Pronunciation of the word "Raghad" in Irish?

SazSarsh

How do you pronounce "Raghad" in irish? Little sister is practicing poetry for leaving cert. Her Irish teacher says it's "rock-ed" but she is sure it's "ride" from listening to audios of the poem she is learning?

hullaballoo

That's Munster Irish so I'm not sure but my instinct is to lean towards your sister's pronunciation but logic suggests the teacher's pronunciation as it's a Munster conjugation of the verb "téigh" and would be "rachaidh mé" (rock-he may) under the Caighdeán.

dudara

Agree with Hullaballoo. My pronunciation would be akin to “rock-ed”. The glories of the Irish language dialects

pandoraj09

"Ride" is definitely a correct way of pronouncing it. I assume it's An Spailpín Fánach. This pronunciation fits the metre of the poem the best also. For Leaving Cert Poetry for the Oral anyway, not every word has to be spot on correct as a native speaker would say it...

secondc

I would definitely use 'rye-ud'(almost as if it's two syllables), as she had been taught.

Have a look at youtube and check for 'Gaelport' and 'an spailpín fánach '. Very clear and accurate readings aimed to help students preparing for the poems in the oral.

deirdremf

SazSarsh wrote: »

How do you pronounce "Raghad" in irish? Little sister is practicing poetry for leaving cert. Her Irish teacher says it's "rock-ed" but she is sure it's "ride" from listening to audios of the poem she is learning?

ride, except with a broad "d" - the sound a lot of us in Ireland make at the beginning of the words "the, this, that", and at the end of the words "breathe, meath, louth". Not as it's pronounced in standard English, or in Ulster.

So it would rhyme with the word blyth, lithe, scythe and tithe

David Webb

In Munster Irish, the pronunciation is not quite "ride". It is /rəid/.
/ə/ is a neutral vowel, like the final vowel in the word "sofa".

As people in this thread have said, in other dialects it is rachaidh mé, but this is not pronounced "rock-he may". Ch in Irish is a guttural sound like the j in Spanish or the ch in German - and also the ch in the Scottish word loch (which is an Irish word). This is /ra:xə m'e:/ in Conemara Irish (pronunciation given in phonetic script in the foclóir to Caint Ros Muc available from the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies).

For the same reason "rock-ed" doesn't mean anything in Irish. An Irish "ch" is not a k sound. And in any case, the gh in raghad shows a diphthong and is not pronounced as a consonant.