Beginner's Guide to Irish Gaelic Pronunciation Rules are divided up into the following topics: - Vowels - Consonants - Aspirated Consonants - Eclipsed Consonants - Diphthongs - Accent - Double Consonants - Exceptions Spoken Irish has three main dialects, Munster (Cork and Kerry), Connemara and Ulster (Donegal). This guide is more or less based on the Ulster dialect. Irish, Scottish Gaelic (which is pronounced "Gallic") and Manx make up the Gaelic branch (sometimes called q-Celtic) of the Celtic languages. Irish is sometimes called "Erse" (usually in crossword puzzles), but this is generally considered impolite nowadays. The other branch is the Brythonic (p-Celtic) branch consisting of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Although the two branches can be seen to be related by a professional linguist, to the ordinary person there is no perceivable relationship between the two. VOWELS Irish vowels are very easy. They are only single sounds, not diphthongs like English vowels. They come in two varieties, long and short. Long vowels are marked with an acute accent, called in Irish a fada (which simply means "long"). Simple Vowels Long vowel Pronounced Short vowel Pronounced á Eng. "Pa" a Eng. "ago" é Eng. "Hey" e Eng. "peck" í Eng. "Knee" i Eng. "pick" ó Eng. "Woe" o Eng. "mock" ú Eng. "Shoe" u Eng. "muck" CONSONANTS For Irish consonants, things work a bit like Spanish or Italian. Note the two different ways the letter "c" is pronounced in "cappuccino" or "San Francisco". In these languages, when a "c" is followed by an "i" or "e" it is pronounced differently than if it is followed by "a", "o" or "u". Irish does the same thing in a very systematic way. "i" and "e" are called slender vowels, "a", "o" and "u" are broad vowels. Each consonant is pronounced either in a broad or slender way, according to the surrounding vowels. Irish spelling requires that the vowels match on either side of a consonant, which is summarized as Caol le caol, leathan le leathan ("Slender with slender, broad with broad"). When foreign words are taken into Irish, extra "glide vowels" may be introduced to meet this rule, e.g. California might become Caileafóirnia. Irish has fewer consonants than English does. As you can see, most of them are pronounced very much like English. Actually, for the purpose of simplicity I am leaving out a few subtle differences. SIMPLE CONSONANTS Broad Consonant Pronounced Slender Consonant Pronounced b Eng. "b" b Eng. "b" c Eng. "k" c Eng. "k" d Eng. "d" d Eng. "j" f Eng. "f" f Eng. "f" g Eng. "g" g Eng. "g" l Eng. "l" l Eng. "l" m Eng. "m" m Eng. "m" n Eng. "n" n Eng. "n" p Eng. "p" p Eng. "p" r rolled "r" r Eng. "r" s Eng. "s" s Eng. "sh" t Eng. "t" t Eng. "ch" ASPIRATED CONSONANTS Some consonants in Irish can undergo a transformation called séimhiú, which is somewhat inaccurately (to a real linguist) translated as "aspiration". In the Old Irish script putting a little dot above the letter showed this. Nowadays Irish is printed using the standard Western alphabet, and the letter "h" following the consonant has replaced the little dot. "h" in Irish is not a letter, it is an operation. That's why there seem to be so many "h"s in Irish. ("h" sometimes appears at beginning of a word before a vowel, or in words borrowed from English. It is pronounced the same as in English when used by itself before a vowel.) The operation of aspiration changes the pronunciation of the consonants, and naturally there is both a broad and a slender version for each. ASPIRATED CONSONANTS Broad consonant Pronounced Slender consonant Pronounced bh Eng. "w" bh Eng. "v" ch As in "loch" or "chutzpah" ch Like the broad version dh Like "ch" but based on a "g" sound dh Eng. "y" fh Silent fh Silent gh Like "ch" but based on a "g" sound gh Eng. "y" mh Eng. "w" mh Eng. "v" ph Eng. "f" ph Eng. "f" sh Eng. "h" sh Eng. "h" th Eng. "h" th Eng. "h" There are a few exceptions to these rules. Broad dh or gh in the middle of a word is usually pronounced "y", such as fadhb "fibe" ("problem"). Sometimes broad bh or mh ("w") can result in a combination which is hard to say, like mo bhróga ("my shoes"). In that case, a "v" sound is used instead. Also, sometimes a "v" sound occurs when bh or mh is at the end of a word, such as creidimh "krej-iv" ("belief"). ECLIPSED CONSONANTS In English, in different grammatical situations, we sometimes change the end of words, such as "child" becomes "children". We also can change the middle of words, such as "man" turns into "men". In the Celtic languages, the beginning of a word can also change. If you were learning to speak Welsh, for example, this might produce difficulties for the beginner. If you see an unfamiliar word, you could have trouble looking it up in the dictionary, because you might not be sure what the first letter of the root form is. In Irish, things are much easier. When the first letter of a word changes in what is called urú or "eclipsis", the spelling gives first the letter as pronounced, followed by the original letter before it was changed. The following letter combinations at the beginning of a word should be interpreted this way: mb, gc, nd, bhf, ng, bp, ts, dt Note that bh is considered to be a single letter. DIPHTHONGS This is the trickiest part of Irish pronunciation, when two vowels come together. The reason it's tricky is that sometimes one of the vowels is favored in pronunciation, and the other is just a glide vowel. You remember that a glide vowel simply changes the quality from broad to slender. The slender glide vowel is easy because we have it in English. Irish tún would be English "toon", Irish tiún would be English "tune". So the slender glide vowel is sort of a very quick "y" sound. Similarly, the broad glide vowel is sort of a very quick short "u" sound, almost a grunt. In Munster dialect it can sometimes sound like a "w". When two vowels are together, and one of them is long, the long vowel sound predominates. There are only a few words in Irish where two long vowels come together, in which case you simply say them one after the other. So the case we really need to look at is when two short vowels come together. LONG DIPHTHONGS These are written with short (non-accented) vowels, but actually you speak them rather as if one of the vowels were long. Long diphthongs Written Pronounced ae Eng. "tray" ao Eng. "tree" eo Eng. "Joe" ia Eng. "see a" ua Eng. "truant" Note this can be followed by an "i", which just makes a slender glide vowel afterwards. SHORT DIPHTHONGS These are combinations of two short vowel sounds. For most of them you simply say the two vowels rather quickly one after the other. The table gives a few where one vowel predominates and the other is strictly a glide vowel. I'm not putting in the glide vowel in the table, but it should be added to the sound shown. SHORT DIPHTHONGS Written Pronounced Glide vowel ea Eng. "mass" Slender before io Eng. "miss" Broad after ui Eng. "miss" Broad before ACCENT In Ulster Irish, the accent always occurs on the first syllable. Especially, please note this includes the name "Clannad". In Munster Irish, things are different, but we are not dealing with that. The exceptions are a few words which were historically compound words. The most common are: anois ("a-NISH"), ariamh, arís, anall, arú, amháin, aneas DOUBLE CONSONANTS Some combinations of double consonants are hard to say together as written. Normally an indistinct vowel sound is introduced between them. The Irish often do the same in English, like pronouncing "Dublin" as "Dubbalin". The introduction of such sounds does not affect the placement of the accent. Thus gnóthach ("busy") is pronounced like "ga-NOE-hakh". The accent is placed on the first syllable, the ó, because the little added sound doesn't count as a syllable. You can put in the added indistinct vowel wherever you find any of the following consonant combinations difficult to say: gn, lm, lg, bl, mn, nm, nc, rb, rbh, rch, rg, rm, rn, thn Note that aspirated consonants are considered as a single consonant. Don't confuse these with eclipsed consonants which appear only at the beginning of a word, in which the second consonant is not pronounced. These double consonants can appear anywhere in a word. They don't include the eclipsed combinations, which even the Irish wouldn't try to pronounce! EXCEPTIONS Irish spelling is really quite regular, especially compared to English. Think about "through", "rough", and "cough". Now tell me how Gough Street in San Francisco should be pronounced! But there are a few exceptions in Irish, like most languages. But just as Irish has only 11 irregular verbs, the number of spelling exceptions is few. The most important are: The word "is" is always pronounced "iss", although by the spelling rules it should be "ish". It's said as though it were spelled ios. f in a verb ending is always pronounced "h". This is easy if you are actually learning the language, but otherwise how to tell which is a verb? In simple sentences the verb comes first. (The usual order is verb subject object.) The most common endings are -faidh, -faimid, -far, -fainn, -fadh. These also have slender versions -fidh, -fimid, -fear, -finn, -feadh. There are a few others but they are not so common. In Donegal the word ending -adh is usually pronounced "oo" as in "moon". In Munster you would hear "ig" in this case. Munster Irish also has some other exceptions, but by sticking to Ulster Irish you don't need to know about these. So by looking back at our first examples, we see an bhfuil (the verb "to be" in the present tense question form), the bh eclipses the f, and the u is just a glide vowel making the bh broad, so we say "an will". For Maedhbh (a legendary queen), ae diphthong is pronounced "ay", a slender dh is a "y", a slender bh is a "v", so we say "Mayv".