Discussion in another thread led me to conclude that I should just start a discussion on this topic and see where it leads.

One of my primary vexations with learning Irish thus far has been the language's orthography. I get the impression that Irish orthography is very well-developed and standardized - however I have yet to see a clearly enunciated explanation of orthographic rules.

Can any of you help?

Understanding of the priciples is really only clear once the logic behind it is seen. It was developed to render irish sounds with a limited set of signs, that is, traditional irish perhaps had over 80 individual sounds (altho how many were phonemic is another question), while there were less than 20 signs.

It was noticed that consonants were more inportant that vowels in the system for comunication (on balance) and came in two flavours, leathan agus caol.

This were not just philosophical lines, but accorded to actual differences. A slender 't' was enounced with the body of the tongue pushed into contact with the hard palatte (homorganic with 'l' in William); the broad t required the back of the tongue to push towards the soft velum while the tip and blade touched/pushed aginst the back of the teeth (usully upper).

Thus there are two species of consonants which are important as they make the differences between plurals and cases (cat --> cait). Here with 'cat' the first t is broad, the second slender.

It was also noticed that two other thigns were happening -a) consonant polarity was mirrored by vowel polarity, and b) transitional sounds (glides) occured as the tongue moved between consonats of opposite polarity.

To example -a: before a broad t, the back of the tongue would move up to a position for vowel 'u' (and cat has been pronounced 'cut' in some dialects or people), that is, consonats are/were associated with a range of vowel resonance due to either intersecting the vowel space (like slender p pausa can be close or near /e:/ in terms of tongue position), or having part or the tongue move into a positon (like 'u' for 't') or in a related sense the way 'u' is slightly articulated before a broad dental 'l'.

This means in short that vowel polarity and consonats polarty are related by physiology, that is, the tongue positons links them.

In a linked way, -b: the glides occur as the tongue moves through the mouth between consonats of one polarity and that of the oppsosite. So for cat, once gets somthings like 'ca(u)t' as the 'u' occurs as the tongue comes up from the lowered position it had for 'a' to get into position for t. For cait, the tongue moves into the real estate of /i/ as it is near in shape to /t'/.

This is perhaps why the scribes used the spelling they did -it reflected how the languages phonology was structured. Extra vowels were not just extra, they actually reflected the glides and resonances that the tongue produced

This is why the spelling makes no sense to many native english speakers, even if they ostensibly understand he rules: they cant make nor hear the distinctions, so it seems pointless.

The broad vowels were/are those which are assocaited with the back of the mouth and the slender, the front of the mouth. IN speech, there were once far more vowel and diphthongs to act as insulation bewteen polarites

This is why one reads of 'broad vowels around broads consontans' and 'slender consontants arounds slender', there is a reason.

I once had someone explain to me the differecne, and it became clear they did not understand the basis for the system; as a consequnce their pronounciation could never be bicambral. This is one of the drawbacks of the dogmatic way irish is taught -a lot of it is just parroted and students learn about broad and slender as if it was something to remeber for a test!

PS, if there are lingusits here, please tell if the above is incorrect :)

Bearnaigh, I applaud you. My vexation is that the EXPLANATIONS of Irish orthography seem to be complicated almost deliberately.

Go raibh maith agat, a Bhearnaigh.

As a product of the Irish school system, who was taught the "caol le caol agus leathan le leathan" rule without ever understanding why, (although it did help with spelling in wirtten work), your explanation is most illuminating.

On another matter can anyone explain why we have nouns in declensions, and what makes them feminine or masculine? Are there neuters also?

On another matter can anyone explain why we have nouns in declensions,

Because grammarians like patterns!

and what makes them feminine or masculine?

Ceist casta. Most languages have gender - English lost them somewhere along the way.

http://education.yahoo.com/homework_help/cliffsnotes/the_old_man_and_the_sea/13. html

quote:

He also thinks about the differences between himself and the younger fishermen who float their lines on buoys and use motorboats bought with money they earned selling shark livers. Whereas Santiago affectionately refers to the sea as la mar (using the Spanish feminine), they say el mar (using the Spanish masculine).

Are there neuters also?

Bhí sa tsean ghaeilge

On another matter can anyone explain why we have nouns in declensions, and what makes them feminine or masculine? Are there neuters also?

That's a subjective question: for an English speaker, it is odd to see declensions and genders in a foreign language; for a Russian speaker, it is odd not to have such! For French speakers, it is odd not to have genders in English: in French, a table is refered to by "she", a chair is "she", a computer is "he", a wall is "he", etc. In Irish it is the same: things and persons are "sé" or "sí", they can't be "it".

I'm not sure anyone knows why there are genders in languages. In English, it is straightforward: the people are either "he" or "she", other things are "it" (sometimes animals can be refered to by "he/she"). But in most languages, there are genders and now we really wonder why a wall is masculine, a table feminine, etc. I have an idea (based on very early language history: Indo-European and stuff), but I'm not able to explain that in English :-( . Not now, anyway. Maybe another day :-)

The only noun or pronoun that I can think of that is neuter would be ea (it).

Hi, is anyone interested in doing some English - Irish translation? I am looking for enthusiatic amateurs as professional translators's prices are exorbitant. Please send an email to .

I hear professional open heart surgery is awfully dear too... perhaps there's a group of enthusiastic amateurs I could turn to?

Just playing the devil's advocate, of course. If your text isn't too long, you can probably get it translated for free, either right here or at www.irishgaelictranslator.com.

Abigail

Interesting discussion. :)

To bring it back to my personal vexation, here's an example of what I mean:

beo

bio

I don't know that the second is even an Irish word, but I must ask - how do you decide how to pronounce either?

When a slender vowell (e,i) follows a consonant, is it a rule that "e" is only ever a glide, but "i" is pronounced?

Bio doesn't exist.

You know that beo is pronounced quite like "byaw" because -eo is always pronounced yaw when the preceding consonant is a bilabial (b, f, m, bh, mh, p, ph).
Cf meon, feoil...

After other consonants, -eo is "aw".

A Lughaidh

Re your post above, is that Ulster pronunciation?

I would have beo as "byo" (the yo as in yo-yo); similarly

meon (m'yown as in "own") feoil (f'yole)

and "anseo" as on-shuh (as in "shut" without the T")

"On another matter can anyone explain why we have nouns in declensions, and what makes them feminine or masculine? Are there neuters also?"

"Because grammarians like patterns! "


For declenion, let me try this explanation:
Delension is about division based on a scheme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declension decribes it as "is a paradigm of inflected nouns and adjectives". Paradigm is a good word as it could be seen as an organising principle.

One can surmise from this that grammarians look at a language and after analysis, pick out what divisions important and give them names. This is not done arbitrarily, put around a scheme.

Let's look at English, a language you are all familiar with. If we use the definition supplied above (by Wiki!) regarding noun and adjective inflexions, we can see English as modifying its nouns for number (singualr vs. plural) and ownership (apostophy s), ex: cat vs. cats or ox vs. oxen (number); cat vs. the cat's paw, or ox vs. the ox's strength.

Adjectives dont seem to modify in English (off the top of my head)

The above analysis could be termed a theme or paradigm, in the example of english, number and case. The case in English is the genitive case, used to show relationship and ownership.

So what of declensions? ONce we select a theme (number, for example) we can then could up all the different examples of how to create a plural in English. Some exmaples are: ox --> oxen; cat -->cats; fish --> fish; sky --> skies. If these come to 5 or 6 or 7 (or whatever number), they are the count of declensions.

So, Englsih has a handful of declensions in the theme of number/how to make a plural.

If the theme is case, English has the genitive (some might say a nominative too, but I prefer to see that as existing when one has a full case set. For all I know, many Englsih nominative case nouns were variously once old genetive, accusative, or dative or locative etc forms, like how in irish the masculine dative took over from the nominative, so made talk of the nominative more complex or just a mute point. Someone with more knowledge on anglo-Saxon could chip in here).-->

So if the genetive as theme = 1, we now count all the ways that the ownership relation is provided for in the language...cat --> cat's tail, 0xen -->oxen's feet, fish --> fishes scales, wine -->wine's flavour. So, we are left with 1 declension (+es in writing is another one, but it is really an orthogrpahic convention, by the looks of it). If anyone knows another declension, please point it out.

To summ up for English: 2 themes with at last 5, and 1 declension respectively for 'number' & 'case'.

IN Irish then, the 'nodal theme' that has given rise to declension has been the inflection into the genitive singular case. Grammarians have used this to cathegorise nouns, putting them into 5 declensions because Latin (or some classical form) had them.

The problem is that, based on the actual uasge, we get very much more. SOme dialects have collapsed the case system (much of Conemara), while others have kepts them better (Cork: Oilean Chleire). Some dialects use the old weak gen pl (like Mayo, as far as I can see), while others prefer the strong plural (Conemara). Munster seems to prefer the datives to take over from nominative, fearaibh for fir (dat pl --> nom sing [am I correct here?!], while Conemara allows the genetive to take over in many cases. Donegal can have a difference between long and short L and N (L/n & N/n), and this results in declensions of the genitive not seen in other places.

So, without doing out a list of the possibles decleions in Irish, let's try to see the themes: number, case, gender

Theme 1: (Number). Most nouns have sing and pl (except mass nouns like aimsir 'weather'). the lieks of aimsir are then a declension. others: cat -->cait, bus --> busanna, lamh -->lamha....maybe 20 forms???

Theme 2(case). Any inflexional language has a spectrum of inflecion, from most inflected to least. you might find old speakers in Munster with full nom, gen, dat and for both singualr and plural in some words, while others (like aimsir) have only a genitve form, or other (like bus) have only a plural form.

So...one might subdivide on a spectrum from full inflexion to just one inflexion. Other subdivisions are weak and strong plurals, or words which admit a mixture, or words which natives feel can go either way.

At this point we are at hundreds of potential declensions...

Theme 3 (gender). There are masculine, feminine, and words that swing both ways. So 3 might be the number here.




I am of the feeling that declension is actually one of those this that are slightly non-linear; easy to set up, hard to count and analyse in practice. I would seem, in my experience, that knowing how to take a word and mutate it based on its structure is a better way than memorising all the variables (not that been careful is not warranted -it can be easy to start inflexting bus as a M1 noun bus -->bhuis, mbus etc when it is M4 (as the dictionary goes), bus -->bus, busanna

The last bit might be a bit confusing; the myriad declensions that may come up are due to how simple or complex one traces imaginary distinctions in the language; basically, ones analysis creates declensions. For natives it just seems like pattern recognition (and of course a lot more must be going on in thier brains)

Bearnaigh

Many thanks for your detailed post above. On your final point, I have often asked my wife, who, although not a native speaker, has far better Irish than I have, how she always seems to get the grammar right. She says that she operates on the principle "if it sounds right, it probably is"