It can sound rather like a severely overdone Y. L only slenderises at the beginning of a word. N only slenderises initially or after a back vowel. R slenderises everywhere except at the beginning of a word. Honestly, who makes these things up? Finally, ever hear the English word tune pronounced 'tchoon' rather than 'tyoon'? This is a common trend, and the same is happening in Gaelic.
Thus it's fine to pronounce teallach 'tchal-uhkh' rather than 'tyal-uhkh', and of course it means the word nid comes out as 'nyitch' because the D is pronounced as a T because it's not at the start, but it's also slender, so it becomes TY which then becomes TCH The trick with this stuff is knowing which vowels are actually supposed to be sounded, and which have been inserted to mark the surrounding consonants as broad or slender.
Also, Gaelic vowels have a habit of changing before certain consonants, much as the A's in the English words ''half'', ''hand'', ''hall'', ''halt'' and ''hallow'' are all pronounced differently.
Just be grateful you aren't having to learn as many rules as a learner of English! AO is a new vowel, and we all love those. It's like the OO sound in English ''food'', but with the lips unrounded , and sounded further back in the throat. To some, it sounds like a cross between that OO sound and the UR sound in burn. Elsewhere, it mostly has the sound of the English E in ''bed'', e. One exception; before M , EU becomes a long E sound instead. Thus leum 'lyehm'. Thus bruach 'bruakh'. A , E , EA make an 'uh' sound as in the second syllable of butter.
Much as in English hall , almost every vowel in Gaelic changes its sound before these letters. This only happens in stressed syllables. A and EA now make the sound of English cow. In the case of EA, a Y sound is added before it when it starts a word, and it doesn't change before M. AI now makes the sound in English sky.
EI now sounds like English vein , e. IO and this is a weird one becomes the long OO sound but not before M. What's more, it gains an extra Y sound in front if it begins a word. O is lengthened to a sound similar to that in English home.
OI becomes the sound of the Welsh EI , that is, a sound formed by running together a short 'uh' and an 'ee'. UI becomes a difficult sound formed by running together the back-of-the-throat Gaelic AO sound and an 'ee'. It's the same in English with the words fall and fallow. EA becomes a Gaelic short A, but still has a Y preceding it if it starts a word off. IO becomes a Gaelic short U.
It also still has a Y preceding it if it starts a word off. This one is simpler though. As in the previous section, this lengthening does not happen if a vowel follows the RR note: it does happen if a vowel follows an RN or an RD , e.
Also as in the previous section, under these circumstances an EA ends up sounding like a short A e. The most annoying thing about these four consonants is their tendency to disappear when following a vowel. I also know that "dubh" is always pronounced rough phoenitic "duu".
I was listening to Roddy's recording and noticed that "taobh" was pronounced as a v as is leibh. There were a cople of others such as leabhar where it was either pronounced as a w or sounded like the bh was skipped all together. Unread post by Seonaidh » Sat Oct 25, pm Can be dialectal, m. In general, the main difference between BH and MH is when they vanish, i. With BH this tends to be total, e. With MH it can make the vowel before nasal, e.
As for "Inbhir Nis" and so on, the first bit usually comes out more like "inyer" than "inver". Some Anglicised Gaelic place-names spell themselves "Inner When it comes down to it, you don't get to speak in Gaelic from a book, only by speaking with others in Gaelic.
After all, is that not the way you learnt to speak English? First, hear it, then say it, then use it - don't worry about how it's spelt until you need to. OK, mevvies I should carry on in Ingglic. Just search for words like mbean or mbord or gcapall , and find exercises that include them.
Not all of them will have audio, but you will usually find at least one that does. Both English-to-Irish and Irish-to-English exercises will provide the Irish audio, if it is available.
Get started. Grateful for answers edit: How is 'Mbean' supposed to be pronounced? May 5, May 6, Thanks for a good answer!
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