course, I believed them. Thanks for letting us know that this is not true.

Just to make myself clear - I do not doubt that the speakers are native or that they come from 3 regions.

The thing is that neither of those will pronounce the words as it is usual in his/her home region. They pronounce things as shown in FP, which in itself is not natural pronunciation.

quote:

The dictionary is based on lárchanúint - completely artificial mish-mash of Irish dialects, therefore it was wholeheartedly rejected by both native speakers and learners alike.

Here in the United States, there are so many different ways that people pronounce words and I've never heard anyone lament over it. There was a documentary on TV about a year ago, where the narrator traveled all over the States to different regions and displayed, via live interviews with folks, all the different ways we pronounce words.

One of the themes which I found interesting was that even though all those interviewed spoke with regional accents, when asked which dialect they thought was proper English, they almost all considered the Standard American Dialect (usually found on TV or radio) as sort of a de-facto standard.

I've even noticed amongst my co-workers here in "New Joisey" differences in pronunciations for even the most common words. For example, two of my colleagues, both born and raised in New Jersey, pronounce the word "egg" as "e:g." (long "a" followed by "g"), where as most people pronounce it as "eg." (short "e" followed by "g"). It turns out both of these co-workers grew up about 5 miles from each other, so I suspect there's a pocket of speakers in that area that say the word "egg" different from the rest of the state.

So, I think the FP and FS go along way to introducing someone to the pronunciation of Irish words and learning the Official Standard is probably the best starting point that later can be refined without getting any "egg on your face." (Pun intended)

A Mhic Léinn,

You just don't get it. American Standard dialect as heard on the radio or TV is a natural speech in the part of America. Midwest I presume. So you can go to Iowa and hear hundreds of thousands people speak like that. Simple.

Lárchanúint IS NOT a natural speech anywhere in Ireland. It was a pure academic exercise by some freaks in Dublin. Nobody speaks like this. They didn't thibk it worthwhile to consult native speakers. The made system which was convenient for THEM, not for native speakers. The devised system in trying to read letter-by-letter the words is violating some basic phonetic laws of Irish language. There is no way a native speaker would feel that this so called "core dialect" is a natural speech. It sounds mechanic, stilted as if spoken by robots not humans.

So PLEASE, do not transpose your experience in English (what constitutes literary language, what is standard pronunciation) onto Ireland. The concepts DO NOT match. The only REAL Irish is found in live dialects, not in caighdeán oifigiúil which is ludicrous at times, neither in lárchanúint. So if you care to speak GOOD Irish, not some debased, inferior version - take a pick, choose a dialect and follow it till minutae.

quote:

They didn't thibk it worthwhile to consult native speakers.

Actually, most of the team (Niall Ó Donaill et al) were native speakers.

But otherwise, there is a lot of truth in what Rómán says.

Irish has not had a chance to develop a Standrad version; I expect that over time RnaG and TG4 will contribute to one, which will be blurred compared to - say - "BBC" English.

quote:

Actually, most of the team (Niall Ó Donaill et al) were native speakers.

I know this - all the more strange is the final produce. But still 5 people on committee (or was it even less???) are not representative of 100,000 gaeilgeoirí ó dhúchais, are they?

quote:

I expect that over time RnaG and TG4 will contribute to one

Fully agree - no need to rape the live language - some kind of standard will emerge over the time. It might be pronunciation of some extremely popular presenter, or influential politician (if there is one fluent?), or trendy actress. Give it time - and it will come. But anyway, I really doubt it will be something resembling lárchanúint. My guess is that unless something extraordinary happens it will be West Conamara, .i. Cois Fairrge without some extreme features, like skipping of "th" in the middle of the words or smth like this.

We can speculate endlessly what it will be like. If the standard follows Tír Chonaill - I am ready to re-learn my pronunciation, as I have equal respect for all live dialects. In a way it even doesn't matter which dialect will come supreme - any outcome is welcome. The only important thing that it is a natural specimen of Gaelainn.

Beir bó

quote:

You just don't get it. American Standard dialect as heard on the radio or TV is a natural speech in the part of America. Midwest I presume. So you can go to Iowa and hear hundreds of thousands people speak like that. Simple.

A Roman,

Your point is well made. But I still think that FP or FS is a good starting point for pronunciation. I have a modest collection of Irish study books, including Learning Irish, which, you may agree, has an excellent pronunciation guide and is based on a genuine Irish dialect and is my favorite. The only problem is that they are only about 1,500 words. So, since it takes about 30,000 words or more to become fluent, something else is needed, which I think starts with FP or FS, even with their faults and possible typos like "anois."

Maybe it's time for an overhaul of FP and FS, nach ea?

quote:

So, since it takes about 30,000 words or more to become fluent

Oh, no you are blissfully ignorant on that topic! A dim adult uses something like 1200 words (believe or not), normal teenager in his mother tongue uses 10 ths, college student up to 20 ths. Shakespear was counted to use 18-25 ths (depending on the definition what is a word).

So I presume you aim VERY high with 30 ths. :-))

Although I definitely see the value of a standard developing naturally over time, I think that the variety that we see in the presence of dialect will be missed. Hopefully regions can retain this to an extent, even when a more standard version of Irish appears.

So many words. When it is put in terms of numbers, it seems well-nye impossible to become fluent at any language, I don't even know how many words in English I know, :)

A may be ignorant, but blissful's another story. :)

I think what you describe as a "dim adult" using something like 1,200 words is what is known as core vocabulary. I'd like to get beyond that point. For example, FS or FP each have over 30,000 Irish headwords, so that's where I came up with the number of 30,000 words for fluency.

Furthermore, my Spanish dictionary has over 355,000 entries, so even if they're counting both English and Spanish entries, that's over 175,000 unique entries.

So, maybe I'll lower my aim and just go for 29,999 words - I'd hate to be accused of hyper-fluency! :)

A Mhic Léinn na Gaelainne,

Níor chonacaís aon abairt amháin im théacs - níor bhuin Shakespeare ach as 18-25 míle focail. An bhfuil uait bheith níos fearr le Shakespeare? ;-))

beir bó

FRC

Sure and I'd be counting myself clever if I knew every word in an English dictionary, so I can't imagine being able to know all the words in an Irish one. Maybe I just need a more vivid imagination. :-)

Beir bua agus beannacht.

A Riona,

Ar cheapais t'fhocal deiridh a athrú? ;-)

Ámhar mór ort

(Message edited by Róman on June 29, 2006)

A Róman,

When you indicate that Shakespeare used 18,000 to 25,000 words, I suspect that you're referring to his works in which someone must have counted the number of different words appearing in his writings. The number of words that Shakespeare used in his writings would be a subset of the words he actually knew.

Take for example, a contemporary dictionary, like Merriam Webster's Collegiate dictionary, which has over 225,000 entries. I would venture to say that I would know at least half of the words in that dictionary, which would put my vocabulary at somewhere around 100,000 words in English. And I, being a blissful ignoranant type, as you point out above, would be below the average English speaking person who then must know well over a 100,000 words.

Of course, a lot has changed since Shakespeare's time. I'm not good at ad hominum types of arguments, but if there's something wrong with me knowing more words than you think Shakespeare had known, I'll try forgetting enough words so that I don't give the impression that I'm better than that great writer. :)

Fuair mé díospóireacht an-suimiúil ar an gceist seo ar an idirlíon ag:

http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2006/02/how_many_words_.html

Is fiú na teachtaireachtaí ar fad a léamh. Seo sliocht as ceann acu:

A guy who had had to learn Turkish said that it was almost creepy how easy it was to deduce what this or that word would be to expres some concept - very transparent. You would expect that in a langauge that took on a huge number of foreign adult learners fairly recently in its history. The other extreme is a langauge like Irish, where the grammar is not only inordiantely complex, especially in the morphophonetic part of the grammar, but also contains a huge mass of exceptions. This doesn't make Irish somehow less reasonable than Turkish, it just means that Irish as a cultural subsystem is maximazed for the opposite result - it serves to excludes foreign learners. It is very efficiently parochial.

An dóigh libh go bhfuil an ceart aige faoin nGaeilge?

Déarfainn gur Éireannach nó Sasanach a scríobh.
An bhfuil an ceart agam?
D'fhág sé níos mó ná dhá mheancóg sa sliocht san thuas chomh maith!

A Roman, I tried figuring that out, best I could figure it was something about a composition of my ... vocabulary or words changing. I'm sorry that is my best that I can be doing with it. Hopefully I had something right.

A Mic Leinn na ..., when you put it that way, maybe I know more words than I think I do. I'd consider myself to have a good vocabulary, its just that when you bust out the numbers factor it seems like with all the words I know I couldn't possibly know "that many". The numbers trip me up I suppose.

A Riona,

Gabh mo leithscéal, ach is innealtóir me agus mar sin, is brea liom ag caint faoi uimhreacha.

I also tried figuring out Róman remarks to me above, but I think he's writing in the Munster dialect, which I'm not too familiar with. In fact, after buying a copy of that venerable, original version of "Teach Yourself Irish," and trying to learn the Munster dialect and all its additional rules, such as the construction of past-tense verbs, I came to the conclusion that the Munster dialect makes the other dialects and the Official Standard look like child's play. :)

Anyway, after one gets a hold on the syntax and grammar in Irish, I think that the path to fluency lies with vocabulary. And, just like in English I think that the number of words needed to attain fluency is in the tens of thousands.

As a simple test, take a contemporary English dictionary, which will have well over a 100,000 words, probably over 200,00 words. Pick a page or two at random, and see what percentage of words on those pages you know. I betcha the percentage is well over 50 percent, which implies that your vocabulary for English, based on the whole dictionary, is in the tens of thousands, and is probably close to or exceeds 100,000 words.

I'm going to try this experiment with an Irish dictionary and see what percentage of words that I know for a few pages and then extrapolate that percentage to arrive at an estimate of how many words I know in Irish.

It's just an experiment, and the world knows how much we Innealtoiri like to experiment. :)

If anyone knows of a better way to estimate a person's vocabulary, I would love to hear about it.

A Mhic Leinn (shame to myself, I didn't lenite in my post above, oops)

Oh well, I tried with Roman's message and that is all that I can do. That's a grand idea for figuring how much you know of a language, I like it. I hope when you do that with FP or FS you find that you know many many words indeed.

Beir bua agus beannacht.

A Riona:

Aistriúchán: Did you consider changing your closing formula (.i. "Beir bua agua beannacht").

A Mhic Léinn,

Ní an cheist an mó focail atá aithne agat ortu é. Is an cheist an mó focail a bhuinir faidhm as.

[It is not the question how many words you know, but how many you use]

Oh oops, it was just a typo, the "a" being right next to the "s". sure and you all keep me on my toes. Occasionally I get to hurrying and I miss the key I meant to press, something I'm sure we're all guilty of at times. I suppose I must be more careful to press the right keys.

Beir bua "agus" beannacht

quote:

I suppose I must be more careful to press the right keys.

Níl le déanamh agat ach na heochracha Gaeilge ar do mhéarchlár a bhrú! An dtuigeann tú?

A Riona,

I conducted my little experiment with Foclóir Póca and here are my results.

I took two pages at random. For the page that starts with "cían," I knew 10 of the 65 words on that page. For the page starting with "mair," I knew 9 out of the 56 words on that page. So the total for both pages is (10+9)/(56+65) = 19/121, which is 15.7% of the total words sampled.

Although the dictionary claims to have over 30,000 words, let's just say there's exactly 30,000 words. That means I know 15.7% of 30,000 which is 4,710 words. That's about 4 times the number of words I thought that I knew.

I wonder if Shakespeare would be proud of me.

Now it's your turn.

I don't really understand why the minister for the Gaeltacht does not do more to help Irish learners. FP is published by An Gúm, the Irish government publisher. The minister - is he called Ó Cuiv or something, or have I forgotten his name - would be doing a service, and it would be a relatively simple thing for him to do, by commissioning 3 versions of the dictionary with Munster, Connacht and Ulster pronunciation. Do these people just take the money and the official cars, or do they actually try to do anything? Shouldn't there be some kind of campaign urging him to do what I have said?

Can I just add that there is a bit of a logical problem in adding Connacht pronunciation to the FP, because the dictionary is of Standard Irish, and not of Connacht dialect per se. Some would say that Connacht pronunciation and Connacht dialect words go together better. But presuming there is such as thing as standard Irish, all the words are pronunceable in a Connacht accent, even if they are not the words that dialect speakers prefer to use. It would make more sense, though, if 3 dialect editions were produced, if the different editions did cover dialectal vocabulary, eg the Connacht pronunciation edition extensively covered Connacht vocabulary, as well as Standard Irish.

A Riona,

Ní raibh an botún beag á phlé. Do duart go mba mhaith liom rud éigin eile á léigheadh!

[I'll give you chance to break your head, and then I will type translation ;)]

A Dhennis,

"Not with doing at you but your Irish ...s on your keyboard press" ... I tried. It probably would have helped if Heochracha was in FP. I'm guessing its something plural and I'm guessing it doesn't usually have an h at the beginning so I kept that in mind while looking it up. I'll try Roman's next.

Beir bua agus beannacht.

Níl le déanamh agat ach na heochracha Gaeilge ar do mhéarchlár a bhrú!

quote:

"Not with doing at you but your Irish ...s on your keyboard press"

Tús maith ~ a good start! You have all the words but one, and you your guess about it are well informed: it's plural and doesn't begin with 'h'. Eochracha is the plural of eochair = key.

Next is the syntax. First off, "le déanamh" means "to do, to make, to be done, to be made". It's a regular pattern:

le rá = to say, to be said
le léamh = to read, to be read
le ní = to wash, to be washed

Now literally:

is-not to be done at-you (= you have not to do)
but the Irish keys on your keyboard to press

All you have to do is press the Irish keys on your keyboard!

If only writing Irish were so simple. As you can see, I was just kidding around!

Go raibh maith agat, a chara,
Even before I translated it I had a feeling it was some sort of a joke or some such. Thanks.

OK a Romain,

"Don't worry about your little mistake in the conversation. Your ... I would like some ... to read" Ouch, I think I'm a one-sentense at a time sort of person at present.

Beir bua agus beannacht.