This is primarily addressed to Lughaigh who has become something of a celebrity with the members of a Yahoo Group based on Christian Brothers' First Steps in Irish. The group has access to a set of audio files he prepared to help with pronunciation (Donegal pronunciation) as FFII is Ulster oriented. The following paragraph contains a question recently raised along with an attempted response.

Input please?

Listening to the audio file for this lesson I was fascinated by the pronunciation of the word for book. An leabhar. It sounds like "a yore" whereas ignorance and common sense made me think it at least started "an l......" i.e. with a 'l' and would be more like 'an levar'. Is this one of those complicated words which is pronounced nothing like it looks or is this an idiosyncrasy of the northwestern Donegal dialect?
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> Lughaigh seems to be placing the emphasis on the second syllable. What determines that is not known to me any more than most English speakers know why we say Epíscopal instead of Episcópal. If indeed the bhar (bh followed by a = war) is given emphasis and the anlea is run together. voila!

Me, a celebrity? Wow! I wasn't expecting that! :-) Thank you :-)
By the way, my Irish name is spelled: Lughaidh (one g, one d).

quote:

>with a 'l' and would be more like 'an levar'.

Nobody would pronounce "levar" in Modern Irish (although it may have been a bit like that in Old Irish). We say "lyore" in Donegal, and they say something like "l(y)ow-er" or "l(y)owr" in Munster and Connaught (in Munster you don't hear the "y").
The first l here, when not lenited, is pronounced a bit as if you were pronouncing an l and a y at the same time. But it is not a y.

quote:

>Is this one of those complicated words which is >pronounced nothing like it looks or is this an idiosyncrasy of the northwestern Donegal dialect?

Pronouncing -(e)abha- as a long o is a feature of Donegal Irish. It is more "ow" in the other dialects.

quote:

Lughaigh seems to be placing the emphasis on the second syllable.

The word "leabhar" has only one syllable in Donegal.

(Message edited by lughaidh on September 24, 2007)

Go raibh maith agat, a Lughaidh, agus tá súil agam go ligfidh tú liom an litriú mícheart d'ainm.

I passed your post on to the FSII Group, thus securing for you an even greater level of celebrity.

Buíochas arís, a chara.

"The first l here, when not lenited, is pronounced a bit as if you were pronouncing an l and a y at the same time."

I didn't think it was possible to lenite the letter L?

For the record, the correct pronunciation of Leabhar (along with Beag, Brea, and Gaeilge) was almost enough to make me quit trying to learn this language, right at the start. These were not easy sounds to mimic, at least for me. I didn't even begin understanding the w-glide in "Gaeilge" until I compared it to how a Frenchman might say "Gré-il-ge" with a very softened R!

If I can offer my beginner's take on how to explain the pronunciation of leabhar... I would say that you need to position your tongue as for slender L (just the tip touching the ridge of tissue behind the front teeth), and then say "yow," barely pronuncing the L. (Or, pronuncing it simply as a by-product, not overtly.) Follow that with the syllable "uhr."

Not a very academic explanation but hopefully it conveys my meaning.

quote:

I didn't think it was possible to lenite the letter L?

You don't lenite the letter, but the sound. It is a feature of modern Irish that lenited/non-lenited L, N,R are not distinguished in writing. In old Irish those (unlenited) were spelled double. E.g. "rrún" - a mystery, "a rún" - "his mystery", but "a rrún" - "her mystery". It is interesting why Irish abandoned doubling of those letters. Otherwise Irish would be closer to Welsh visually!

quote:

I didn't even begin understanding the w-glide in "Gaeilge"

There is no w-glide in "Gaeilge". There are w-glides only after the bilabial consonants (actually b, f, m, p, ph).

Then what do we call the very faint W sound in the first syllable of Gaeilge?

there is no "faint w sound" in this word. There is glide which is closest to schwa, but no "w"...

A Róman, a chara, more than one person on this forum has instructed me to pronounce "Gaeilge" like "Gway-lih-guh" but not quite with the overt W, so I'm at a loss now.

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more than one person on this forum has instructed me to pronounce "Gaeilge" like "Gway-lih-guh"

Internet is full of advice to pronounce "Dia dhuit" as "jee-ah gwich" - but it does not follow that this is the correct pronunciation.

That sort of getting carried away leads to 'Park ee queev' for 'Pairc Uí Chaoimh', 'Fwina gael'/'Fina Gwael' for 'Fine Gael', and so on

Lughaidh,
as for 'leabhar' been 'leor' in Donegal, and been feminine too, did/does the cadad rule come into play for liquid dentals too, thus, is it [ə ʎoːɾ] (cadad in operation) or [ə l̥oːɾ] lenition-like replacement?

Scríobh Róman:
There is glide which is closest to schwa, but no "w"...

There's your answer! My guess is that you're probably describing the same sound (or close to it) but what sounds distinctly (if faintly) w-ish to you doesn't to Róman.

Anybody want to post a sound file? I'll do it tonight if there are no takers, and then one of the phonological heavyweights can tell us if I've got it "correct" or not.

No, Brn, because the article doesn't lenite dentals (l and n are dentals).

We'd say [ə ˈλoːɾ] but [mɔ ˈloːɾ].


For the other questions:

Gaeilge is [ˈgˠɛːlɟɪ] (or in Donegal [ˈgˠɛːlɪc]), not [gʷɛː-], which I wonder how you'd spell it in Irish if it existed.
Páirc Uí Chaoimh [pʷæːɼc iː ˈχɨːβ]. Ch is NEVER pronounced like k or qu.
Fine Gael (the f is slender!) [ˈɸɪɲɪ ˈgˠɛːlˠ]

Abigail,

I can you offer to listen to Fios Feasa:

http://www.fiosfeasa.com/bearla/language/gutai.htm

The word "gaoth" (scroll down a bit and click on "gaoth") has the same beginning as "Gaelainn". This is the way I pronounce myself. There is no [w] even faint there as lips don't participate, it is all done with the back of the tongue.

I'd like to hear Abigail's sound file!

I'll return to my own description of the sound as "not quite a French R."

I'll have to put up some sound files as well, for the hell of it. If nothing else it will afford some amusement.