quote:Thanks, a Lughaidh. I put aimsir, aimsire through the synthesizer at abair.ie, and here's what I got. Would you call that an Ulster short 'a'? I'm asking because it doesn't really match the short 'a' on your own site.
Sounds may change, depending on the following or preceding sound and on many things, and every word may be pronounced in different ways, even by the same person... There's more than one Ulster short a, but describing all variations would take much time. Have a look at books such as The Irish of Cois Fhairrge, you'll have a sample of the phonemes of an Irish dialect and all their "members" ie. variations in context...
quote:If it is, could you possibly post a recording of how aimsir would be pronounced IF it was spelled with an Ulster 'a' fada, so that I can get a better sense of the difference between the two? (I can't do it myself because the link on your site is broken.)
There's more than one "Ulster long a" - on my site I gave a Northwestern one, ie. a sound between "a" and "ay", but in southwestern Donegal or in the Gaeltacht Láir it'd be more like [a:] etc. Anyway I don't think people would use a long a in Ulster in that word.
quote:PS: Hope I've done the sharing of the box.net link correctly. It's the first time I've ever uploaded something.
Aye, it works.