Talk:Irish orthography

message: Can we have an (rough) english equivalent for all of these? 79.75.64.248 (talk) 00:00, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question? 

message: The new Spelling reform section says, "The Irish Texts Society's 1904 Irish–English bilingual dictionary by Patrick S. Dinneen used traditional spellings." But even Dinneen's dictionary uses some reformed spellings, such as sp and sc instead of sb and sg, -as instead of -us in words like solas, consistent use of éa instead of eu, and eo rather than eó to mark [o:] after a slender consonant. So while many early 20th century texts spell the word for "story" sgeul and the word for "knowledge" eólus, Dinneen spells them scéal and eolas as they're spelled today. —Angr (talk) 15:50, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling reform section 

message: Though the Irish for kilometre is ciliméadar, it is always abbreviated as "km" on road signs. Can anyone say why, if there is no letter K? The article says - "k is the only letter not to be listed by Ó Dónaill." Is it bad Irish on the road signs, or did they think nobody would notice, or does nobody care anyway??86.42.192.214 (talk) 15:42, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: km is an international symbol for the kilometre, it's the same in all languages. CodeCat (talk) 15:51, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Apart from being an international symbol and used in most (though not all) languages, using "cm" for "ciliméadar" would also be confusing as we also have "ceintiméadar" for centimetre. ‣Mac Tíre Cowag 16:07, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Use of K

message: Most examples are given with only one pronunciation, and there's no mention of whether it's supposed to be the “standard” one, the most common one, or the one from a particular dialect. For example, it says ao is pronounced /eː/ in the word aon /eːn̪ˠ/ "one" and its derivativeswell, Foclóir Póca says aon is /i:n/, and there are dialects where ao is normally /eː/, so a statement like that only applies to some dialects, and the article gives no clue as to which ones. Same applies to most of the exceptions (ceann is /canˠ/ according to Foclóir Póca and /caunˠ/ in Munster, beag is /bʲɛɡ/ in FP and (IIRC) /bʲaɡ/ in Ulster, ...) ― A. di M.​plé​dréachtaí 23:14, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: When I started this page, the examples were in a vaguely Connemara/Aran Islands-ish sort of accent, but perhaps not terribly consistent. Since then I've been meaning to come back and represent all the dialects more consistently and with sources, but have been daunted by the enormity of the task. You can see at User:Angr/Irish orthography the sort of plan I have for this page, although I haven't worked on that draft in a very long time. To your specific examples, I think the Lárchanúint is the only "accent" of Irish where aon is /iːn/ rather than /eːn/ (at least, I'm unaware of any native accent that pronounces it /iːn/, but that doesn't mean there aren't any). As for beag in Donegal, Quiggin gives /bʲɪɡ/, Wagner /bʲʌɡ/, and Lucas /bʲɛɡ/, but I've never heard /bʲaɡ/. Angr (talk) 05:53, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, that draft looks way better than this page. (/ʌ/ in a phonemic transcription? And why the hell did the ITÉ standardize on pronunciations no-one uses? I can't remember anyone pronouncing anois with /ɔ/ either.) For now, I'll just add a note somewhere stating that the pronunciations are those in Connacht Irish. ― A. di M.​plé​dréachtaí 10:03, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the character Wagner uses is actually "ø", but I don't think he means it in its IPA sense. AFAIK no dialect of Irish has front rounded vowels. Ní Chasaide uses /ʌ/ to represent the vowel of oladh in Gweedore, so I commandeered it in my comment above to stand in for Wagner's "ø" as it seemed to be the closest vowel available. Donegal vowels are a terrible mess; the literature is full of very vague descriptions, punctilious transcriptions of clearly subphonemic allophones (but without labeling them as such), and nonstandard uses of phonetic characters. I can't always tell when the differences between authors describing different Donegal accents are due to actual dialectal differences and when they're merely due to the authors' idiosyncrasies. Re ITÉ and Lárchanúint, I've also never heard anyone pronounce gloine with /ɔ/. Angr (talk) 10:36, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: So much for the “the O in Foclóir Póca's transcription of anois is just a typo for I” theory. :-) ― A. di M.​plé​dréachtaí 14:18, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope, I'm afraid the rule in Lárchanúint is "‹oi› is always pronounced /o/, regardless of reality. If they wanted it to be pronounced /əˈnɪʃ/, they should have spelled it anuis." Angr (talk) 14:26, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I just checked. It says indeed anois [əˈnos´]. That's simply insane. Not a soul says that. -- Evertype·✆ 12:20, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  What dialect are the pronunciations supposed to be from? 

message: In the forthcoming edition of The Hobbit in Irish a Tengwar mode for Irish will be published. Would a description of this be out of scope for the present article? -- Evertype·✆ 12:18, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd think so. In fact, I doubt it would meet the general notability guideline for inclusion in Wikipedia, unless it "has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject", i.e. if it's discussed by people other than the people responsible for creating it and for the translation. Angr (talk) 12:27, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tengwar mode for Irish 

message: I don't speak Irish, I've just read a few things about it. I wonder why the word is is pronounced with an [s] instead of [ʃ]. Shouldn't it be [ɪʃ], since i is a slender consonant? - So is it an exception? Are there more? And could they be listed? Thanks.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.83.205.123 (talk) 17:39, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, is (both the copula and the conjunction, which is a contraction of agus) is pronounced with [sˠ] despite being next to i. It's an exception. The exception to the exception is that the copula (but not the conjunction) is pronounced [ɪʃ], or just [ʃ], before é, í, iad. So is é a dúirt seo "He's the one who said this" is pronounced [ʃeː dˠuːɾʲtʲ ʃɔ], but is é ina shuí anseo "while he was sitting here" (literally "and him sitting here") is pronounced [ɪsˠ eː ɪnˠə hiː nʃɔ]. Angr (talk) 19:05, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  The word ''is'' 

message: This is a low-quality image. The edges of the letters are not smooth, and the letter "names" use some sort of quasi-phonetic spelling. It looks it was put together in an old version of Microsoft Paint. It would be nice if someone redid it. I was thinking particularly of User:Evertype, but if someone else has the necessary typeface (I don't), by all means go ahead and do it. (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 21:16, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irish typeface image 

message: Have the silent vowels that indicate broad/slender been inserted to indicate this, or were they originally really there, affecting the consonants, and have these vowels subsequently been lost?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.82.82 (talk) 21:41, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a mixture of both, but mostly they were inserted to indicate slenderness. This was done already in Old Irish, but the rules were different then and may not always have been consistent. Old Irish didn't require consonants to be surrounded by the same type of vowel on both sides. Instead, the slenderness was normally implied by the following vowel only. A slenderising silent "i" was added before a consonant to show slenderness when a slenderising vowel did not already follow it, which was primarily at the end of a word but also in cases where syllables containing "e" or "i" had disappeared, leaving the slenderness as an after-effect. Most importantly, word-final consonants that were preceded by "e" were generally broad, such as cet "hundred" (pronounced with slender "c" and broad "d"). In these cases, the vowel has since changed to "a" as an effect of the following broad consonant, but the slenderness of the preceding consonant was kept, hence the modern cead. Keep in mind that Old Irish spelling was not quite regular and so words might be spelled in unpredictable or counterintuitive ways. I'm sure User:Angr can elaborate. CodeCat (talk) 21:51, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep, what she said. It's only short e that became /a/ (spelled ea) between a slender consonant and a broad consonant; céad "hundred" has a long /e:/ in both Old and Modern Irish. You're thinking of Old Irish cet (/ced/) "permission", which became modern Irish cead (/cad/). In Scottish Gaelic, it's remained a mid vowel, so in that language cead is pronounced /cʰet/. Sometimes, however, the silent vowels don't seem to be silent any more because of the on-glides and off-glides. For example, you often hear cúig "five" pronounced [kuːi̯ɟ], in which case the i does seem to correspond to a sound, just not one that's present at the phonemic level. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:20, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:   Yes, I meant short e. I always think that céad has a short e for some reason, maybe my dad taught it wrong to me at some point and it stuck. Anyway, would I be correct to say that in the first syllable of an inherited word, an e or i (with no fada) after the initial consonant always represents an etymological vowel, while an e before the last consonant of the syllable is etymological but an i is an unetymological slenderising vowel? CodeCat (talk) 12:54, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't think you ever get e before a consonant in (Modern) Irish except in the digraph ae (e.g. Gael, laethanta). And i obviously isn't merely a slenderizing vowel when it's by itself (e.g. tuigim), but otherwise yes, in ai ei oi ui and ái éi ói úi the first vowel is the etymological one and the i marks the following consonant as slender. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:36, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question about silent vowels and broad/slender consonants 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Irish orthography. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110722030235/http://www.englishspellingsociety.org/journals/j22/irish.php to http://www.englishspellingsociety.org/journals/j22/irish.php
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20131005001529/http://www.ahg.gov.ie/en/Irish/CentralTranslationUnit/TheScopeoftheProcess/ to http://www.ahg.gov.ie/en/Irish/CentralTranslationUnit/TheScopeoftheProcess/
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 11:46, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: When I put Irish names that include Mc or Mac in all caps, should the “c” and “a” be capitalized? For example, I was watching golf and I saw the name “RORY McILROY”. Is this right, or should it be MCILROY? Either way, it should be added to the capitalization section with a reference. Worst Username (talk) 22:52, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: It is a style guide decision for the publisher. Ireland does not have any equivalent of the Academie Française to rule on such things. But for what it is worth, MCILROY looks totally weird in my opinion. VanHALEN or VANHALEN anyone? --Red King (talk) 21:15, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Putting names in All Caps 

message: Do you have sources for the pronunciation of obh, odh, ogh, and omh as /ou/?  The linguist Brian Ó Raghallaigh, for example, transcribes them all as /au/, which is the same pronunciation he uses for abh and amh. Esszet (talk) 14:09, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry for taking so long, but I also saw that you changed the pronunciation of aon, so I tried to find out exactly how it is pronounced.  There's apparently variation between /eːn̪ˠ/ and /iːn̪ˠ/ in Connacht and Ulster (see here and here (in the bulleted list under "Vowels")), so I'm trying to get confirmation that that is indeed the case.  I still don't have a definitive answer there, but I changed /ou/ back to /əu/ and made some other changes as well. Esszet (talk) 23:22, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation of diphthongs 

message: Is h really called 'hh'? No vowels in the name? Koro Neil (talk) 23:54, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  The name of h 

message: Judging by the page Eoin, word-initial eo- is not  but . Is this accurate? It should probably be included in the table if so. Rua (mew) 11:17, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Word-initial eo- 

message: Under vowels, various examples are given after this:
"Between a consonant and a broad vowel, e and i are usually non-phonemic in the same way. This applies to:"
One of the examples given is "cailin".  However, shouldn't that be "cailín" (with a fada on the second "i")? 2A02:C7D:EC13:9700:5516:CF3F:9713:131D (talk) 13:36, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cailin 

message: The part of the vowel table for <ai> implies that that digraph only represents /ɛ/ in three words, after <bh>, but in another part of the vowel table the word <aici> is written in IPA as /ˈɛcɪ/. 108.49.179.27 (talk) 13:08, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  <ai> /ɛ/