Can you, please, explain how to pronounce Irish spellings?

I share your perplexity. When I was reading the stories of Cuchulain, I found a great guide to pronunciation of the names and tried to bear them in mind. But even in my imagination I couldn’t do justice to them. And when I listened to authentic pronunciations, I couldn’t wrap my tongue around them. After a while I just settled for what they looked like, with mental apologies to speakers of Celtic languages.

I do remember that “mh” is a diphthong.

Samhain is a bit odd as the letters mh together usually sound like v. See the Gaelic pronunciation guide. The pronunciation of Gaelic words isn’t so bad, as long as you can say the ch sound as in loch, which Sassenach’s can’t, but the spelling seems over complicated.

@flutherother Is the /ch/ in loch different than a simple /k/?

I checked you’re thoughtfully provided link and answered the question for myself. Thank you.

Yes, it isn’t pronounced “lock” the ch is pronounced as in J S Bach.

Welsh words and pronunciation is an order of magnitude beyond Irish

It’s the natural result of trying to apply Roman letters to a language that was developed without a written alphabet, and which contains more sounds than the Roman alphabet can accommodate.

It’s so heartwarming to see the Irish stereotyped in such a positive light. ~

@Brian1946 Is the question or its details offensive?

I seriously want to know.

no, nobody can. Every one of them does it differently.

However, I have some Irish cousins if you have anything in particular that is bugging you.

@Hawaii_Jake I imagine brian was responding to Darth rather than the OP.

@janbb That’s what I’m hoping. Both @Darth_Algar and @Rarebear were demeaning.

Irish (celtic) pronunciation is best done with “at least tae’ pints o’ Guinness in ye!”

There is a lot of history to consider with the Gaelic languages (and Welsh, to a somewhat lesser extent).

After the English takeover of Ireland after 1066, the language was effectively outlawed. It was spoken in secret for a long time, which is why it exists to this day, but it wasn’t provided the “air” it needed to grow and evolve into a modern language. For that reason, the language is essentially the same as it was a thousand years ago.

Consider, for that purpose, Old English – and how it looks to our modern eye when written. It’s basically unrecognizable as English. Middle English isn’t much easier to pronounce without serious study.

We’re sitting in 2017 reading a highly tribal, non-Latin-based language from a mostly illiterate culture written with Latin letters based on the sounds those letters made in a mostly Germanic language a thousand years ago.

All the Guinness in the world won’t make that easier, Irish-heritage jokes aside.

@Hawaii_Jake

Being of English and Scottish ancestry I consider making fun of the Irish to be a, tongue-in-cheek, matter of obligation to my heritage. Besides, English drunkenness gave us ridiculousness like cheese rolling and dwile flonking. Any jokes are in good humor, I assure you.

@Darth_Algar Thanks for the clarification.

And at any rate the Irish can still speak English better than the Scottish can.

Who can deny that the Irish are well known for self-deprecating humor and being that the majority genetic makeup that I possess is Irish I consider it making fun of myself.

I also tell Aggie jokes

This site offers approximate pronunciations for for English speakers who don’t intend to study the language in depth.

I’m studying Irish now. I’ve studied Chinese, Korean, Ojibwe, and a few European languages, and Irish is the hardest language I’ve ever studied.

@Muad_Dib Your history lesson is wrong in almost every detail. I can’t tell if you are deliberately trying to confuse people as some kind of prank or if you just don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought everyone knew that 1066 is the year the Normans conquered England, not the year the English conquered Ireland.

Edit: ok, you said “after” 1066. But the Anglo-Normans who invaded Ireland “after” 1066—not going to look it up, but I think it was in the 12th or 13th cent—were in fact absorbed by the Irish, becoming “more Irish than the Irish themselves”.

A process that did not take place overnight, darling.

^The suppression of Irish wasn’t seriously attempted until much later, under the Tudors. The Irish were no less literate than other Europeans of the middle ages—in fact, Irish scholars preserved much Latin learning during the Dark Ages. Etc.

You can hear how native speakers pronounce Samhain here

“mh” is either /v/ or /w/. One thing that makes Irish spelling confusing is the way the spelling represents certain regular phonological changes in the language, and Irish phonology is challenging for an English speaker no matter how it’s spelled.

They preserved Latin.

Gaelic has no alphabet of its own. There’s Ogham, which may predate Gaelic, and was mostly used as signage, as relatively few examples exist. There’s little if any written anything outside the monasteries.

^Yes, and they also preserved Irish legends and legal codes. Irish “has no alphabet of its own”? Neither does English, French, or most other European languages that use the Roman alphabet, other than Latin (if ogham doesn’t count, then runes don’t either). And the missionaries who brought the Roman alphabet to Ireland were not English speakers, so the Irish use of it is not “based on the sounds those letters made in a mostly Germanic language a thousand years ago”.

I’m sorry about the churlish way I reacted to your first post. I should have found a more tactful way to address these errors. I’m going to leave it there.

I found a very good article on the Irish Alphabet which helps explain things.

This video is excellent!

https://youtu.be/oIokUII7LX0

@Hawaii_Jake @Zissou‘s video is excellent and it explains the “w” sound in “samhain” at around the 10.00 mark. It is the broad vowel “a” on either side of the “mh” that causes it to be pronounced “w”.

I’m really enjoying this question.