The Strange 'CN' Sound in Scottish Gaelic
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- Опубликовано: 15 май 2023
- CN may look strange but it's no big deal once you know its secret. This video will teach you that secret - plus examples so that you can understand and use CN more easily yourself. You'll also learn my theory on why it looks as strange as it does...
Enjoy!
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Thanks for watching and take care!
-Jason
#gaidhlig #learngaelic #scottishgaelic #scotland #gaelic #gaelicwithjason #cleachdi
Halò Jason,
Tha ceist agam … I had previously learned cnatan (duolingo) with the n pronounced as an n. I looked up the words on the Learn Gaelic online dictionary and it definitely sounds (to me) that they are pronouncing n.
I’m just wondering if there is a difference in pronunciation dependant on geography or dialect?
Tapadh leat
Madainn mhath! 🙂 I'm glad you mentioned this! It could be a difference in dialect. Personally, I've only heard the R sound from my teachers and other native speakers, which is why I favor it. It seems very widespread too. I haven't interacted with everyone, though!
Another possibility is that both Duolingo and the Learn Gaelic site support more modern, standardized Gaelic. Maybe that's why they favor CN having an N sound - because it's more phonetic? I'm not 100% about that so this is just speculation. 🙂
@@GaelicwithJason I’ll ask around and see what other people say. I have to admit, I do like the n pronunciation, especially for cnatan - it really does sound like you have your nose blocked up, but for fluidity, as you say, the r pronunciation makes more sense …
Thanks for taking the time to reply. Your video lessons are a wonderful and very much appreciated learning resource.
In Munster Irish they pronounce the CN like it would be in English but Connacht and Ulster say it like standardised Gàidhlig, at least from what I've noticed. I think it's spelled CN still to show the roots in old Gaelic kinda like how ch is in 'archaic' to represent the χ character from Greek (I could see the whole mistaking the old Gàildhig/Gaeilge scripts 'r' for a 'n' though I hadn't thought of that)
I too think it's dialectal. On Duolingo some pronounce it "cn" and others pronounce it "cr". LaurenRhiannon recently had one of her bite-size word of the day clips up with "tha an cnatan orm" and she pronounces the n as an n. She's from Stornoway, but lives in Aberdeen.
The LearnGaelic dictionary is weird. It gives "kr" as the IPA pronunciation, but the audio is definitely "kn".
When pronounced with R, cnatan kinda sounds like krachten!
The 'CN' in Gaelic shares the same origin as the 'KN' in English i.e. (Knife). Both derive from Nordic loan words and both were originally pronounced as /Kn/. However, this pronunciation posed difficulties for both languages. English simplified it by changing the pronunciation to /N/, completely silencing the 'K', (i.e. we pronounce Knife as /naɪf/ and not /knaɪf/). On the other hand, Gaelic simplified it by replacing the 'N' with an 'R' sound, yielding /Kr/. Thus, one can argue that in Gaelic both pronunciations are correct: the former (/kn/) aligns more closely with the original Nordic roots, while the latter (/kr/) conforms better to native Gaelic morphology. It's worth noting that in both Ireland and Scotland, there are dialects where you can hear both /Kn/ and /Kr/.
Interesting
This is of interest to me for two reasons. Although I now live in Derby, England I grew up in Perthshire and went to school in Crieff. Crieff is built on a hillside which the locals call the hill behind the town The Cnoc pronounced Knock in English. Whether it was always pronounced as Knock or if it transitioned I have no idea.
Second my father's parent were both native Gaelic speakers and English was their second language, my grandmother came from North Uist, Knockintorran in English and Cnoc An Torrain in Gaelic.
So make of that what you will.
My grandmother's maiden name was Laing which she pronounced Lengk with a soft "k" or "c" at the end. When her cousins, uncles and aunts emigrated the ones who went to Canada became Link and Australia became Lynk. Laing being the Scots for long/tall so they went from being tall to links over several generations and regions
I hope to visit North Uist in the autumn and be able to say a bit more than
Halò
Ciamar a tha thu
aon lionn mas e do thoil e
Tapadh leat
Slàinte mhath
Tioraidh an-dràsta
Pronouncing the ‘n’ is closer to the original Old Irish/Goidelic pronunciation. It has slowly morphed into ‘r’ in most dialects across Scotland and Ireland, but with a few ‘n’ holdouts in both countries.
Cnatan and Cnap are both Germanic loan words from Old Norse; the first relating to catarrh and the second literally meaning a knob. Pronouncing the ‘n’ in both is a dead giveaway to the Germanic/Scandinavian origin of these two.
Great point about the Old Gaelic calligraphy possibly affecting pronunciation. Also interesting to think that Old Norse loan words could encourage the retention of older conservative Goidelic pronunciation.
I wonder are you referring to St. Kilda? There are some speculations about the origins of the name that include spelling errors as the people there pronounced Hirta a bit like 'Kilta' which combined with some cartographical errors eventually led to the name St. Kilda when the word Skildar was reinterpreted as S. Kilda...
Great video by the way - you are a fantastic teacher ♥
Thank you !!!!! This sound has been driving me crazy ! And now I know how to pronounce it ❤.
Thanks - Very informative but not what I was looking for specifically. In West Virginia, where we had many Scots-Irish settlers, we have the saying today, "There's more than one way to skin a cat." which means more than one way to do things. I think the phrase is really "There more than one way to s'ken a cat" (ken=know). I think the cat refers to the highland cat, the same cat in my ancestors' Clan MacIntosh and Clan MacDuff banners. Anyway, I was doing linguistic research about the 'sk' sound to see where the "s" before 'ken' might have come from. Thanks!
A timely video for me. Wonderful explanation of why you think it came about, and perfectly feasible. Thank you for all your videos, they’re great.
My pleasure! Thank you for watching. 🙂
Just wanted to say that I'm visiting Cape Breton this summer, and your videos are really helping me learn as much Gaelic as I can before putting it into practice. Thank you!
Glè mhath! It's a pleasure to support your trip in this way. I hope you have a great time, a charaid. 🙂
Great video. I can't believe I have been pronouncing cnoc wrong all my life. Every day is a school day 😊
Tapadh leat. Id always wondered about this. The old 90s TV course ," Soeaking our language" had both pronunciations but the native speakers seemed to be favouring the ,' r' sound.
Im looking forward to the videos on rhe use of ' orm' .
Since Irish Gaelic pronounces "cn" as "cn" (at least I think that is the pronunciation in Munster), I always thought that the Scottish Gaelic "cr" pronunciation was a deviation from the older pronunciation maintained in Ireland. I'll have to research this point.
It could be. Let us know what you find out. 🙂
Great video Jason! Tapadh leat!
By the way if anyone is curious, it's speaking our language series 2 episide 5 where you hear both pronunciations of "tha cnatan orm" It was filmed in Lewis so I suppose both forms are used
I hope you dont mind me referencing othe courses Jason. Yours is the best one!🙂
Thanks, Jason! Actually the "cn-" pronunciation is the original pronunciation. Joy Dunlop of the "Speak Gaelic" series pronounces is it this way. For example "cnoc" derives from Proto-Celtic *knokkos.
@sharonjackson, do you know what dialect Joy Dunlop speaks?
Yes, I am sure the Cn is the original. I come from a place in Central Scotland that has a place-name nearby that was anglicised hundreds of years ago: Knockhill. This is tautological, as often happened back when English speakers heard a word and thought it was a name. They wouldn't have written it knock if they had heard "krock". Back in those days the k was still pronounced in "kn" combinations in English also.
@@geraldmatthewwebb4538 Joy has an Argyll accent. She grew up in the village of Connel, which is near Oban.
That all makes good sense, Sharon. Thank you for that - and thank you to everyone who has shared about this. 🙂 I wonder if the CR sound could be Nordic in any way? That could explain an island vs mainland difference in speech patterns.
@@alicemilne1444 yes, and think of all the "knock . . ." place names in Ireland. I wonder why /cn/ became /cr/? Perhaps, it was because of Norse speech patterns but why the change in Ireland? We will have to consult someone knowledgeable in historical linguistics.
So interesting! As a Welsh speaker I was really expecting it to be like our cn sound which is actually just a hard c and n said very close together just like its written 😆 as if you pronounced knackered with the K. Actually in German Kn is pronounced the same. Anyway. Polyglot nerd stuff. I love your lessons. I hope to one day really be a good student of yours.
The way I've heard it pronounced is as though you're trilling "n", which took me some practice to master and I'd imagine was unpronounceable for enough people that it fell out of favor. I'm convinced that Scottish Gaelic has managed to trill every consonant across it's various dialects. For example, the hissing "L" sound that both Welsh and Mongolian share is often trilled when you say things like "A bheil" or "Nach eil".
Jason you are an amazing teacher I learn so much from you and you inspire me to keep learning Gaelic love your videos you explain it so wonderful.
Jason, your videos are gloriously informative and fun! Glè mhath mo charaid. Tapadh leibh 🎉
Tapadh leat, a Dhaibhidh! Thanks for watching. 🙂
Me 100% Celt staring at the phone. "It's pronounced CR".
😀
Jason, many thanks for all that you do. In our sister tongue, Irish, cn is resolved like in Beurla, as the n or kn sound. Thus Cnoc is a “knoc”. The C like the K is silent. I’m sure this must be the older tradition and, that you’re correct to look to typographical error. After all, those monks working by candlelight, would’ve had eyesight compromised by such practice
Yup, the older pronunciation is kn (with audible k) and I heard that's still common in Munster. Connacht and Ulster dialects have kr here, just like Scottish Gaelic. But the vowel is nasalised after cn (at least in Scotland).
I think the reason is that in the past it was spelled as it written. But after centuries it changes
Great video, again, I like the typo explanation. My home is in Victor Harbor, South Australia and is spelled ‘Harbor’ without the U because of a typo back in the 19th century. It now bugs me when people spell it the not American way, as in Harbour, because I’m so used to seeing it…….crazy right 🤷🏽
Makes sense - we get so used to certain spellings that anything else just seems strange. 🙂 Thanks for watching!
Okay i found this video to answer my own question. Would you do a video on the DH sound in Gaelic? It seems like I hear it sometimes and not others. Tapadh leat, Jason. . Gaidhlig is a fun language.
Those other letters look almost Greek or Phoenician which would make sense from the interactions and settlements of the Sea People in the British Isles of the Celts. Gla mvah.
😂 the last one was my first thought to having to remember this as CR. Although this makes far more sense than the recordings on duo which weren’t great for those words beginning with CN.
Lol k-nock (cnoc) is how we would joke in my family about knocking on doors.. since the k-nights from Monty python etc. 😆
Great connections, a charaid! 🙂 They'll help you remember it for sure.
Old English and English as written by the Scots had an extra letter in the alphabet for 'th' - the sound we make when we say 'the' or 'this' or 'thimble' etc. It was never written as 'th'. It was written as a character that looked rather like the modern 'y'. Its name was 'thorn'.
Can you guess where we're going with this?!!
Yep. When those old handwritten manuscripts were copied or put into print in the late 1500s-1600s, the printers wrongly transliterated it as a modern 'Y' instead of adding a new character that looked like the old letter 'thorn'.
Hence 'Ye old tea shoppe' and 'Ye old oak' etc. They introduced to the English language a completely new word! Same spelling as 'ye' for 'you' but a different meaning altogether.
The letter thorn actually looks like this: þ. It was sloppy handwriting that made it look like a "y". And it was Caxton's imported Flemish printers who had no cast metal letter to represent that sound (because it didn't exist in their language) that chose a "y" as a substitute for purely optical reasons. English people of the time who were literate never pronounced the word as "ye" because they knew the difference between "the" and "ye". It's only ignorant English speakers in our modern age who think that this introduced a new word to the English language.
Also, the Scots didn't particularly use the "y" to replace "th". The difference in Scots came about because the Scots used the letter yogh Ȝ ȝ to represent a sound like the "ch" in Gaelic and Modern Scots and a kind of softened "k" or "g" "like the "ch", "gh" and "dh" in Gaelic. Printers used the letter Z to replace that because of the old cursive way of writing that. Again, purely on visual grounds. It had nothing to do with the way the words were spoken.
So you have Scots names like Menzies (pronounced Ming-ess in Scots) that are wrongly pronounced Men-zees in English. And Culzean Castle (Call-ain) which is wrongly pronunced "Cull-zeen" in English.
That's quite interesting, Alice! I remember seeing Menzies at Glasgow airport every time I was there and wondering where on earth that Z came from. 🙂
In Irish we still pronounce it as CN rather than CR.
Do you have any tips in how to practice rolling Rs? I've tried to do it before but I can't seem to get the knack.
Hmmm, they can be tricky. Maybe there's a good video here on RUclips that would help? 🙂
In Irish I think it’s dialectical- for example “mná” (“women”) is usually pronounced “m-naw” but some dialects pronounce it “m-raw” or “mraw”.
The first word I thought of was cnò!
That's another one! Glè mhath! 🙂
Hi Jason. Makes sense to me. I think about the sch words that are pronounced sk. Then there’s the t that looked like a y, so we say things like ye for the.
Good points, Terry! Good to see you - I hope things are going well out there! 🙂
Is cnap a negative word like crap? Or is it it positive or neutral? So if I say there's a cnap of laundry on my bed that's kind of neutral, if I say there's a cnap of dung in the yard that's a negative, but if I say there's a cnap of cookies on this plate that's a positive. How is cnap used?
A bit like old English - 'Y' was pronounced 'th' so when you see tourist traps with signs like 'Ye old pub' etc people say it as 'yee old pub' but it should be 'the old pub'
Ah, inntinneach! Tapadh leat, a Chaluim! 🙂
Ah CNAP!! lol
It’s terribly unfortunate that I can do this..I would like to go up the Shetland’s and look after sheep
I've heard great things about Shetland. 🙂
8:00 that is exactly what I thought when you first said it. "Pile of crap." And makes me wonder if that's where English gets the word crap from.
It could be! 🙂
That is how we have the modern qu from monks hand copying text, cw moved to become cq as most scribes could not read very well, once they had completed a sentence or paragraph they would count the characters to check for error,
Inntinneach - tapadh leat! I imagine the softer lighting of the time didn't help either. 🙂
The whisky company An Cnoc have on their bottle "pronounced an nok" and it's always annoyed me.
No C sound at all there?
@@GaelicwithJason it's even worse, I just double checked and proudly on the front of their bottle they say "pronounced a nock"
@@johnsloan79 Obh obh! 😣
Seems like more people outwith Scotland want to learn Gaelic than in Scotland! I don’t know anyone here who knows or wants to learn it
That was my experience too. Perhaps I was a bit naive at first, but I was genuinely surprised by how few Scots I encountered wanted to learn - or were even just pro-Gaelic. 😟
😂 Tha na cnuic beò!
...with the sound of ceòl. 😁