About phonetics

stephanus

It is true what they say, the more you learn about a thing the more answers you find to your questions. I have now a fair idea of Irish phonetics but here are four things to which I have not found an answer. Can anyone please help!

1. Slender r is pronounced as broad r at the beginning of a word and I can even distinguish them when I hear a word like rince. But what about consonant clusters with r, like "freisin"? Is that rule also true for them? The word is always pronounced so quickly on my cd that I cannot really tell whether it is broad or slender.

2. According to the spelling rules given in my book "io" is pronounced like "í" but not at the beginning of a word and before an n, where it is pronounced "ú". What about "ionacht"? That is pronounced with an "í" sound. The reason might be the "n". I havenoticed that before nasals many vowels are umlauted. But then there is the word "iondúil" which has an "ú" sound at the beginning of a word and before an "n", too! Is this something I simply have to accept or is there a rule for it?

3. In my book, which represents the Cois Fharraige dialect, it says that the third person plural of "ag" is spelled "acu" but pronounced with a b-sound at the end. It is not a spelling mistake as I have cross-checked it with other prepositions. Is that because Mr Ó Siadhail uses standard orthography for that dialect in which this form is pronounced like this? Or is it one of those things I still have to accept?

4. Short "a" before a consonant + á combination is pronounced like a short "u", like in scadán, caisleán. So what about "candáil"?

I knew, I shouldn't have started with the phonetics first ....;)