How is Cnoc pronounced in each dialect? I've only heard it spoken by a Donegal person as is Cnoc Fola.

/n/ is almost invariably maintained after initial /k/ in West Muskerry. The only exception that comes to mind is Conchubhar which gets contracted to /kro'hu:r/.

It's /kruk/ throughout Connemara.

In Ulster, "cn-" is always "cr-" (sometimes the following vowel is nasalised).

Cnoc Fola is pronounced as Croc Fola.

Normally in Connachta they say "Croc" as well.
In Munster I think most (if not all) people say "Cnoc" with an n sound.

Where is Conchubhar pronounced as /kon'hu:r/ or equivalent?

and where how did they get murphy from Ó Múirchú??

Ó Murchú or Ó Murchaidh. If you replace ch by an f sound in the second form, you get a name that sounds like O'Murphy...
I dunno who says /konhu:r'/. In Ulster we say Ó Crochúir too.

quote:

and where how did they get murphy from Ó Múirchú??

I've often wondered about this myself.
(Ó/Mac) Murchadha /mur@xu:/ to Murphy /m@rfi:/

Perhaps the common pronunciation (at least in part of the country) was either /mur@x@/ *, or /mur@xi:/ based on "Murchaidh", which led to an anglicisation something like "(O'/Mac) Murroghy" /m@roxi:/
(* terminal /@/ usually becomes "y" in anglicisations).
Then, just as in words like "cough" or "enough", the "gh"/x/ was replaced by an "f" leading to the form we know today.

That's about the best theory I've come up with anyway :)



P.S. "Ó Múirchú" is not the Irish form. "Murchadha" (or "Murchaidh") is the gen. of the common old Irish forename "Murchadh". "Muirchú" was a different name.


P.P.S. Why does text between forward slashes turn green?

I think you have included an "ag" symbol in the text between the slashes, so making it into a clickable email address.

Thanks for explaining that.
Problem is I don't know how else to represent a "schwa" with my keyboard.

the symbol often used is an upside down e but how you get it out of the keyboard is another qn

Thx.

quote:

It's /kruk/ throughout Connemara.

I hear it now. I just listened to 'Amhrán Chamais' by Sarah Ghriallais on the Cumar CD. She clearly pronounces Cnoc Leitir Móir as you describe.

Peter's phonemicisation reminds me that I should point out that the vowel is also lowered to /u/ in Muskerry (and, presumably, other parts of Munster as well). Come to think of it, what dialects actually preserve /o/ here?

Cnoc is pronounced as it is written here -North West Cork.The 'K' sound in the initial C is not silent.But it is silent when 'Cnoc' comes at the beginning of a place name, just like in the English word 'knock'.Whether it should be I don't know!

Macdara, North West Cork is not a Gaeltacht area. If the word Cnoc is pronounced the same as the English word Knock, that is because they are monoglot speakers of English there.

quote:

Where is Conchubhar pronounced as /kon'hu:r/ or equivalent?

I have heard it pronounced this way in Corca Dhuibhne

id pronounce it cnoc - northerners pronounce it croc - like mrá instead of mná

conchubhar - cru-hir

To get the schwa, at least for representing it here, type the following, all on one line:

backslash char{601}


The backslash is the actual backslash character. If I type it above you won't see the schwa.

also, no space between backslash and char

ə

Cad é an schwa seo? An dara siolla sa bhfocal "doras" an ea?

Ba mhaith liom an IPA a fhoghlaim. Níl puinn eolais agam ina thaobh.

Tá an tIPA iontach úsáideach fá choinne na ndaoiní atá suim acu sna teangthacha.

Schwa = ə , mar a deireann tú, an guthaí atá sa darna siolla in "doras" srl.

the anglicisation process of Ireland was very interesting..didn´t Friel write a play with some soldiers "recording" the names in the 19th century..still working out how Murphy came from Ó Murchaidh...mur-o-kee..mur-fee..hhmm

Go raibh maith agat, a Lughaidh. Cad a thugtar ar an nguta ceilte i bhfocail mar "fearg" nó "An Bheilg"?

Is beag nach bhfuil dhá shiolla sna focail sin: "fear-ag" agus "an bheil-ig". Cothaíonn siadsan trioblóid don Ghaeilgeoir sa Bhéarla "farm" nó "faer-um" agus "film" nó "fill-um" srl. "Svarabkhati vowel" nó rud éigin mar sin????

Maidir le dráma Friel "Translations" atá air agus is ag leagan logainmneacha ar léarscáil a bhí siad. Murab ionann is in Albain mar ar scríobh siad na hainmneacha i nGaeilge d'aistrigh siad iad in Éirinn nó rinne siad traslitriúchán orthu nó an dá rud san aon logainm amháin. Tá sé sin le cur ina cheart go fóill.

Ó thaobh na foghraíochta dó, an chuid is mó don am is schwa atá in "fearg" agus [ɪ] in "Beilg".

Agus thig linn a ráidht gur "guthaithe cúnta" (svarabhakti, helping vowels...) atá sna guthaithe sin.

(Message edited by Lughaidh on April 26, 2009)

Schwa? Nach iadsan na neachtanna bochta a ndéantar sléacht gan trócaire orthu in Éirinn i gcúrsaí deaslabhra sa Bhéarla?

Cé chum an téarma "schwa"? Gearmánach éigin, déarfainn!

Go bhfios domh, is focal Eabhraise "schwa", trascríofa san aibítir Laidneach do réir leitriú na Gearmáinise - fuaimníthear mar "shfah" é.
Is guthaí do chuid na hEabhraise an schwa sin.

A Thaidhgín, I have seen the slender version of schwaa referred to as schwi (or shwee) and written as a schwa with a dot above it.

In 'Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne', Ó Sé writes the "slender schwa" with the /ɪ/ which is the sound we actually hear, most of the time. Looks like we may hear a kind of [ə̝] too, in Connemara, for example.

Seant,that's not what I wrote! Enlish speakers here pronounce - mar shampla - local placename Seana Cnoc quite correctly despite its more common English spelling :Shanaknock.Correct pronunciation persists despite the prevalence of Béarla spelling on maps and signposts.I ran a filling station here and was often driven to distraction trying to give directions to hapless foreigners.It wasn't their fault,the English versions of local names sometimes work ok.But tis a minefield out there.
'Where's Mollowrow mate?' asks a young Aussie.Níl fhíos agam of course so I ask loads of people.'Never heard of it'is the standard response.He proffers a scrap of paper bearing the legend 'Molloghroe'.Fair stab at it, I would have thought.No good,nobody knows.Then my mate Donncha gets a 'flash' - 'he means Mullach Rua!'
You are right that native speakers would pronounce initial 'c'.But monoglot anglophones still use pretty good Irish pronunciation here ,that aside.Even people here who don't like Irish -and thats quite a few - use e xpressions like 'no meas in it' or 'gan dabht'There is or was a tiny Gaeltacht not too far away - Cuillin Uí Caoimh

Did Shan Ó Cuív's ancestors come from Cuillin Uí Caoimh?

quote:

To get the schwa, at least for representing it here, type the following, all on one line:

backslash char{601

}
ə
Thanks for that, Student.
Is there anywhere a list of the codes for these different symbols can be found?

Anseo http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/ipachart.html

I like this. http://weston.ruter.net/projects/ipa-chart/view/keyboard/. Just click on the symbols and build your transcription to copy and paste elsewhere.

Here's a link to Daltai's formatting guidelines:

http://www.daltai.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/daltai/discus/discus.pl?pg=formatting


Or just look under help.

Seant,I'm told all O'Keefes come from this place and its hinterland ,which was formerly known as 'Pobail Uí Caoimh'.They have lived in this part of Cork since the 14th Century and maybe longer.You meet them everywhere now though.

But getting back to the n/r split:when I say the Rosary I now find myself saying 'mrá' instead of 'mná.( they are both used on the cd by different speakers).This is odd cos otherwise I find Gaoth Doir hard enough to understand!

What is the Caighdeán on this topic?

quote:

What is the Caighdeán on this topic?

CO is a written standard, not a spoken one, and according to CO, all these cases are written with n.

The Caighdeán is not about pronunciation, so there is no CO verdict on how to pronounce mná or cnoc.

The Foclóir Póca comes with a lárchanúint, or suggested made-up central pronunciation, that the authors bizarrely suggested in the preface Gaeltacht natives might try to adopt in formal situations. But it is not part of the Caighdeán and as far as I know fell flat on its face as a suggestion, partly because some of the pronunciations in the book are not found anywhere.

The logical thing with a CO largely based on Galway Irish would be to adopt Galway pronunciation, but that is not what happened. Basically the lárchanúint was stillborn.

I still wish they would produce 3 versions of the Foclóir Póca with pronunciations for all three dialects. Or even include them all in one dictionary. Can you imagine a version of Ó Dónall's with 3 pronunciations for each headword? That would be awesome!!

quote:

I still wish they would produce 3 versions of the Foclóir Póca with pronunciations for all three dialects. Or even include them all in one dictionary. Can you imagine a version of Ó Dónall's with 3 pronunciations for each headword? That would be awesome!!

Well, there is the problem that the "three dialects" are something of a convenient fiction. The Cork pronunciations I'm learning don't always match up with Kerry, much less An Rinn. I suppose taking the variety of the most vibrant Gaeltacht in each region would be a reasonable compromise, but still one guaranteed to make a lot of speakers unhappy.

But, really, what's the need? For the most part, I find the pronunciations extremely predictable. There are exceptions, of course, but these could be noted when necessary without cluttering up the entries with renderings of perfectly ordinary correspondences.

There is the additional problem that Ó Dónaill has regularised spellings (while giving variants). Which pronunciation would you give? The stilted pronunication of a native speaker trying to say the word as written, the pronunciation of the word used naturally by the native speaker, or a theoretical value based on how the word might be pronounced?

(An interesting aside - when Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin was working on Gugalaí Gug he deliberately avoided giving the children written texts to learn the rhymes - instead he had good native speakers record them. His experience is that read texts are pronounced differently to living speech. Citation needed, as the wikipedians say. I don't recall where I found this gem, you'll have to take my word for it).

A partially related question: is the fact that Luimneach is Anglicised with an "r" (Limerick) instead of an "n" a reflection that it is (or perhaps was) pronounced /Lim'r'əx/ rather than /Lim'n'əx/?

Well, yes, you could find the idea of doing a dictionary with pronunciations impossible for various reasons, but I think it would be a reasonable compromise to pick the pronunciations of one Munster area, one Connaught area, and one Ulster area - and show those. It would not mean "these are the only pronunciations".

There is a certain degree of consistency in pronunciation of each dialect - but not every word is predictable. And it would be an astonishing resource. Quite simply, if the Gaeltacht miniser announced the Irish State was going to do this and fund this, we would be advised to immediately express gratitude and support and not get sidetracked into discussions of "and what about An Rinn".

Aonghus raises an issue - the pronunciations of the dialects sometimes cannot be aligned with the spellings. Osna. That is the case, but in the cases where it is the case, it rather shouts the case for spellings that accommodate all dialects. I would handle it thus:


Trá, earlier tráigh [M trɑːgʲ, C trɑː, U trɑi]

Tráigh, gen. Tráighe would have worked perfectly for every dialect in Ireland.


There had been calls from some people for a reform in Irish orthography since the early 20th century. *
Some of the proposed changes were minor, some were radical, but their supporters always claimed the same thing - that learners found the Irish spelling system (and the Gaelic script) a real difficulty and it was a serious impediment to the revival.
Well, eventually they got their way and what was really achieved by it?
-It caused bitterness and division between people who should have been working together.
-It made all manuscripts and books written and published before the 1950/1960's virtually illegible to most Irish people educated after that time. (Worst of all the huge store of Bardic syllabic poetry - the heart and soul of our literary heritage - simply doesn't work unless the original number of syllables are clear.)
-It left us with an orthography which often simply does not represent the pronunciation of modern, living Irish.
This is especially true of Ulster and north Connacht and has led to, understandable, resentment there. A separate written standard for Ulster has even been suggested! I'm sure northern unionists would love that one.
-And, last but not least, it hasn't made one iota of difference in number of children leaving our schools with Irish or the quality of their Irish.

The only good argument for it today is simply the fact that it's been around for some time and changing again would inevitably cause disruption. Is that really a good enough reason to keep it?

(* Standardisation and some changes here and there to match modern pronunciation were certainly needed and there was undoubtedly a case for shortening some words and elements. In cases like the verbal noun ending -(i)ughadh the compromise of accepting -(i)u' (e.g. brostu') could have worked.)

The genitive would be trágha.
In Ulster we say "tráigh", genitive "na trá" (-gha is mute).

To be clear, I am not saying go back to the old spelling. I am saying published dictionaries with the genuine pronunciations in them. I think the first proposition would create division, the second is one that everyone here will support (probably).

My dictionary has genuine pronunciations in it, but since it's a pocket dictionary I had only space to put one pronunciation (Ulster) for words except when they are words used outside Ulster (I gave Cois Fhairrge pronunciation for Connemara words and Corca Dhuibhne pronunciation for Munster words).

You have published a dictionary??? What is it called?

Thig leat é a cheannacht ansin :

http://www.coop-breizh.fr/lire-3/livres-3/autres-langues-333/dico-poche-fran-ais -irlandais-2033/zoom-fr.htm

agus ar shuíomhannaí eile fosta.
Foclóir póca atá ann, níl mórán abairtí, déarfainn gur "lexicon" atá ann, le cupla abairt. Ach tá an fuaimniú ann (ní "lárfhuaimniú" cumtha, mar atá san Fhoclóir Póca)...

níos saoire anseo:
http://tinyurl.com/co8cy2

quote:

The genitive would be trágha.
In Ulster we say "tráigh", genitive "na trá" (-gha is mute).

Yes you're right there. I see it's /trɑ:wə/ in Mayo though and slender "gh" or "dh" is still pronounced /j/ in similar positions eg. páighe.

A Lughaidh, a chara,

What pronunciation did you give for the Irish for a "yawn" méanfach; the "senses" na céadfaí; and "fur" fionnadh? This is not a trick question. I find difficulty with those words and I have never heard them spoken.

Tréaslaím leat foilsiú an fhoclóra. I congratulate you on the publication of the dictionary.

Cionaodh > níos saoire ach as cló (do réir a bhfuil scríofaí, ach chan dóigh liom é go bhfuil sé fíor).

Méanfach > [ˈmeːnˠɸʷɑh]

Fionnadh [ˈɸɤn̪ˠhuw] (like fionnthadh in Ulster)

Céadfaí is not in my dictionary but in Ulster it's pronounced [ˈkʲeːd̪ˠɸʷi] (I heard it in the song "Mallaí Chroithlí" by Altan).

Scéal grinn:

An eager English learner walks into "The Comprehensive English Phonetic Dialect Dictionaries Store" in New York - which, as one can imagine, is the biggest shop in the world - and asks the shop assistant for the Kansas City Phonetic Dialect Dictionary.

The shop assistant looks around sceptically at the almost empty shelves and then taps something into the computer. After reading what has come up on the screen he looks up at the eager English learner.

"We don't have Kansas City at the moment. In fact, we're pretty low in stock right now. All I can offer you would be phonetic dictionaries with the dialect of Canada, the dialect of Australia or the dialect of Kinnegad."

"Oh, you'll have to be more specific than that," demanded the eager English learner, "what part of Kinnegad?"

(Message edited by ormondo on April 29, 2009)