Talk:Irish phonology

message: The chart has  and . One of the diagrams has  and . Since  =  (the IPA symbol is palatalized postalveolar), should the chart read  vs.  instead? kwami (talk) 08:48, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The sound phonetically is apparently usually  = , but it's a little hard to pin down precisely. Some sources describe it as , and since effectively all Irish speakers are bilingual with English, it's pretty likely they use exactly the same sound when speaking Irish as when speaking English. This article originally used , but I later changed it to  due to complaints (probably still on this talk page) that  was inaccurate and/or misleading. I figure for a broad transcription,  is good enough and less likely to be confused with /ç/, which is a completely different phoneme.  would work too, but it has a touch of OR since while some published works use  and others use , none uses . —Angr If you've written a quality article... 16:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Per English phonology,  is often slightly labialised. This lip-rounding is even stronger in German. I'd expect the Irish phoneme to never exhibit labialisation, unless perhaps under the influence by English. (Does Hiberno-English show this lip-rounding?) As I am so used to  showing labialisation (in Polish, which features a contrastive phoneme , the postalveolar fricative it contrasts with is actually retroflex, so it doesn't provide a true – contrast, either), distinguishing  from an unlabialised  can be very difficult for me. So the Irish slender sibilant is indeed actually more palatalised that plain , at least originally? Then the article should note this for the user not to be confused by the choice of symbol (as in be led to conclude it is completely equivalent with English , including potential labialisation). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:27, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  sibilants 

message: The article should make clear in the 1st sentence that it's talking about Irish Gaelic, not Irish English, rather than leaving it to a picture & the 4th paragraph.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.164.119 (talk) 10:48, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Something like "The phonology of the Irish language varies..." would be a quick fix to that.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 14:02, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro 

message: Impressive work!
Krym66 (talk) 23:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you! —Angr If you've written a quality article... 06:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

text: The broad/slender distinction in consonants is discussed throughout the article. The reflection of the distinction in the grammar is outside the scope of this page, which is just about the phonology, but could be brought up in the various pages relating to Irish morphology. A syllable-based account would be appropriate for a linguistics paper, but not for Wikipedia, which rejects original research. —Angr 15:31, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Cutting down the article and incorporating it back into the main Irish language article would obviously be a change for the worse that would serve no purpose at all. If you feel you can improve or expand this article, go ahead, but remember to avoid original research (i.e. you can only discuss issues that have already been discussed in other people's published work) and to cite your sources. —Angr 06:12, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Congratulations on FA 

message: Are the diphthongs rising or falling? That is, should the  be placed under the first or second component? kwami (talk) 20:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: They're all falling. Both /iə/ and /əi/ are  and . Scottish Gaelic has some rising diphthongs, I think, but Irish doesn't. —Angr 20:43, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  diphthongs 

message: "Many of the phonological processes found in Irish are found also in its nearest relatives, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. For example, both languages contrast "broad" and "slender" consonants, but only at the coronal and dorsal places of articulation; both Scottish Gaelic and Manx have lost the distinction in labial consonants." This is contradicted in the Scottish Gaelic article, which lists slender versions of b, bh, p, and ph. I assume one of the articles is wrong, though I am not knowledgeable enough to tell which one. Lesgles (talk) 01:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: As that article shows, the "slender labials" of Gaelic are actually clusters of labial consonant + /j/ in initial position. It claims there are also clusters of /j/ + labial consonant in final position, but I'm not sure about that. But a cluster isn't the same thing as a single palatalized consonant, which is what Irish has. —Angr 08:25, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I see. Thanks for clearing that up! Lesgles (talk) 00:49, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slender labials in Scottish Gaelic? 

message: Palatalized consonants normally are not considered part of the phonetic inventory of the Bulgarian language. — Klimenok (talk) 18:55, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The text you're referring to has disappeared by now, but people can read the discussion on 'an alternative analysis' at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_phonology#Consonants. It comes down to the choice whether you want to analyse [tʲ] as /t/ + /j/ or as an independent phoneme in itself. But palatalized consonants are definitely part of the phonetic (vs. phonemic) inventory of Bulgarian. Exarchus (talk) 11:15, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  broad/slender vs. Slavic hard/soft consonants 

message: I had changed all references of  to  because the International Phonetic Alphabet defines them as absolutely canonical.  But they were reverted because this article uses  for slender dh/gh, which has more friction.  That's what we call a fricative consonant, and I recommend the latter be changed to  which is the dedicated canonical symbol for the voiced palatal fricative.   should be changed to , as it actually is. - Gilgamesh (talk) 18:38, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it shouldn't. There are degrees of friction. The fricative  is an allophone of /j/, which has an approximant allophone [j] in other contexts, as explained in the article.  has even less friction than that, being merely a nonsyllabic vowel. But quite apart from the phonetics, using [j] for the onglide is misleading because the onglide isn't an allophone of /j/, it's just a very brief nonsyllabic vowel, which is much more intuitively written [i̯]. For the sake of comprehensibility, the symbols should be kept separate. There is no reason whatsoever not to use [i̯] for the onglide, but there are good reasons not to use [j] for it. Angr (talk) 23:01, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I take it that Irish speakers can distinguish between  and , right?  It might be relevant to mention that at semivowel or approximant. — Æµ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 00:13, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

text: This...sort of flies in the face of IPA orthodoxy.  An asyllabic  is always strictly equivalent to .  It's nonstandard IPA to say otherwise.  If there are variable levels of frication, why not use  or  where this has more frication than ? - Gilgamesh (talk) 12:44, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a similar contrast between the two in Spanish, so it's not unheard of. — Æµ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 14:08, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  The very fact that [i̯] is equivalent to [j] means that we can use either one, and indeed we can use both. No law says we're required to use only one to the exclusion of the other. In this case, the function of the two sounds is so different (one is an onglide between a back vowel and a palatalized consonant, the other is an allophone of a consonant phoneme) that it is beneficial for presentation purposes to distinguish them visually. The phoneme /j/ would never occur in the positions where the onglide occurs, so it's not really possible to say whether Irish speakers can distinguish them by their acoustics alone: their position in the word would always be sufficient. Angr (talk) 17:55, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

text: [j] is generally understood to be a consonant and [i̯] a vowel, which fits the existing convention of this article. — kwami (talk) 18:47, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  IPA palatal notation 

message: I do not speak Irish and the distinction broad-slender is not very clear for me. What do you think about adding some audio samples? Xpicto (talk) 07:03, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that audio examples would be helpful, here, as well as in the article velarization. --Lundgren8 (t · c) 12:08, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe one of our native speakers can be prevailed upon to make some audio samples. Angr (talk) 12:37, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Audio samples 

message: Hello! Can someone explain what is meant by ”constant” in this picture to the right (and its brother)? What’s the difference here between ”constant” and ”consonant”? To me ”two-consonant cluster” would make as much sense, but I haven’t encountered ”constant” in this context. Thanks for explaining! --Lundgren8 (t · c) 12:06, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a typo. — Lfdder (talk) 12:10, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Rather embarrassing no one caught that before. Fortunately, as an SVG it's easy enough to fix. Unfortunately I don't have an SVG editor so I can't fix it. Maybe one of you can? Angr (talk) 12:33, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I was suspecting it was a typo, but since it occurred in both images, and since I’m not a native speaker of English, and since this is a featured article, I didn’t want to criticise. I can maybe fix it on Inkscape if I get it to work on my new computer; the online SVG translation editor is down at the moment. --Lundgren8 (t · c) 12:58, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: For the record, it was correct in the original PNGs that I made. I'm not responsible for these SVGs that someone thought would be a good idea. Angr (talk) 13:06, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Whoever made these converted text to objects, so it was just like editing a raster. — Lfdder (talk) 13:19, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, you edited them? I was just about to upload them myself, good. But yes, a new text layer had to be made. --Lundgren8 (t · c) 13:24, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks for fixing them, Lfdder. Back when I used to make SVG files, I always had to convert text to objects, otherwise the text would just appear as black boxes. Angr (talk) 14:38, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two-constant clusters? 

message: I suggest the word "normalized" be used in place of "standardized". Speling12345 (talk) 7:41, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion 

message: The article says they are realised universally as taps, but I’ve heard (I think predominantly) approximants. Siúnrá (talk) 13:45, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The article is based on sources in which the speech of native speakers from Gaeltacht areas was analyzed, especially those who lived in the first half of the twentieth century. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Irish people nowadays (most of whom aren't native speakers to begin with) used the English /ɹ/ sound when speaking Irish, but the sources consulted for this article don't mention that if so. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:51, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rhotics 

message: For me, IPA [c] is rather a t-like sound, e.g. Hungarian orthography ty (the same for [ɟ] which is rather a d-like sound though written gy in Hungarian). 
There are only a few cases of mixing between slender /k´/ and /t´/ in Irish (e.g. té/cé as a wh-word in Connacht). But probably never ceist and teist would be confused. 
For me, /k´/ is clearly recognizable as a k-sound and /g´/ is clearly a g-sound and both are clearly differentiable from broad /k/ and /g/. Perhaps they aren’t really palatal plosives but rather palatovelar ones. So, I’d describe them in IPA rather as [kʲ] and [gʲ]. -- 212.37.172.221 (talk) 12:28, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: They vary between palatal and palatovelar; also, the symbols /c/ and /ɟ/ are flexible enough that they can legitimately be used for k-like palatals as well as for t-like ones. The /c/ and /ɟ/ of Icelandic and Greek, for example, are very much like the Irish ones. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:49, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  slender c and g and IPA c and ɟ 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Why is "mh" used to represent a "v" sound? It doesn't seem to make any sense. 173.88.241.33 (talk) 02:57, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Because it's a "v" sound that comes from an earlier "m" sound; also, spelling it "mh" makes it easy to see the relationship between (for example) máthair "a mother"/a máthair "her/their mother" on the one hand and an mháthair "the mother"/a mháthair "his mother" on the other hand. The spelling "mh" makes it easy to tell at a glance what the unmutated form of the word is. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:08, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: mh

message: Why is slender R being represented by its less common allophone of a palatalized tap, where as the rest of the phonemes are represented with their primary allophones, e.g. broad L for example?
51.37.142.198 (talk) 07:48, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Because it patterns with . Perhaps it's better to transcribe both with  in phonemic transcription. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 19:09, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Slender R

message: "The slender tap /ɾʲ/ has a palatalised palato-alveolar fricative [ɹ̝ʲ].[24] as its primary allophone."
Umm, so if it's primarily a fricative, in what sense is it a 'tap' then? And is it ever, you know, actually a tap? If so, when?--82.137.115.143 (talk) 04:02, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not primarily a fricative. I've corrected the statement. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:50, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: It is. Ó Sé mentions it as the primary allophone on p.19 of his monograph for example: "Consan cuimilteach iarailbheolach agus tosach na teanga ardaithe". 109.76.85.27 (talk) 21:37, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rhotic 

message: Hello, I am looking at this article as it is one of the oldest unreviewed FAs. Issues I am seeing is that the article partially uses the inline parenthetical referencing, which was deprecated by a 2020 RfC, and not all the article meets the FA requirement for an inline citation at the end of each paragraph. One aspect that is not covered here is the changes in phonology in recent years based on language attrition and bilingualism, as well as phonology of second language speakers. (t · c) buidhe 04:49, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with buidhe that this article struggles to meet the featured article criteria at the moment. There are lots of areas, including whole paragraphs, that require citations. The inline parenthetical references should be removed. If no one is willing to improve upon it, can this be brought to WP:FAR? If anyone needs assistance with this, feel free to ping me. Z1720 (talk) 19:09, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  FA sweeps 

message: There are two conflicting policies regarding which spelling (GB or US) should be used here. The article has used US spelling since 2004 and was promoted to Featured Article in 2007 with no one objecting to that, or even raising the issue at all. So MOS:RETAIN suggests we should retain US spelling. On the other hand, MOS:TIES suggests that the strong national ties to Ireland mean the article should use GB spelling (since Irish English follows GB spelling). I'm the primary author of this article (84% of the text was written by me), but of course I don't own it. If someone wants to go through the article and change all the US spellings to GB spellings on the basis of MOS:TIES, I won't revert, but don't make it inconsistent by changing two instances of the word behavior while leaving all the other US spellings in place. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:50, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling variety