I loved this. Me, a Swede, tried to learn some Irish as teenager, using a very serious cassette course (don't remember the name, but they did many different languages). Being a language geek already then, I would sit at home copying the sounds as careful as I could. Real speakers of Irish they were. Then years later I finally got to know an Irish person and I was so happy to try and speak some, even though I had forgotten most of it. But she was a young Dubliner who (despite having parents who could speak Irish) would sort of make fun of me for sounding like an old countryside person and even correcting me to pronounce 'an' as 'ahn' with both a very clear ah sound and the n, and making me pronounce é and ó as English 'ay' and 'oh'. I was so disappointed. I also learned some Welsh, more than Irish actually, and it's very much the same there. There are countless shows where you get to follow English speakers who learn Welsh, and nobody would ever correct their pronunciation. Also there's a bunch of channels here on RUclips where you can listen to people speaking different languages, and more often than not, they tend to pick people who have a severe English accent when it comes to the Celtic languages (or French accent for Breton). As if the Celtic languages are some second class language group that doesn't deserve its own proper pronunciation. And when it comes to Irish orthography - they didn't create it to make it difficult to learn, but to reflect the rather complex phonology of Irish.
Irish and Scottish Gaelic are category 3 languages, definitely the hardest languages I am learning, tho the other languages I am learning are all category 1 languages and category 2 languages, including all Germanic languages and the other 4 modern Celtic languages, and I started learning languages on my own about one year ago! I am intermediate level in Welsh / Norse / Icelandic and 5 other languages and upper advanced level in Dutch and advanced level in Norwegian and beginner level in Irish and the other modern Celtic languages! I am trying to learn the rest of the pronunciation rules in Irish as I haven’t memorized all of them yet, especially the ones with vowel clusters, and, trying to get used to the new sounds and spelling! I usually learn from vocab videos and all sorts of videos on grammar etc that I can find and from lyrics and sometimes from Google translate, and I highly recommend doing the same - I try to learn all the sounds and pronunciation rules as a beginner as it makes it easier to learn / read the words!
It would be great to see more videos like this that just run down a list of words that may seem like homophones to native English speakers but which aren't! That would be a really effective way to demonstrate why these sounds are important to get right. Examples are always powerful -- humorous examples, doubly so.
My God. The slender R actually being pronounced as either a voiced sibilant or palatal is quite a revelation. Not at all like the way, as you said, 99% of people who teach Irish do it.
It's meant to have some r-colouring too and it's not actually a sibilant, but pronouncing it as a voiced palatal fricative is close enough, and better than pronouncing it like an English 'r'.
This was very interesting! Learning a new language is not just about grammar and learning new words; it is also about learning new sounds (to the best of one's ability) and link them together with the spelling. That process takes time and effort, but it pays off in the long run.
You say "that process takes time and effort, but it pays off in the long run". I would agree if we were discussing say Arabic, with its practically unspeakable consonants that I think I would maybe choke on, or Siamese with its cacophony of weird vowels and tones. But Irish Gaelic has the SAME VOWELS as English, and only like six or seven different consonants, all clearly marked and easily pronounced with a minimum of effort, the only real rigour involving clearly identifying and hearing them as pronounced in native speech, which I am constantly amazed to see students NOT doing. Compared to most languages, Gaelic pronunciation can be learned in very little time, and with my students it is, because I make them aware of the sounds associated with the letters of such a very phonetic language, EASY PEASY.
@@patchy642 thank you kindly, and, greatly... you are kind and thoughtful, to take time to do this.... I want the sounds... I am just learning the irish of my grandmother's fathers... a bit late in life, but a trail always starts somewhere 🤗🥰🌱🌿🍀🌳🌲🌲🌲
Irish and Scottish Gaelic are the most non-phonetic languages I’ve ever seen, the words usually sound very different from how they are spelled, and, both are category 3 languages, definitely the hardest languages I am learning, tho the other languages I am learning are all category 1 languages and category 2 languages, including all Germanic languages and the other 4 modern Celtic languages, and I started learning languages on my own about one year ago! I am intermediate level in Welsh / Norse / Icelandic and 5 other languages and upper advanced level in Dutch and advanced level in Norwegian and beginner level in Irish and the other modern Celtic languages! I am trying to learn the rest of the pronunciation rules in Irish as I haven’t memorized all of them yet, especially the ones with vowel clusters, and, trying to get used to the new sounds and spelling! I usually learn from vocab videos and all sorts of videos on grammar etc that I can find and from lyrics and sometimes from Google translate!
Patchy do you think you could make more videos for Irish? I appreciate your love of languages in general, something we share. But the kind of Irish being spoken by yourself is something that is hard to find being spoken naturally for those outside the Gaeltacht like myself. I absolutely love hearing it and would love to learn more!
Really useful, thanks. After thinking for a few minutes, I don't think there are any English words that are semantically differentiated based only on whether the nasal is pronounced on the palate or on the velum. That's a huge part of the challenge for the continuation of the Irish in its current documented form. The more speakers coming into Irish via English, the more people will try to "get away with" (so to speak) undifferentiated consonants. In most languages (like French, for example), the language survives phonetic erosion caused by non-native speakers through sheer numbers of native speakers. With Irish, the numbers of speakers are going up mostly through public schools and (more successfully) Gaelscoileanna, wherein these teachers are reteaching the eroded pronunciations they received when they went through school. And so, if these new speakers can make themselves understood without differentiating their nasal consonants, the language may drop this as a differentiator. "bhean" and "veain" will become homophones just like "pen" and "pin" in some (but not all) American dialects (which, as a Philadelphian, drives me crazy. So i get it!) There's not a language alive today that has emerged unscathed by oppression.
Love that you use seancló to write in gaelic. Im currently learning and was thinking of doing this as a way of associating the written and spoken words in my head and to help separate it from English.
What a delightful surprise to find this! I'm 61 and have been working on learning Gaeilge for two years. It's my dream to live in Éire for total immersion..
Couldn't agree more about the central importance of Irish phonology. I stopped learning Irish as I was afraid I'd become fluent in something like neo-Gaelic i.e. Irish spoken with English phonology. I'll be in touch via iTalki once I find my webcam. I need a tutor who can speak "phonetics/points of articulation".
Fantastic video. Has helped me understand the pronunciation of words that I'd have heard before but never knew why they were pronounced differently to what I'd learned in school. One that comes to mind in particular is "TG4" with the slender r being pronounced correctly. Makes perfect sense now after watching your video, but I was none the wiser back then. Please continue making more videos on subjects like these that help enthusiasts like myself learn and speak my language as it should be spoken in the first place
I'm very grateful for these videos. I've been coming back to Irish in recent years and while I had intuited some of the differences between native pronunciation and the anglicised school Irish that I mostly learned, these videos are really helpful in pinpointing where those differences are, and knowing how to rectify them. I had even held the mistaken belief growing up that you could essentially speak Irish with your Hiberno-English accent and that it would be largely correct .... For Irish people of my generation, any echoes of Gaelic pronunciation in their English are likely long gone. I certainly imagine that most Irish teachers, certainly primary teachers and maybe some secondary teachers, do not master these phonemes correctly, and as a result their students fail to properly acquire them. It likely explains as well why so many (myself included) after primary and secondary school fail to be able to understand native speakers properly. I've been listening to a lot of RnaG in recent months and while I can follow programmes like Tús Áite, in which many speakers speak the anglicised second-language variety, I still struggle to follow programmes like An Saol ó Dheas, where both the speed, intonation and pronunciation can throw me off. I'm getting better but it takes time. Not sure exactly how this is best rectified. In my experience in the Irish school system, excellence is not always the aim. I can recall just before my Leaving Cert oral exam, our teacher correcting us on our pronunciation of 'ch' / [x], which was the right thing to do but I asked myself at the time why no one had ever done that in the 13 beforehand ... Still, grounds for hope is that we can find these videos now and learn from them!
Thanks for an excellent introduction. It seems that the rebuilding of the imagined foundation as student has means we are not left with a tower in Pisa. I will attempt to take a deep dive into your RUclips channel. Go raibh maith agat.
Ba dhóigh leat gur físeán den Loingsach é ach is é Patchy an fear atá ann! Is ait an mac an saol. Ach is maith liom é, obair mhaith! Is maith go labhrann duine eile fós ar an RUclips mar gheall ar fuaimeannaibh cearta na Gaelainne traidisiúnta. Go raibh maith agat as a dhéanamh. :)
I was having a discussion online recently about the standardization of Irish. I think standardization is a wonderful thing, but someone claimed that it's the same as British colonial policy. I heartily disagreed with this hyperbolic claim. Anyhow, "focal leabhair" is one of the only phrases I know in Irish, and now I hear it's probably pronounced, ~ "lao-eesh" or "lao-ed/lao-í", when I first heard it in a song where the Irish singer pronounces it "lao-wer" and rhymes it with English "hour." It makes me think about how Arabic almost completely replaced Persian as the lingua franca after the Islamic conquest of Iran, but Persian was revived in the 15th century by the poet Firdawsi. After the revival, modern Persian still has a significant Arabic lexicon and Arabic pronunciation has completely insinuated itself into the modern Persian accent with guttural sounds like "kh", "gh" etc. At what point do we just accept that Irish Gaelic has changed due to the proliferation of media, nation-building, homogenization, and urbanization? Would I even be understood by Gaeilscoil educated Gaeilgeoirí if I pronounced it ~ "laow-eesh/lao-wed/lao-wí ? When it comes to pronouncing a word like "Samhain" ~ "Sah-wen" like English "Sam-HAIN", that is a clear bastardization and easily correctable, but I don't think language learners should be expected to be linguists knowing about "velar plosives" and "labial fricatives" and the like; that sort of thing is overly pedantic imo. I still can't grasp the correct pronunciation of Irish "bean." It sounds like you said "them" or "than."
Excellent, thank you so much! Finally, a good explanation for the difference between the slender & broad R sounds. This has always confused me, as when I hear 'native' speakers of Ulster Irish, this isn't always clear. I do notice that sometimes I'll hear a broad R being pronounced like a rolled R - is this normal in Irish, or the Ulster dialect (in raibh, for example)?
Thank you, you're very kind. Yes, the broad R can be pronounced correctly the same as a Spanish (older speakers, more often) or the same as an English R (younger speakers), or anything in between, not just in the Ulster but in any dialect.
There are 2 videos on the web (incl youtube) from the 70s and early 80s with the last 3-4 native gaelic speakers in the irish countryside. In those you can't hear any english accent except barely in a few instances, but remember that english also took influence from old gaelic/celtic-like languages in Ireland and the UK (although ænglisc was fairly close to old languages in the North sea area like norse, gothic, saxon and frisian)
Love the way your teaching. I'm Irish and have gone through the Irish school system which never taught the Irish pronunciations like this or explored the Gaelic script. I am attempting to learn my native language correctly and this helps immensely especially as I'm from Maigh Eo go raibh maith agat.
Is deas gur fhreagair tú ceist an fhocail "ar" i do thrácht mar is minic a deireann muid "ar" mar a litrítear é, b'shin an cheist a bhí mé ar thob a chur ort. Is maith an rud é go bhfuil duine mar thú féin ann atá ag díriú ar fhuaimeanna na Gaeilge mar is ceart, mar cloisim an méid sin múinteoirí Gaeilge ar líne ag iarraidh an teanga a mhúineadh agus gan ach fuaimeanna an bhéarla acu. Tugann físeán mar seo an seans do na foghlaimeoirí éisteacht leatsa agus tuiscint a fháil go bhfuil a leithéid ann agus fuaimeanna sainiúla i nGaeilge taobh amuigh den bhéarla, goinfear ar a n-aire siadsan agus tabharfar deis dóibh fuaimeanna an bhéarla a thabhairt faoi deara mar gheall ar na físeán a chonaic siad uait féin. Samhail leat duine ag múineadh béarla agus tuin fhíorláidir Ghearmáinise ar a chuid cainte aige, sin mar a airím féin an Ghaeilge ó na daoine sin. Mar sin féin is maith an rud é go ndéanann siad an iarracht ar aon chaoi agus go bhfuil duine mar thú féin ann le srian a chur ag an am céanna orthu. It is nice that you tackled the problem of the word "ar" in your comment because it is often that we say "ar" as it is spelled, that was what I was just about to ask you. It is a good thing that there is somebody like yourself concentrating on the proper sounds of Irish, because I hear so many Irish language teachers attempting to teach the language and all they have are the sounds of English. A video such as this gives learners a chance to listen to yourself and to appreciate that there is such a thing as particular sounds in Irish that are not in English. Their attention will be drawn and they will be given the opportunity to notice the sounds of English because of your videos. Imagine someone teaching English in a really strong German accent, that is how I hear the Irish language from those people. Having said that it is a good thing that they make the attempt anyways, but that there is someone like yourself there at the same time to rein them in.
Because these are first-language English speakers who were taught a neutered form of Irish by first-language English speakers who were taught a neutered form of Irish by... well, you get the idea
Go roibh maith agat as a bhfíseán son! I'm really glad to see the use of the seanaibítir! Just a small note on the broad r, it isn't more or less the same one that exists in English, in most variants of English (including most Hiberno-English accents), it is a approximant /ɹ/, whereas the broad r in Irish is a tap (or flap) /ɾ/. The English r is pronounced at the back of the mouth, the Irish r (broad and slender) is pronounced at the front.
Yes, but when said it phonetically slots into the acoustic range (the phonetic field) of only one of the Gaelic phonemes: the broad R, but not the slender R or any other consonant. Therefore, it's more or less the same, and I've even known correct, native speakers of Gaelic (notably one young lady from Inishmaan in Galway) use it in their normal day-to-day Gaelic speech, sounding a bit strange, but not incorrect.
@@patchy642 Well, in traditional Muskerry Irish (e.g. Peadar Ua Laoghaire), numbers over 2 took the plural, apart from a small number of words like lá, mí, etc. So 9 things, which you stated as "naoi ní" can also be "naoi nithe". I'm not claiming that that is a prevalent form in the Gaeltacht today. In Ua Laoghaire's manuscript translation of the Bible he translates Proverbs 6:16 (Six things there are, which the Lord hateth, and the seventh his soul detesteth) as "Sin sé nithe gur thug an Tiarna fuath dóibh, agus tá gráin anama aige ar an seachtú ní".
@@patchy642 Well, it is a translation of the Bible done by Peadar Ua Laoghaire (1839-1920) around 1917. Amhlaoibh Ó Loingsigh had "trí nithe" in his folklore taken down by the Folklore Commission in 1943-44. Both of these were very traditional in their Irish. I don't think anyone speaks like that any more. The most traditional form of Muskerry Irish probably died out around 1950.
Hi Patchy. I can't hear the difference between the broad and slender n in this video. Your inflection goes up on the slender and down on the broad - that's what I'm hearing most. Is like an ng as in sing ⟨ŋ⟩?
Thanks for the videos, very interesting. Who speaks Irish like a native, these days, most speak like their teacher or an app off the internet. And then like me if your mammy's Norwegian you have a whole lot of other cant thrown in there
I recently started learning Irish. How do I pronounce the R in "tithe tábhairne"? Does the -airne" at the end of "tábhairne" sound like /ezhne/, /əʒnə/?
Patchy, first, thank you for the video. It was very helpful. I do have a question. Listening to some native Irish speakers, their pronunciation of slender r sounds closer to a d sound than a zh sound. Is this also correct? I am asking as an American who has just started learning
Yes indeed, that's what I meant by the different representations in other languages, while it's all the same phoneme in Gaelic. Yes, sometimes the slender R when heard with an English ear can sound very like an English D.
@@patchy642 thank you again for the reply. It would be helpful if you made more videos like these because they are both informative and very easy to follow.
Because of a general, strict and intuitive spelling convention ("broad with broad and slender with slender") such a situation never arises, except in some very few composite words (words which were once separate), in which case the consonant usually (but not always, and sometimes fluctuating sporadically) maintains its original consonant values. Examples are "ansin", "aréir", in which I and most usually pronounce that central consonant as slender, but this, maybe in part because it's not nailed down in the spelling, can vary by dialect, speaker, and sometimes mood, or even at random. But in probably 99% of words the spelling rule is firmly adhered to, and followed (when pronounced by proficient speakers).
One word that comes to mind is "gaeltacht", but we used to spell that as "gaedhealtacht" in the seanchló until someone decided to shorten it to "gaeltacht", and placing a slender vowel against a broad vowel in the process.@@patchy642
@@makkiij I've no idea what "erye" is, or how it's pronounced. Upon observation of your complete lack of capitalisation, I can just as easily presume it's a proper noun, can I? Erye? Maybe somebody's Name? Is it possibly a misspelling or a variant of the name of the main square in Galway city?
@@patchy642 B'fhéidir ba chóir duit freagair a chuir air nó uirthí, tá fhios agam go bhfuil an foghraíocht mícheart ag cuir isteach ort agus taim ar an leathanach céanna cosúil tú féin, ach níl an stiúir go maith chun spreagadh do scoláirí, i mo thuarim.
I guess you could explain the slender r pronunciation as an in between of 'sh' and 'ch' or a sh but your using a lower part of your voicebox. Additionally, you don't say that harshly but rather softly
You're older...no offense, I'm not young I'm 46...so I trust what you're saying. However, the sound...is rough. I wish I could hear this video without the echo... I'm learning the language and would love to clearly hear what you're saying. My older eyes also can't read what you're writing on your dry erase board. My loss indeed.
No such name as Ní É ???? I presume she is really Ní Aodha? There is a major problem with mis-spellings of personal names and surnames in Irish. By the way, it should be naoi and not naoí !!
Grammar is one thing, but if people learn a language without bothering to use the differentiation sounds within that language, what's the point in bothering to learn it in the first place? Fair enough to get one or two of the sounds mixed up, like some Asians who mix up "light" and "right", but to do this across most of the minimum pairs within the language seems to me a big waste of time. And then when they don't even make an effort to rectify the same mispronounced sounds year in year out, and even decide to teach others to replicate the same abominations of butchered Gaelic phonemes, there comes a time it starts to grate on the ears of those who speak it well, lightly or longly.
Using an cló gaelach means most learners will never be able to engage with this sort of content. I certainly agree with you that most learners speak a sort of patois practically, rather than striving to emulate the living, native forms of Gaeltacht speech as much as is possible for learners. And it will only get worse as the middlle-aged and elderly speakers pass on with ever greater frequency.
@@DA-og4px I don't agree. I think you underestimate people. And you forget that what a learner of a language most requires is authenticity, including the correct sounds from their teachers. Learners' Gaelic pronunciation will only get worse as long as they keep learning (and teaching) the wrong sounds. And it's so easily fixed! All of my students use the right sounds, right from the start. Also, not one of them has had any problems adapting to the Gaelic script. I guess you didn't listen to everything I said in the video. And I don't even know what "patois" means in this context, but if you mean they've somehow got inferior grammar or vocab, again you're mistaken. Many modern learners are well accomplished EXCEPT for their pronunciation, I suppose often because their teachers mislead them, awares or unawares.
@@patchy642 I didn't watch the entire video, it's true. Seems to me a disproportionate number of the more high profile language advocates and 'activists" speak this anglicised Irish mishmash. Ciarán Mac Giolla Bhein and Julian de Spáinn come to mind. Ola Majekodunmi, Pádraig Ó Tiarnaigh, among others... all have been profiled in the English language media as examples of the supposed resurgence that Irish is experiencing... 😑 As an immigrant learner its offputting because a lot of the Irish I hear isn't worth listening to. The late Feargal Ó Béarra called it English in Irish drag, if I remember correctly.
![ROSÉ(로제) - APT. (Band VER.) (With. 이영지) [더 시즌즈-이영지의 레인보우] | KBS 241129 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IW8qaemx74g/mqdefault.jpg)
I loved this. Me, a Swede, tried to learn some Irish as teenager, using a very serious cassette course (don't remember the name, but they did many different languages). Being a language geek already then, I would sit at home copying the sounds as careful as I could. Real speakers of Irish they were. Then years later I finally got to know an Irish person and I was so happy to try and speak some, even though I had forgotten most of it. But she was a young Dubliner who (despite having parents who could speak Irish) would sort of make fun of me for sounding like an old countryside person and even correcting me to pronounce 'an' as 'ahn' with both a very clear ah sound and the n, and making me pronounce é and ó as English 'ay' and 'oh'. I was so disappointed. I also learned some Welsh, more than Irish actually, and it's very much the same there. There are countless shows where you get to follow English speakers who learn Welsh, and nobody would ever correct their pronunciation. Also there's a bunch of channels here on RUclips where you can listen to people speaking different languages, and more often than not, they tend to pick people who have a severe English accent when it comes to the Celtic languages (or French accent for Breton). As if the Celtic languages are some second class language group that doesn't deserve its own proper pronunciation. And when it comes to Irish orthography - they didn't create it to make it difficult to learn, but to reflect the rather complex phonology of Irish.
Irish and Scottish Gaelic are category 3 languages, definitely the hardest languages I am learning, tho the other languages I am learning are all category 1 languages and category 2 languages, including all Germanic languages and the other 4 modern Celtic languages, and I started learning languages on my own about one year ago! I am intermediate level in Welsh / Norse / Icelandic and 5 other languages and upper advanced level in Dutch and advanced level in Norwegian and beginner level in Irish and the other modern Celtic languages! I am trying to learn the rest of the pronunciation rules in Irish as I haven’t memorized all of them yet, especially the ones with vowel clusters, and, trying to get used to the new sounds and spelling! I usually learn from vocab videos and all sorts of videos on grammar etc that I can find and from lyrics and sometimes from Google translate, and I highly recommend doing the same - I try to learn all the sounds and pronunciation rules as a beginner as it makes it easier to learn / read the words!
Out of curiosity, and my experience down in Kerry, has the slender r been lost or is it not pronounced even by native speakers? (Rightly or wrongly)
I'm actually learning Svenska at the moment and doing revision in my native tongue of Gaeilge, I've also dabbled in Italian, Spanish, and Dutch.
PILOT MARKERS!!! You know you're a real language teacher when you're using the refillable Pilot markers. Best damn markers in history. Ok. I'm done.
It would be great to see more videos like this that just run down a list of words that may seem like homophones to native English speakers but which aren't! That would be a really effective way to demonstrate why these sounds are important to get right. Examples are always powerful -- humorous examples, doubly so.
My God. The slender R actually being pronounced as either a voiced sibilant or palatal is quite a revelation. Not at all like the way, as you said, 99% of people who teach Irish do it.
It's meant to have some r-colouring too and it's not actually a sibilant, but pronouncing it as a voiced palatal fricative is close enough, and better than pronouncing it like an English 'r'.
This was very interesting! Learning a new language is not just about grammar and learning new words; it is also about learning new sounds (to the best of one's ability) and link them together with the spelling. That process takes time and effort, but it pays off in the long run.
You say "that process takes time and effort, but it pays off in the long run".
I would agree if we were discussing say Arabic, with its practically unspeakable consonants that I think I would maybe choke on, or Siamese with its cacophony of weird vowels and tones.
But Irish Gaelic has the SAME VOWELS as English, and only like six or seven different consonants, all clearly marked and easily pronounced with a minimum of effort, the only real rigour involving clearly identifying and hearing them as pronounced in native speech, which I am constantly amazed to see students NOT doing.
Compared to most languages, Gaelic pronunciation can be learned in very little time, and with my students it is, because I make them aware of the sounds associated with the letters of such a very phonetic language, EASY PEASY.
@@patchy642 thank you kindly, and, greatly... you are kind and thoughtful, to take time to do this.... I want the sounds... I am just learning the irish of my grandmother's fathers... a bit late in life, but a trail always starts somewhere 🤗🥰🌱🌿🍀🌳🌲🌲🌲
Irish and Scottish Gaelic are the most non-phonetic languages I’ve ever seen, the words usually sound very different from how they are spelled, and, both are category 3 languages, definitely the hardest languages I am learning, tho the other languages I am learning are all category 1 languages and category 2 languages, including all Germanic languages and the other 4 modern Celtic languages, and I started learning languages on my own about one year ago! I am intermediate level in Welsh / Norse / Icelandic and 5 other languages and upper advanced level in Dutch and advanced level in Norwegian and beginner level in Irish and the other modern Celtic languages! I am trying to learn the rest of the pronunciation rules in Irish as I haven’t memorized all of them yet, especially the ones with vowel clusters, and, trying to get used to the new sounds and spelling! I usually learn from vocab videos and all sorts of videos on grammar etc that I can find and from lyrics and sometimes from Google translate!
Patchy do you think you could make more videos for Irish? I appreciate your love of languages in general, something we share. But the kind of Irish being spoken by yourself is something that is hard to find being spoken naturally for those outside the Gaeltacht like myself. I absolutely love hearing it and would love to learn more!
Thank you, Ioxy.
Consider it considered.
✨️
@@patchy642 A heart of gold, that's a right man.
Really useful, thanks.
After thinking for a few minutes, I don't think there are any English words that are semantically differentiated based only on whether the nasal is pronounced on the palate or on the velum.
That's a huge part of the challenge for the continuation of the Irish in its current documented form. The more speakers coming into Irish via English, the more people will try to "get away with" (so to speak) undifferentiated consonants.
In most languages (like French, for example), the language survives phonetic erosion caused by non-native speakers through sheer numbers of native speakers. With Irish, the numbers of speakers are going up mostly through public schools and (more successfully) Gaelscoileanna, wherein these teachers are reteaching the eroded pronunciations they received when they went through school.
And so, if these new speakers can make themselves understood without differentiating their nasal consonants, the language may drop this as a differentiator. "bhean" and "veain" will become homophones just like "pen" and "pin" in some (but not all) American dialects (which, as a Philadelphian, drives me crazy. So i get it!)
There's not a language alive today that has emerged unscathed by oppression.
Love that you use seancló to write in gaelic. Im currently learning and was thinking of doing this as a way of associating the written and spoken words in my head and to help separate it from English.
What a delightful surprise to find this! I'm 61 and have been working on learning Gaeilge for two years. It's my dream to live in Éire for total immersion..
Couldn't agree more about the central importance of Irish phonology. I stopped learning Irish as I was afraid I'd become fluent in something like neo-Gaelic i.e. Irish spoken with English phonology. I'll be in touch via iTalki once I find my webcam. I need a tutor who can speak "phonetics/points of articulation".
Fantastic video. Has helped me understand the pronunciation of words that I'd have heard before but never knew why they were pronounced differently to what I'd learned in school. One that comes to mind in particular is "TG4" with the slender r being pronounced correctly. Makes perfect sense now after watching your video, but I was none the wiser back then.
Please continue making more videos on subjects like these that help enthusiasts like myself learn and speak my language as it should be spoken in the first place
I'm very grateful for these videos.
I've been coming back to Irish in recent years and while I had intuited some of the differences between native pronunciation and the anglicised school Irish that I mostly learned, these videos are really helpful in pinpointing where those differences are, and knowing how to rectify them. I had even held the mistaken belief growing up that you could essentially speak Irish with your Hiberno-English accent and that it would be largely correct .... For Irish people of my generation, any echoes of Gaelic pronunciation in their English are likely long gone.
I certainly imagine that most Irish teachers, certainly primary teachers and maybe some secondary teachers, do not master these phonemes correctly, and as a result their students fail to properly acquire them. It likely explains as well why so many (myself included) after primary and secondary school fail to be able to understand native speakers properly.
I've been listening to a lot of RnaG in recent months and while I can follow programmes like Tús Áite, in which many speakers speak the anglicised second-language variety, I still struggle to follow programmes like An Saol ó Dheas, where both the speed, intonation and pronunciation can throw me off. I'm getting better but it takes time.
Not sure exactly how this is best rectified. In my experience in the Irish school system, excellence is not always the aim. I can recall just before my Leaving Cert oral exam, our teacher correcting us on our pronunciation of 'ch' / [x], which was the right thing to do but I asked myself at the time why no one had ever done that in the 13 beforehand ...
Still, grounds for hope is that we can find these videos now and learn from them!
Brilliant video. A rare find.
You're very kind, sir.
Which part do you consider the most useful?
Thank you for this video, Patchy! Super helpful ☀️
What kills me is television announcers with their "gw" as in "Fine Gwale", "Gwale-guh" et al.
Thanks for an excellent introduction. It seems that the rebuilding of the imagined foundation as student has means we are not left with a tower in Pisa.
I will attempt to take a deep dive into your RUclips channel.
Go raibh maith agat.
Ba dhóigh leat gur físeán den Loingsach é ach is é Patchy an fear atá ann! Is ait an mac an saol.
Ach is maith liom é, obair mhaith! Is maith go labhrann duine eile fós ar an RUclips mar gheall ar fuaimeannaibh cearta na Gaelainne traidisiúnta.
Go raibh maith agat as a dhéanamh. :)
I was having a discussion online recently about the standardization of Irish. I think standardization is a wonderful thing, but someone claimed that it's the same as British colonial policy. I heartily disagreed with this hyperbolic claim. Anyhow, "focal leabhair" is one of the only phrases I know in Irish, and now I hear it's probably pronounced, ~ "lao-eesh" or "lao-ed/lao-í", when I first heard it in a song where the Irish singer pronounces it "lao-wer" and rhymes it with English "hour." It makes me think about how Arabic almost completely replaced Persian as the lingua franca after the Islamic conquest of Iran, but Persian was revived in the 15th century by the poet Firdawsi. After the revival, modern Persian still has a significant Arabic lexicon and Arabic pronunciation has completely insinuated itself into the modern Persian accent with guttural sounds like "kh", "gh" etc. At what point do we just accept that Irish Gaelic has changed due to the proliferation of media, nation-building, homogenization, and urbanization? Would I even be understood by Gaeilscoil educated Gaeilgeoirí if I pronounced it ~ "laow-eesh/lao-wed/lao-wí ? When it comes to pronouncing a word like "Samhain" ~ "Sah-wen" like English "Sam-HAIN", that is a clear bastardization and easily correctable, but I don't think language learners should be expected to be linguists knowing about "velar plosives" and "labial fricatives" and the like; that sort of thing is overly pedantic imo. I still can't grasp the correct pronunciation of Irish "bean." It sounds like you said "them" or "than."
"Tá an bhean ag obair" - the ultimate test!
Excellent, thank you so much! Finally, a good explanation for the difference between the slender & broad R sounds. This has always confused me, as when I hear 'native' speakers of Ulster Irish, this isn't always clear. I do notice that sometimes I'll hear a broad R being pronounced like a rolled R - is this normal in Irish, or the Ulster dialect (in raibh, for example)?
Thank you, you're very kind.
Yes, the broad R can be pronounced correctly the same as a Spanish (older speakers, more often) or the same as an English R (younger speakers), or anything in between, not just in the Ulster but in any dialect.
There are 2 videos on the web (incl youtube) from the 70s and early 80s with the last 3-4 native gaelic speakers in the irish countryside. In those you can't hear any english accent except barely in a few instances, but remember that english also took influence from old gaelic/celtic-like languages in Ireland and the UK (although ænglisc was fairly close to old languages in the North sea area like norse, gothic, saxon and frisian)
Love the way your teaching. I'm Irish and have gone through the Irish school system which never taught the Irish pronunciations like this or explored the Gaelic script. I am attempting to learn my native language correctly and this helps immensely especially as I'm from Maigh Eo go raibh maith agat.
Is deas gur fhreagair tú ceist an fhocail "ar" i do thrácht mar is minic a deireann muid "ar" mar a litrítear é, b'shin an cheist a bhí mé ar thob a chur ort. Is maith an rud é go bhfuil duine mar thú féin ann atá ag díriú ar fhuaimeanna na Gaeilge mar is ceart, mar cloisim an méid sin múinteoirí Gaeilge ar líne ag iarraidh an teanga a mhúineadh agus gan ach fuaimeanna an bhéarla acu. Tugann físeán mar seo an seans do na foghlaimeoirí éisteacht leatsa agus tuiscint a fháil go bhfuil a leithéid ann agus fuaimeanna sainiúla i nGaeilge taobh amuigh den bhéarla, goinfear ar a n-aire siadsan agus tabharfar deis dóibh fuaimeanna an bhéarla a thabhairt faoi deara mar gheall ar na físeán a chonaic siad uait féin. Samhail leat duine ag múineadh béarla agus tuin fhíorláidir Ghearmáinise ar a chuid cainte aige, sin mar a airím féin an Ghaeilge ó na daoine sin. Mar sin féin is maith an rud é go ndéanann siad an iarracht ar aon chaoi agus go bhfuil duine mar thú féin ann le srian a chur ag an am céanna orthu.
It is nice that you tackled the problem of the word "ar" in your comment because it is often that we say "ar" as it is spelled, that was what I was just about to ask you. It is a good thing that there is somebody like yourself concentrating on the proper sounds of Irish, because I hear so many Irish language teachers attempting to teach the language and all they have are the sounds of English. A video such as this gives learners a chance to listen to yourself and to appreciate that there is such a thing as particular sounds in Irish that are not in English. Their attention will be drawn and they will be given the opportunity to notice the sounds of English because of your videos. Imagine someone teaching English in a really strong German accent, that is how I hear the Irish language from those people. Having said that it is a good thing that they make the attempt anyways, but that there is someone like yourself there at the same time to rein them in.
In Scottish Gaelic ar is spelt air and ag is spelt aig.
Fisean ar dóigh, níos mó le do thoil 🙏
Almost every one I've heard that speaks Irish Gaelic pronounces the R in the retroflex English manner.
But if you listen to old people from the Gaeltacht, you won't hear it... Because they knew Irish before they learnt English.
Because these are first-language English speakers who were taught a neutered form of Irish by first-language English speakers who were taught a neutered form of Irish by... well, you get the idea
I learned what Irish I have in Iorras, and I love your pronunciation guide. Go raibh maith agat.
Go raib mait agat, go h-an suimiúil
Hey, what’s your opinion on “Now your talking” for learning the Ulster dialect?
This is making a lot of sense! GRMA!
Go roibh maith agat as a bhfíseán son! I'm really glad to see the use of the seanaibítir! Just a small note on the broad r, it isn't more or less the same one that exists in English, in most variants of English (including most Hiberno-English accents), it is a approximant /ɹ/, whereas the broad r in Irish is a tap (or flap) /ɾ/. The English r is pronounced at the back of the mouth, the Irish r (broad and slender) is pronounced at the front.
Yes, but when said it phonetically slots into the acoustic range (the phonetic field) of only one of the Gaelic phonemes: the broad R, but not the slender R or any other consonant.
Therefore, it's more or less the same, and I've even known correct, native speakers of Gaelic (notably one young lady from Inishmaan in Galway) use it in their normal day-to-day Gaelic speech, sounding a bit strange, but not incorrect.
Nine things: naoi nithe.
I don't understand.
@@patchy642 Well, in traditional Muskerry Irish (e.g. Peadar Ua Laoghaire), numbers over 2 took the plural, apart from a small number of words like lá, mí, etc. So 9 things, which you stated as "naoi ní" can also be "naoi nithe". I'm not claiming that that is a prevalent form in the Gaeltacht today. In Ua Laoghaire's manuscript translation of the Bible he translates Proverbs 6:16 (Six things there are, which the Lord hateth, and the seventh his soul detesteth) as "Sin sé nithe gur thug an Tiarna fuath dóibh, agus tá gráin anama aige ar an seachtú ní".
@@disappointedenglishman98
In The Bible, sure, where they also speak of "fishes" instead of "fish", but hark, who speaketh like that now, verily?
@@patchy642 Well, it is a translation of the Bible done by Peadar Ua Laoghaire (1839-1920) around 1917. Amhlaoibh Ó Loingsigh had "trí nithe" in his folklore taken down by the Folklore Commission in 1943-44. Both of these were very traditional in their Irish. I don't think anyone speaks like that any more. The most traditional form of Muskerry Irish probably died out around 1950.
A wonderful video, thank you. Where are you based, I am interested to know do the people all speak with the same pronunciation in your area?
Hi Patchy. I can't hear the difference between the broad and slender n in this video. Your inflection goes up on the slender and down on the broad - that's what I'm hearing most. Is like an ng as in sing ⟨ŋ⟩?
Teach me sensei! :D
Patchy other than pronunciation, would you recommend other online videos on RUclips for learning phrases and grammar as reliable sources?
I guess the difference between the 2 n's is that for one, you pronounce it softly whereas the other one has more emphasis and accent on it
Thanks for the videos, very interesting. Who speaks Irish like a native, these days, most speak like their teacher or an app off the internet. And then like me if your mammy's Norwegian you have a whole lot of other cant thrown in there
Go hiontach ar fad, Patchy! I've actually started a series which may interest leaners of Kerry dialect Gaelic.
@@TimmyTommy-dj3sq
Oh, nice!
Is it available here on RUclips?
Tá tú ag foghlaim gaeilge anois. teanga álainn. Go raibh math agat.
🥇🏆🥇🏆🥇
I recently started learning Irish.
How do I pronounce the R in "tithe tábhairne"? Does the -airne" at the end of "tábhairne" sound like /ezhne/, /əʒnə/?
tábhairne is pronounced tár-ne. R is broad in the rn combination even when the n is slender.
@@disappointedenglishman98Only in Munster. Further north, is still a bilabial fricative (like b/v in Spanish) and thus is three syllables long.
Patchy, first, thank you for the video. It was very helpful. I do have a question. Listening to some native Irish speakers, their pronunciation of slender r sounds closer to a d sound than a zh sound. Is this also correct? I am asking as an American who has just started learning
Yes indeed, that's what I meant by the different representations in other languages, while it's all the same phoneme in Gaelic.
Yes, sometimes the slender R when heard with an English ear can sound very like an English D.
@@patchy642 thank you again for the reply. It would be helpful if you made more videos like these because they are both informative and very easy to follow.
What happens when a vowel is surrounded by a slender and a broad (iro) is there a rule of precedence?
Because of a general, strict and intuitive spelling convention ("broad with broad and slender with slender") such a situation never arises, except in some very few composite words (words which were once separate), in which case the consonant usually (but not always, and sometimes fluctuating sporadically) maintains its original consonant values.
Examples are "ansin", "aréir", in which I and most usually pronounce that central consonant as slender, but this, maybe in part because it's not nailed down in the spelling, can vary by dialect, speaker, and sometimes mood, or even at random.
But in probably 99% of words the spelling rule is firmly adhered to, and followed (when pronounced by proficient speakers).
One word that comes to mind is "gaeltacht", but we used to spell that as "gaedhealtacht" in the seanchló until someone decided to shorten it to "gaeltacht", and placing a slender vowel against a broad vowel in the process.@@patchy642
Hello, can you tell me what Mashanashulla means please?
Do you give classes
Yep, I've just put that in the description of this video, thanks.
would it be correct to pronounce slender like ry ? like éire said like erye ?
@@makkiij
I've no idea what "erye" is, or how it's pronounced.
Upon observation of your complete lack of capitalisation, I can just as easily presume it's a proper noun, can I?
Erye?
Maybe somebody's Name?
Is it possibly a misspelling or a variant of the name of the main square in Galway city?
@@patchy642 B'fhéidir ba chóir duit freagair a chuir air nó uirthí, tá fhios agam go bhfuil an foghraíocht mícheart ag cuir isteach ort agus taim ar an leathanach céanna cosúil tú féin, ach níl an stiúir go maith chun spreagadh do scoláirí, i mo thuarim.
sembra una sfida per me
I guess you could explain the slender r pronunciation as an in between of 'sh' and 'ch' or a sh but your using a lower part of your voicebox. Additionally, you don't say that harshly but rather softly
Duolingo pronounces 'bean as veain.
Go raibh míle Patchy
@@Dd13818
Ní thuigim.
Go raibh míle mé cén áit?
@@patchy642 go raibh míle maith agat :)
@@patchy642do you teach lessons In person or online?
@@sula1529 Yes.
You're older...no offense, I'm not young I'm 46...so I trust what you're saying. However, the sound...is rough. I wish I could hear this video without the echo... I'm learning the language and would love to clearly hear what you're saying. My older eyes also can't read what you're writing on your dry erase board. My loss indeed.
🤗🤗🤗🥰🥰🥰🏆🏆🏆grma❤
How do you expect people to learn your pronounciation when there is an echo and it is not possible to hear the difference?
No such name as Ní É ???? I presume she is really Ní Aodha? There is a major problem with mis-spellings of personal names and surnames in Irish.
By the way, it should be naoi and not naoí !!
You've read my notes below the video, yeah?
so slender r = жь
Almost, but r-coloured. Czech has the same sound, where it's written ⟨ř⟩.
When you're making a video on precise pronunciation, probably best not to film it in an empty auditorium.
Meh, it's not very professional, indeed, but I've seen true pros do worse.
I think at least it's discernable, right?
'Sea, cinnte!@@patchy642
Too much faffing about.
The sound is terrible. There's an echo. You need an engineer and a proper studio.
Unfortunately the grammar police tend to put people off the language. Purity spiralling is great on paper but not in reality.
Grammar is one thing, but if people learn a language without bothering to use the differentiation sounds within that language, what's the point in bothering to learn it in the first place?
Fair enough to get one or two of the sounds mixed up, like some Asians who mix up "light" and "right", but to do this across most of the minimum pairs within the language seems to me a big waste of time.
And then when they don't even make an effort to rectify the same mispronounced sounds year in year out, and even decide to teach others to replicate the same abominations of butchered Gaelic phonemes, there comes a time it starts to grate on the ears of those who speak it well, lightly or longly.
Using an cló gaelach means most learners will never be able to engage with this sort of content. I certainly agree with you that most learners speak a sort of patois practically, rather than striving to emulate the living, native forms of Gaeltacht speech as much as is possible for learners. And it will only get worse as the middlle-aged and elderly speakers pass on with ever greater frequency.
@@DA-og4px
I don't agree.
I think you underestimate people.
And you forget that what a learner of a language most requires is authenticity, including the correct sounds from their teachers.
Learners' Gaelic pronunciation will only get worse as long as they keep learning (and teaching) the wrong sounds.
And it's so easily fixed!
All of my students use the right sounds, right from the start.
Also, not one of them has had any problems adapting to the Gaelic script.
I guess you didn't listen to everything I said in the video.
And I don't even know what "patois" means in this context, but if you mean they've somehow got inferior grammar or vocab, again you're mistaken.
Many modern learners are well accomplished EXCEPT for their pronunciation, I suppose often because their teachers mislead them, awares or unawares.
@@patchy642 I didn't watch the entire video, it's true. Seems to me a disproportionate number of the more high profile language advocates and 'activists" speak this anglicised Irish mishmash. Ciarán Mac Giolla Bhein and Julian de Spáinn come to mind. Ola Majekodunmi, Pádraig Ó Tiarnaigh, among others... all have been profiled in the English language media as examples of the supposed resurgence that Irish is experiencing... 😑 As an immigrant learner its offputting because a lot of the Irish I hear isn't worth listening to. The late Feargal Ó Béarra called it English in Irish drag, if I remember correctly.
Go ráiḃ maiṫ agat, ba maiṫ liom an fíor ṫeanga a laḃairt, in ionad an caiġdeán