Does anyone have a good reference to the the pronouncation of a slender -g- in final position in EM Irish / Classical Irish?

Thinking of teaching some heavy stuff next autumn and thought I might try and pull of the pronouncation.

I have read through Stair na Gaeilge on this matter but it seems to ignore this particular sound - maybe I just mist it but.

Have to check a few things first but.

would Munster give an idea?

I am under the impression that the Munster pronouncation is the result of delinition.

O' Rahilly in his Irish Dialects Past and Present makes comment on it:

A few excerpts:

Delenition as you say in Munster

endings -idh becomes -igh in course of 12th and 13th centuries

-g served to get rid of -igh, (the jettisoning of broad and slender gh in anything but initial position a marked tendency of the language) and keep the ending clear (distinctive)

In Munster the -igh to -ig had occurred by the 16th century (to go by anglicized place names)

North Munster, Leinster up to Dublin, and Roscommon and parts of Galway and Longford, the -igh had become -e (mínigh --> míne)

In Northern Dialects (in this case from North Roscommon to N. Meath and anything up -note: Ulster final vowel shortening in due course), compensatory lengthening occured: gealaí from gealaigh, míní from mínigh)

Note too: Northern Irish confounds 3 historical endings to 1: ceannaigh, ceannaighe, and ceannaighthe --> ceannaí but Munster (I take that as West Munster in light of some of the remarks above) keeps all three seperate:
ceannaig, ceannaí, and ceannaihe

In contact area between the -e ending areas (like parts of South Longford and to the south of Tuam, Galway, a short close i is used (as if geali as plural to differ it from gealaí as genitive)

Everywhere now, -igh drops out before pronoun; in North sometimes before noun with initial consonant (mhíne Seán é or mhíní Seán é)




There is more:

Development in SG

The second pl imperative (6 and a half pages!)


I am happy to digitally photograph the chapter (take only a few minutes) and send it to an email address, if you wish

Thats fine - go raibh maith agat cibe ar bith.

I have it here.

I have a could grasp of the development but what I am usure of it what -idh -igh originally was pronounced and how classical Irish dealt with it.

it is interesting that in mid > Scotland the ending is now -ich.

Essentially what you're asking is how was lenited slender 'g' pronnounced in Old Irish. The professional poets apparently maintained that old pronunciation in their formal work in EMI, while the spoken language went it own way, as noted above. As best I can tell the lenited 'g' in OI "ríg" (gen. of "rí") and "ríge" (= kingship) was a sound that scholars represent as G‘ (where G = gamma), which sounded (I think) like a voiced "ich-Laut" (fuaim atá againn in "ithe" agus "oíche"... i gcuid de na canúintí ar aon nós). This is a rather unstable sound, not just in OI, thus its slide into a number of other realizations: smaoinich, smaoinig, etc.

Hmmm, thanks.

"which sounded (I think) like a voiced "ich-Laut" (fuaim atá againn in "ithe" agus "oíche" ... thus its slide into a number of other realizations: smaoinich, smaoinig, etc."

But isnt that (basically) how 'smaoinich' is pronounced?

It is that a palatalized gamma?

Do you mean the stronger slightly more hissy/noisey /j/ as in yet but stronger?

As best I can tell the lenited 'g' in OI "ríg" (gen. of "rí") and "ríge" (= kingship) was a sound that scholars represent as G‘ (where G = gamma), which sounded (I think) like a voiced "ich-Laut" (fuaim atá againn in "ithe" agus "oíche"... i gcuid de na canúintí ar aon nós).

A "voiced Ich-Laut" would be [ʝ], a voiced palatal fricative. It's found in many varieties of Spanish, including most peninsular varieties, and in Modern Greek, but as far as I know not in final position. It does appear in final position in other languages, such as Kabyle (a.k.a. Ṯaqbayliṯ, a Berber language of Algeria).

What about southern Russian varieties with frication of medial /g/? What does the palatalised version of this (IPA [ɣʲ], неправда ли?) sound like?