I want to know how to pronounce this...Irish father-in-law about to die...his son (my husband) would like to say the first line of the familiar blessing in Gaelic at his service. Thank you for your kindness.

Well, according to my friend from Múscraí, whose first language was Irish Gaelic:

guh nye-REE un BO-har lat (stress on the syllables with capital letters)

"nye" rhymes with "pie", "BO" rhymes with "no", "lat" rhymes with "hat", and the "r" doesn't really sound like an "r" in English; they seem closer to the "r" sounds in Spanish, to my ear.

in Ulster we'd say

guh NYEE-r'een BAW-hur laht

[gˠɔ ˈɲiːɾ̝inˠ ˈbʷɔhəɾˠ lʲat̪ˠ]

Sorry to hear of your loss, Sandra. I only just saw your messages. Unfortunately, they took a while to get through. I have e-mailed you as well.

Go n-éirí an bóthar leat.

/gə nairi:n bo:r l'at/


"Go" /gə/ sounds like the "G" in Gdansk or "go" in "got" without the "t";

"n-éirí an" /nairi:n/ rhymes with "Irene" with a Scottish "r";

bóthar /bo:r/ sounds like English "bore", again with a Scottish "r";

leat /l'at/ sounds like the "lat" in "latte".

This is not standard, it is Conemara Irish, but is the easiest to pronounce at short notice.

The other explanations above are also good - Wee_falorie_man's is more standard and Lughaidh's is Ulster Irish. Please use whichever makes the most sense to you.


(Message edited by breandán on January 19, 2009)

quote:

"n-éirí an" /nairi:n/ rhymes with "Irene" with a Scottish "r";

Well, I think the r would be slender so it is not as in Scottish...

Yes, Lughaidh, _technically_ you are _absolutely_ correct.

However, given the learner's prior experience with Irish (assumed to be minimal), and the urgency with which they needed to learn, I like to hope that in this case we at least got them close enough to right for the task at hand in the time alotted.


In hindsight, I have made a clear mistake:

/nairi:n/ should have been /nair'i:n/ pronounced with the slender "r".

Again, given the context, though, I think that a Scottish "r" would be more acceptable to an Irish speaker than an English one, would it not?

I believe that there are degrees of precision. You often just have to give beginners rough equivalents at first and let them work towards finer precision over time. Your phonetic transcription is a beautiful work of art, Lughaidh, but requires a lot of background knowledge that is probably not available to the learner in this case to decipher it. Context sometimes requires simplifications.

I see that you have used [ɾ̝] for the slender "r". What IPA symbol(s) do you use for the Scottish "r"? What about the Spanish "r"? Are the Scottish "r" and the Spanish "r" significantly different from each other ?

I am still trying to find a good way to explain the slender "r" sound to English speakers who don't know a foreign langauge (or at least an explanation for times when I cannot assume that they do). It seems almost like the french "j" in je /ʒə/ or the /ʒ/ sound in "version" /vɜ:(r)ʒən/ yet subtly different, further back onto the alveolar ridge, but this is not easy to explain to someone who speaks only English.

Is there a sound in English that is closer than the /ʒ/? Even if we cannot expect a perfect match, I think we can at least look for the "nearest closest fit".

quote:

In hindsight, I have made a clear mistake:

/nairi:n/ should have been /nair'i:n/ pronounced with the slender "r".

Well, in Connemara, probably the n's would be different too: I'd guess /N'air'i:N/. Isn't the first one slender since it's followed by an é ?

quote:

Again, given the context, though, I think that a Scottish "r" would be more acceptable to an Irish speaker than an English one, would it not?

Yeah of course.

quote:

I believe that there are degrees of precision. You often just have to give beginners rough equivalents at first and let them work towards finer precision over time. Your phonetic transcription is a beautiful work of art, Lughaidh, but requires a lot of background knowledge that is probably not available to the learner in this case to decipher it. Context sometimes requires simplifications.

Yeah but we never know if the person who's asked the questions can read IPA or not... It may happen ! :-D

quote:

I see that you have used [ɾ̝] for the slender "r". What IPA symbol(s) do you use for the Scottish "r"? What about the Spanish "r"? Are the Scottish "r" and the Spanish "r" significantly different from each other ?

I've not studied these languages so I can't say. I know there are two r-phonemes in Spanish, a one-tap r [ɾ] and a trill [r]. I'd say both exist in Scottish English, although they are not phonemes (I think).
Now about the way they are realised in these 2 languages, as I said I've not studied these languages so I can't say more.

quote:

I am still trying to find a good way to explain the slender "r" sound to English speakers who don't know a foreign langauge (or at least an explanation for times when I cannot assume that they do). It seems almost like the french "j" in je /ʒə/ or the /ʒ/ sound in "version" /vɜ:(r)ʒən/ yet subtly different, further back onto the alveolar ridge, but this is not easy to explain to someone who speaks only English.

I usually say that the sound is halfway between the zh-sound (as in pleasure), z, and a one-tap r (as t or d between vowels in parts of America... I guess).

quote:

Is there a sound in English that is closer than the /ʒ/? Even if we cannot expect a perfect match, I think we can at least look for the "nearest closest fit".

Yeah. I gave the IPA just in case Sandra knew it...

quote:

Well in Connemara probably the n's would be different too: I'd guess /N'air'i:N/. Isn't the first one slender since it's followed by an é ?

Ah, so it should be. Not sure about the first one being /N'/ or /n'/. Ó Siadhail definitely gives /əN/ for an:

Go n-éirí an bóthar leat.

/gə N'air'i:N bo:r l'at/ or /gə n'air'i:N bo:r l'at/