Title: New thoughts on “Quick and Dirty”
Message:The real problem with
IPA is it is All things to All people.
Thus only a tiny subset is applicable to Irish, but because of its
structure, the tiny subset cannot stand on its own.
Thus its usage is Grossly INEFFICIENT.A Chara
Can you please clarify the above a little more? (1) I’m not sure what you mean
exactly. Is it that IPA is too universal and not particular and tailored
exactly to Irish pronunciation? I see what you mean in that IPA is scalable
and is meant to be universal and applicable to all the sounds of all the
languages. That is its basic purpose, to be an international standard.
How well or precisely the IPA sounds for Irish match the various Canúintí
must be left for native speakers to confirm. It seems they do.You need to be able to use nearly 40 characters to encode Irish,
and only a fraction of that 40 can be typed on a standard keyboard, such as
on a phone.
Q+D uses the Irish alphabet with only 5 additional characters to the 18,
giving just 23 discounting punctuation marks and standard abbreviations.
I have yet to meet anyone in the street who understands IPA.
Any attempt to write any text in this system looks like the meanderings of a
drunken ink soaked spider.
It is fine for a convocation of professors, but useless, nay, worse than
useless as a vehicle for written Irish.You make a good point that it is not convenient to type.
Can you provide a reference / link to this other phonetic system for Irish? (2)grma
Somehow the original message got lost, so I cut and paste the notification.
I will try to enlarge on my points:
(1) I do not try to devalue IPA as an accurate instrument, if used correctly, but it still needs a heavy shoe-horn to fit it to Irish.
It needs lots of little ticks and accents, upside-down and italic letters to cope with the simple facts of broad and slender, and six vowels where we are used to five.
(2) Shán Ó Cuív devised a system based heavily on a regularised system of Irish spelling, being based on phonetics, and the phonetics carefully explained in terms of physiology of the vocal organs.
It is my opinion that this is an excellent start point, but failed to go far enough in some ways, and went too far in others. I have tried to correct these very minor points, as his system, with such faults as I perceive, still work excellently.
My modifications are purely to make it less ambiguous to someone unfamiliar with the difference between a di-graph and a diphthong, or tri-graph, and triphthong.
You will find referenced to the book earlier in this thread, it is titled “The Sounds of Irish”, and the link is:
http://www.box.com/s/fmiogi2bge1a5lms3p0v
I hope, maybe, with considerable help from better Irish speakers than me, and they are not hard to find, for I know so little, that I
might re-code this book into Q+D.
The symbols are easy to convert, but the continuous texts are more difficult as I do not easily understand the ambiguities in Shán’s system. Once these ambiguities are removed we will have a compact, simple, and usable system.
That is my hope, and my prayer.
