- This topic has 20 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 10 years, 8 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
New website to accompany a book.
Welcome! This website accompanies the book Fuaimeanna na Gaeilge, a beginner’s course in phonetics and phonology. The book describes the vowels and consonants of three dialects: the Irish of Gaoth Dobhair, the Irish of An Cheathrú Rua and the Irish of Corca Dhuibhne. This website supports readers with a catalog of the sounds and sample recordings referred to in the book.
Go raibh maith agat, a Aonghuis! Is iontach an áis í. Níl ann anois ach an leabhar a cheannacht chomh maith! Cé go bhfuil imní orm go gcuirfidh sé stop leis an díospóireacht a bhíonn againn faoi chúrsaí foghraíochta. 😉
Welcome! This website accompanies the book Fuaimeanna na Gaeilge, a beginner’s course in phonetics and phonology. The book describes the vowels and consonants of three dialects: the Irish of Gaoth Dobhair, the Irish of An Cheathrú Rua and the Irish of Corca Dhuibhne. This website supports readers with a catalog of the sounds and sample recordings referred to in the book.
I had a look at this and I think it’s a great site. I have to say, though, that I disagree with some of the IPA notions, particularly for Gaoth Dobhair. Lughaidh will know this better as he’s both a trained linguist and an expert on that dialect, but if I look at, for instance, what the author puts down as /æË/… I’m confused.
If you visit the relevant page http://fuaimeanna.ie/ga/Recordings.aspx?PhonemeID=6 you can listen to these words
– a ghá. The author has /æË/, I hear /​​ɛË/. That’s what I hear in most cases with this speaker.
– áineas. The author has /æË/, in my ears this tends towards /​eË/
– bearr. The author has /æË/, I hear /​​aË/.
– faoi. The author has /æË/(!!), I hear /​​iË/.
– Máire. The author has /æË/, I hear something like /​​əi/.
– sláinte. The author has /æË/, and here I also hear /æË/, though close to /​​ɛË/.
– Stiofán. The author has /æË/, I hear a short /a/.
– tháith. The author has /æË/, I hear /​​ɛi/.I hear almost all of the sounds above more than once, but only gave one example for each. Most of the time I hear /​​ɛË/, and I can understand the author using /æË/ instead. I think it’s already a bit of a stretch to include everything between /​​aË/ and /​​ɛË/ under the same phoneme, and when the author goes from /​​aË/ almost all the way up to /​​iË/, then I get confused.
On a minor note, the Munster speaker comes from Corca Dhuibhne. And he comes from Baile na hAbha in Corca Dhuibhne. The question for the reader then is if he’s from [url=https://maps.google.fr/?ll=52.155321,-10.198059&spn=0.013507,0.038581&t=h&z=15]Baile na hAbha[/url], from [url=https://maps.google.fr/?ll=52.249034,-10.278783&spn=0.013479,0.038581&t=h&z=15]Baile na hAbha[/url] or perhaps from [url=https://maps.google.fr/?ll=52.140205,-10.4498&spn=0.013512,0.038581&t=h&z=15]Baile na hAbha[/url]. When you visit the Corca Dhbuibhne Gaeltacht, you’re never far from Baile na hAbha 😉
Is as Baile na hAbha in aice le Más a’ Tiompáin é Dara.
Is fíor é sin, ach ceapaim gurb ait é, an triúir acu go leir ansan, in aice lena chéile 😉
Maidir le Dara Ó Cinnéide, labharíonn sé an teanga i ngach aon aít. Is breá liom go mór an óráid bheag so 😀
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVE82iitjC4I’m not an expert on Donegal Irish, but if my memory serves me right “faoi” is pronounced “fá” in that dialect, so perhaps rendering it as /æË/ isn’t that far off the mark. Though I imagine the actual realisation might be closer to /a/, when the word isn’t stressed. Think about, for instance, the phrase “faoi dtaobh de”. The shortening of the vowel “á” in an unstressed syllable, which is typical of Donegal Irish, would also explain why you hear an /a/ sound in “Stiofán”. In words like “Máire” and “tháith”, I would say the quality of the long vowel is altered by the following /i/ sound (in “Máire”, the intervocalic slender “r” become /j/, hence the English spelling “Moya”). However, this is just my personal theory which could be wrong/inaccurate in some points.
Onuvanja, that’s a valid point. I’m not saying that the sound files are wrong (on the contrary, I’m sure they are correct) and I’m not necessarily saying that the IPA versions the author gives are wrong either. What I am saying, most definitely, is that they don’t correlate. When I listen to both the Galway speaker and the Kerry speaker, I think that what they say is well matched by the IPA the author uses. Not so for the Donegal speaker. What she says and what the author writes are (too) often two very different things.
Fair enough, Jonas. I suppose /a/ could be regarded as a realisation of /æË/ in a particular environment (unstressed syllable), and it can be hard to draw a clear line between /​​ɛË/ and /æË/. Perhaps that depends on the idiolect of the speaker. But then, I’m saying that without having listened to the actual recordings. 🙂
Fair enough, Jonas. I suppose /a/ could be regarded as a realisation of /æË/ in a particular environment (unstressed syllable), and it can be hard to draw a clear line between /​​ɛË/ and /æË/. Perhaps that depends on
the idiolect of the speaker. But then, I’m saying that without having listened to the actual recordings. 🙂Oh sure, I definitely understand using the same symbol for /a:/ and /æË/. I can also very well understand using the same symbol for /​​ɛË/ and /æË/ when describinh North Donegal as I believe the two are in free variation there. Lughaigh will know that better. I’m already a bit surprised when both /​​ɛË/ and /aË/ are covered by the same symbol. And when we stretch that to even include everything between /a:/ and /i:/, well, then something is clearly wrong. Just listen to those words by using the link and tell me if you agree with the IPA 😉
Just listened to the recordings. I have to say I hear pretty much the same sounds as you. Perhaps in “tháith”, I hear /æ/ + /i/, if that’s a possible notation. But yes, “áineas” has a definity /e:/ sound, which is curious.
However, I think I see why all these seemingly disparate words are grouped together. What the table suggests is that at least in one of the dialects, though not necessarily all of them, the word in question has a long “a” vowel (or /æ/ in Donegal).
Finally, as regards “faoi”, the girl on the recording does say /fi:/, so my guess would be that she was influenced by the Standard spelling of the word, i.e. the fact that it was spelt “faoi”, rather than “fá”.
On a closer look, there seem to be also inconsistencies in the IPA spellings given for Connemara Irish. For example, “am” (shortened form of “agam”) is transcribed as /​ˈ​ɑË​mË / and “am” (“time”) as /​ˈ​a​mË /, while it should be the other way round! Same thing about “ainn” (shortened form of “againn”) and “baladh” (= “boladh” in Standard Irish), which should both have /a(:)/, instead of /​ɑË​/. These are two completely different sounds in Connemara Irish, the former has an /æ/ colouring, whereas the latter almost resembles /o:/. I wonder how could the transcribers have mixed them up …
I also find it odd that the first “a” of “scadán” is transcribed /​​ʌ​/. I always thought this sign stood for the vowel in the English word “sun” (as pronounced in RP), whereas “scadán” should sound something like “scudán”. Very strange.
What I have noticed is that the speaker of Gaoth Dobhair simply reads the words and forms as they are written even when they don’t exist in her dialect…
On top of that, there’s quite a lot of mistakes in the phonetic transcriptions, in my opinion..Concerning “fà/faoi”, both exist in GD, but they don’t mean the same thing, faoi means under and fà means about.
What I have noticed is that the speaker of Gaoth Dobhair simply reads the words and forms as they are written even when they don’t exist in her dialect…
On top of that, there’s quite a lot of mistakes in the phonetic transcriptions, in my opinion..Concerning “fà/faoi”, both exist in GD, but they don’t mean the same thing, faoi means under and fà means about.
Very interesting. I guess there could be a point in that if the idea of the book (which I haven’t read) simply is to show different sounds. Though it’s a bit weird, it would make more sense to only include words that really exist. By the way, I already noticed the same thing for the Corca Dhuibhne speaker. He pronounces every word with a Munster pronunciation, but some of the words would be different in Corca Dhuibhne. So I’m not surprised to hear that the same is true for Gaoth Dobhair, though I’m of course not able to tell that myself.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
