Appendix:Old Irish pronunciation
The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Old Irish pronunciations in Wiktionary entries.
See w:Old Irish language § Phonology for detailed discussion of the phonology of Old Irish.
Some details of Old Irish phonetics are not known. /sʲ/ may have been pronounced [ɕ] or [ʃ], as in modern Irish. /hʲ/ may have been the same sound as /h/ and/or /xʲ/. The vowels /i/ and /e/ may have had backed allophones like [ɨ] and [ə] when they were preceded by a plain consonant (which happened only in unstressed syllables).
The precise articulation of the fortis sonorants is unknown, but they were traditionally seen as longer, tenser, and generally more strongly articulated than their lenis counterparts /n/, /nʲ/, /l/, /lʲ/, /ɾ/, /ɾʲ/. Modern Irish and Gaelic dialects (e.g. Connacht Irish) that still possess a four-way distinction in the coronal nasals and laterals usually manifest the fortis variants as dentals. As such, these fortis sonorants will also be reconstructed as dentals here. /n̠ʲ/ and /l̠ʲ/ may have been pronounced [ɲ̟] and [ʎ̟] respectively. The difference between fortis and lenis r may have been that the former were trills while the latter were flaps.
In unstressed final closed syllables and medial syllables, by Old Irish u-infected vowels (as well as some vowels next to labials or velars) merged into one unstressed vowel which will be denoted as /u/. Other unstressed vowels in the same environment ended up spelled a, e, and (a)i in often complementary distribution depending on which surrounding consonants were palatalized. These uninfected vowels tend to be understood as a single phoneme generally transcribed as /ə/. Its allophones are unclear: Blasse (2015)[1] and Griffith (2016)[2] give different interpretations.
| Consonants | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Palatalized[3] | English approximations | |||
| IPA | Example | IPA | Example | ||
| b | bó | bʲ | bél | boot; beautiful | |
| β | aball | βʲ | gaibid | voodoo; view but bilabial, meaning the bottom lip touches the top lip rather than the upper teeth | |
| β̃ | demon | β̃ʲ | cnáim | (no equivalent; like /β/ and /βʲ/ but nasalized) | |
| d̪ | daimid | d̠ʲ | derg | do (but dental), dew | |
| ð | adarc, nád | ðʲ | buide | though; bathe you | |
| ɡ | gaibid | ɡʲ | gér | goose; argue | |
| ɣ | ag | ɣʲ | aig | (no equivalent) | |
| h | a ṡúil ‘his eye’ a athair ‘her father’ (not written) |
hʲ | a ṡéitig ‘his wife’ a iasc ‘her fish’ (not written) |
hand; hew | |
| k | caraid | kʲ | ceist | coot; cute | |
| l̪ | lár, ball | l̠ʲ | lebor, céille | filth; million | |
| l | ḟlaith, colainn | lʲ | ḟlesc, gaile | pool; leaf | |
| m | mór | mʲ | milis | moot; mute | |
| n̪ | nóeb, ennac | n̠ʲ | nél, fírinne | tenth; inch | |
| n | gonaid | nʲ | fíne | noon; new | |
| ŋ | ngaibid | ŋʲ | ngér | long; angular | |
| p | póc | pʲ | persan | poor; pure | |
| ɸ | fuil phóc |
ɸʲ | fín phersan |
fool; fuel but bilabial, meaning the bottom lip touches the top lip rather than the upper teeth | |
| r | rún, berraid | rʲ | rí, airrecht | rule (but trilled); real (but trilled) | |
| ɾ | beraid | ɾʲ | beirid | rule (but tapped); real (but tapped) | |
| s | sacart | sʲ | sen | soon; bless you or possibly sheet | |
| t̪ | tarb | t̠ʲ | tír | tool (but dental); tune | |
| θ | tharb | θʲ | thír | thorn; birth you | |
| x | charaid | xʲ | cheist | loch (Scottish English); hue (pronounced strongly) | |
| Vowels | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| IPA | Examples | English approximation | |
| Monophthongs | |||
| a | banb | pot (General American) | |
| aː | bás | father | |
| e | bein | best | |
| eː | bél | pay | |
| i | bith | kit | |
| iː | mí | meet | |
| o | bocc | cloth | |
| oː | bó | boat | |
| u | cullach | good | |
| uː | cúl | too | |
| Short diphthongs | |||
| au̯ | daum | house | |
| eu̯ | neuch | (no equivalent; a bit like coat in very posh RP) | |
| iu̯ | do·biur | (no equivalent) | |
| Long diphthongs | |||
| aːi̯[4] | áes | prize | |
| aːu̯[5] | dáu | loud | |
| eːu̯ | béo | stay with | |
| iːa̯ | cíall | fear (nonrhotic accent) | |
| iːu̯ | díummus | be with | |
| oːi̯[4] | cóem | void | |
| oːu̯[6] | bóu | go with | |
| uːa̯ | cúan | tour (nonrhotic accent) | |
| uːi̯ | druí | do it (but compressed into a single syllable) | |
| Supersegmentals | ||
|---|---|---|
| IPA | Explanation | |
| ˈ | Primary stress (placed before the stressed syllable) | |
| ˌ | Secondary stress (usually found only in compounds) | |
Notes
[edit]- ^ Blasse, Lian (2015), “Method in the Madness: Vowel length, schwa and the quality of consonants in the orthography of Early Old Irish”, in Utrecht University Student Theses Repository[1]
- ^ Griffith, Aaron (2016), “On the old Irish third palatalisation and the 3sg. present of the copula”, in Ériu, volume 66, number 1, Royal Irish Academy, , →ISSN, pages 39–62
- ^ Old Irish makes contrasts between plain and palatalized consonants. Palatalized consonants, denoted in the IPA by a superscript ⟨ʲ⟩, are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised toward the hard palate, in a manner similar to the articulation of the ⟨y⟩ sound in yes.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 The sounds /aːi̯/ and /oːi̯/ merged into a single phoneme during the Old Irish period. It is not known how this merged sound was pronounced, but by Early Modern Irish it was spelled ao(i) and pronounced [ɯː].
- ^ The sound /aːu̯/ merged with /oː/ during the Old Irish period.
- ^ The sound /oːu̯/ merged with /aːu̯/, which then later merged with /oː/.