A chairde,

Recently on another thread it has been posited that:

quote:

Those who pronounce Sinn Féin with an F either are from Munster or don't speak Irish, I guess.

That is, merely because of this variation in pronunciation of a single word it is concluded that the speaker was from a certain area or did not speak Irish. In order to avoid any unnecessary digression on that thread, I thought I would start a thread on a subject that I find very interesting.

I am native speaker of English here in the United States. I have noticed that some native speakers of English will habitually pronounce words differently than most other people. I'm not necessarily talking about regional differences, although that may be the underlying reason. For example, where I come from, many people pronounce the word "water" as though it's written as "warter." I suspect that many of them don't even know that they're pronouncing it this way. I mentioned it to one of my colleagues at work who also pronounces "water" as "warter" and much to his suprise, he was completely unaware that he was doing such.

Another example is how people pronounce the word "across." Some folks unknowingly pronounce this word as "acrost." I had done this for years until someone pointed it out to me. I wonder if there's an English-language study group out there where I would be labeled as not speaking English because of this.

I do not mean to start a dialect war here, since I fully embrace the cause that the Irish dialects should be preserved. But I would like to know if there are variations in pronunciation in Irish that are not due to dialect differences, but are instead caused by the way native speakers hear words and/or are brought up saying them.

If youse' have any examples, I would love to hear them.

Go raibh maith agaibh,

Student

Tá buille faoi thuairim agus buile faoi thuairim ann a Mhac Léinn. The person guessed, from their perspective, but it doesn't hold up. Generalizations in relation to Irish are always on shaky ground.

Anois, dá mbeadh an t-am agam.

quote:

Another example is how people pronounce the word "across." Some folks unknowingly pronounce this word as "acrost." I had done this for years until someone pointed it out to me. I wonder if there's an English-language study group out there where I would be labeled as not speaking English because of this.

Looks like you didn't understand what I meant by "not speaking Irish". I meant, there are people who don't speak Irish, or just a "cupla focal" they remember from school, and who'll pronounce Shin Fayn because they simply don't know that most speakers say Shin Hayn. They pronounce as it is written.

I didn't mean "they say Shin Fayn so it is obvious they don't speak Irish", I meant "they don't speak Irish so they pronounce the F as an F since it's what is written".

F is Pronounched as F , unless followed by an H ,
Fir , Fear , Fosta , Freisin. And i guess your lack of clarity isnt unlike the reference to " Native Speakers " meaning People who come from Ireland and who Speak Irish. We can all be misunderstoood, especially when its only the written word we have as a Guide.

Níl aon fhuaim ag 'fh' ar chor bith chor ar bith a Theifigh.

Bíonn an fhuaim 'h' go mion minic ag 'f', chomh maith leis an bhfuaim 'f' féin ar ndóigh.
Nuair is mian le duine an fhuaim 'h' a chur in iúl le 'f', caithfear 'f' gan 'h' a scríobh. Ní haon rún an méid sin.

quote:

F is Pronounched as F , unless followed by an H ,
Fir , Fear , Fosta , Freisin. And i guess your lack of clarity isnt unlike the reference to " Native Speakers " meaning People who come from Ireland and who Speak Irish. We can all be misunderstoood, especially when its only the written word we have as a Guide.

Fancy a fight, once again?


As Seosamh said, fh is mute in Irish. If you don't know that, it may be because "it's only the written word you have as a Guide"...

Fhéin is not used in writing anymore except by some people who want to use some old features of spelling (or people who've learnt Irish before the CO).
Go to any Gaeltacht, ask how people write "mise féin" and how they pronounce it. I guess 99% of the people will write "mise féin" and say "mise héin", except in parts of Munster.

F is pronounced as an h in the future and conditional endings too, in most Gaeltachtaí and in most endings. E.g. dhéanfainn : the f is pronounced as an h everywhere except maybe in West Cork and in Waterford. And nobody writes dhéanfhainn.

If I recall correctly, our teachers at Daltaí would pronounce "fein" as either "fayn" or "hayn," as in "agus tu fein." I was taught that they could be used interchangeably and that it wasn't a big deal to do so.

Since we already have quite an active thread on "fein" already, I would like to ask if we could also look at some examples analogous to "water" being pronounced as "warter." Do things like this happen in Irish? Another example in English would be how people pronounce the work "mountain." Some people say "mounTain" and other people say "moun'in." And it isn't necessarily dependent on what part of the country you come from.

By the way, thanks Seosamh for writing in Irish. I always enjoy reading your responses. It's a little struggle for me to understand, but by doing so, I improve my Irish little by little.

Mac Léinn

Smac_muirí's Irish is awesome, it is so idiomatic that it's often hard to understand for us learners :-D

I can't give examples of "personal pronunciations" in Irish but I know it does exist in other languages so I'm sure it does exist in Irish too. People like certain words or certain pronunciation features and use them more than the others. It's quite natural.

Fancy a fight, once again?

That says a lot about you and how you percieve me , So i will not lower myself to answer you. Anyone else percieve what i said to say " I would like a fight ?

Not at all, a Theifeach. But then again who am I to say.... I can't even understand that "not speaking Irish" doesn't mean "not speaking Irish."

Do you say ?
fear = har
fosta = hosta ?
im lost on this one , if this offends you im sorry ?

According to Ella....

You say either and I say either,
You say neither and I say neither
Either, either neither, neither
Let's call the whole thing off.

You like potato and I like potahto,
You like tomato and I like tamahto
Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto,
Let's call the whole thing off.

http://www.rhapsody.com/ella-fitzgerald/the-best-of-ella-fitzgerald-louis-armstr ong/lets-call-the-whole-thing-off/lyrics.html

quote:

That says a lot about you and how you percieve me ,

I perceive you as someone who never misses an opportunity to provoke me...

quote:

Do you say ?
fear = har
fosta = hosta ?
im lost on this one , if this offends you im sorry ?

The word "féin" is an EXCEPTION, ok? Nobody ever said that all the f's of Irish are pronounced as an h, but only that in the word "féin", most native speakers pronounce the f as an h. If you don't believe us, once again go to the Gaeltacht or ask to some Gaeltacht speaker you know around you (or to someone who's learnt Irish in the Gaeltacht).
Quite funny you always insist on saying I just know Irish through books (which isn't true) and that I don't live in Ireland so I can't know as much as you, while you do live there and you don't know such basic things while you can go to the Donegal Gaeltacht in a couple of hours at most and ask anybody there about the pronunciation and spelling of "féin".

Enough of this.

Caoimhín

These discussions are so tiresome and frustrating and are probably very far from the objectives of this website or forum. Elsewhere on this site someone has posted a link to the CO and a cursory read of the Introduction reveals why it had to be developed.

Thankfully, as I have indicated elsewhere, the language is thriving both within and outside the Gaeltacht although not in the sense that its speakers do not know English.

Speakers of Irish know English very well, thank you, and it is to their credit that they also know Irish. They laugh at such pre-occupation by "scholars" with the incidence of "féin" and "fhéin" not to mention one of the best dialects of all where it is pronounced "fhéan". Trivial nonsense.

Get on to learning Raifteirí's poem "Eanach Dhúin" (or more familiarly "Anach Cuain") by heart, or study "Cúirt an Mheoin Oíche" by Brian Mac Giolla Meidhre. There's a challenge.

tadhgín

couldnt have been put better by raferty of bhrian themeselves

quote:

I'm not necessarily talking about regional differences, although that may be the underlying reason. For example, where I come from, many people pronounce the word "water" as though it's written as "warter."

In this case, it is a regional difference: the only people I know who say "warter" are from certain areas of central Maryland and north central Virginia. (Such as my father, who grew up in Sykesville.)

quote:

Bíonn an fhuaim 'h' go mion minic ag 'f', chomh maith leis an bhfuaim 'f' féin ar ndóigh.

Difríonn sé seo ábhair de réir canúna. I Múscraí, mar shampla, deirtear (nó ar a laghad deirtí) anaihe thar ceann anfa, fiarhaí thar ceann fiafraí, córha thar ceann cófra srl.