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UZBEKISTAN STATE WORLD LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY

II ENGLISH PHILOLOGY FACULTY

ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY DEPARTMENT

COURSE PAPER ON

THE IRISH TYPE OF PRONUNCIATION

Scientific advisor: Tukhlieva G.N

Student: Zasukhina Ekaterina

TASHKENT 2011

Introduction

This course paper is dedicated to the theme: “The Irish Type of Pronunciation”. I have chosen this theme, because I was interested in it and I wanted to know more about Irish language.

The aim of this course paper is to give information about the phonetics, alphabet of the Irish language, relationship to other languages and also about origin of its writing.

Subject of the course paper is to explain all these aspects and make them accessible, as I can. Because each language has its own features, refinements, which we should notice, understand and know.

Theoretical value of the course paper . This work shows code of information about Irish type of pronunciation. Even If nowadays this theme is not so actual and wide spread, it will improve and make a contribution soon.

Practical value of the course paper. It can be used in the lectures and seminars at the university.

. Irish is a Celtic language spoken in mainly Ireland (Eire). The official standard name in Irish is Gaeilge /'ge?l?k/. It should be stated first of all that English pronunciation standards in Northern Ireland and in the Republiс of Eire are different. The explanation lies in history. In the Middle Ages almost the whole of Ireland was Irish speaking. Nowadays, however, native speakers of Irish are few in number and are confined to rural areas even though Irish is the official language of Ireland and it is taught in schools. Between the 17th and early 20th centuries, the Irish language was gradually replaced by English in most parts of Ireland. However when the Republic of Ireland came into being in 1922, Irish was adopted as an official language, along with English, and the government and civil service become, in theory at least, officially bilingual.

Types of English Pronunciation and Relationship of the Irish language to other languages

There is wide range of pronunciation of any language, the English language as well. The pronunciation of almost every locality in the British Isles has peculiar features that distinguish it from other varieties of English pronunciation. Moreover pronunciation is socially influenced, i.e. it is influenced by education and upbringing. At the same time all these varieties have much more in common that what differentiates them. They are varieties of one and the same language, the English language. The varieties that are spoken by a socially limited number of people only in certain localities are known as dialects. Due to communication media (radio, TV, cinema), the increased mobility of the population, concentration of the population in the cities, the dialectal differences are becoming less marked. That, of course, does not mean that the pronunciation of a Manchester dialect speaker does not differ from the pronunciation of a London dialect speaker. Dialect speakers are, as a rule, the less educated part of the population. With the more educated people pronunciation generally tends to comfort to a particular standard. In present-day English the number of local speech dialects is being reduced to a fewer, more or less general, regional types. Every regional type of pronunciation is characterized by features that are common to all the dialects used in the region. The dialects, in their turn, are marked one from another by a number of peculiarities specific to each of them. The orthoepic norm of a language is the standard pronunciation adopted by native speakers as the right and proper way of speaking. It comprises the variants of pronunciation which reflect the main tendencies in pronunciation that exist in the language. It is the pronunciation used by the most educated part of the population, the pronunciation that is recorded in pronouncing dictionaries as the best. Alimardanov R.A.2008 “Pronunciation Theory of English” Irish is a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages, also known as Q-Celtic. It is closely related to Manx (Gaelg/Gailck) and Scottish Gaelic (Gaidhlig), the other Goidelic languages. There is some degree of mutual intelligibility between them, particular between the Scottish Gaelic of Islay and Argyll, Ulster Irish, and Manx. The grammar and vocabulary of these languages are quite similar, but the spelling and pronunciation are different, especially Manx spelling. Irish is distantly related to Welsh (Cymraeg), Cornish (Kernewek) and Breton (Brezhoneg), which form the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages, also known as P-Celtic. The Celtic languages all have a similar grammatical structure, but have relatively little vocabulary in common. Here is an illustration of some of the differences and similarities between the Celtic languages using the phrase 'I live in Ireland':

· Irish - Ta me i mo chonai i nEirinn

· Scottish Gaelic - Tha mi a' fuireach ann an Eirinn

· Manx - Ta mee cummal ayns Nerin

· Welsh - Dw i'n byw yn Iwerddon

· Cornish - Trigys ov yn Iwerdhon

· Breton - E Iwerzhon emaon o chom. The Official Standard (An Caighdean Oifigiuil). During the 1950s and 1960s a standardised form of Irish, known the An Caighdean Oifigiuil (The Official Standard) was developed. It combines elements from the three major dialects and its pronunciation is based on the Connacht dialect. This is the form of the language taught in most schools.

Hiberno-English (also known as Irish English) is the dialect of English written and spoken in Ireland (Hibernia). English was first brought to Ireland during the Norman invasion of the late 12th century. Initially it was mainly spoken in an area known as the Pale around Dublin, with Irish spoken throughout the rest of the country. By the Tudor period, the Irish culture and language had regained most of the territory initially lost to the colonists: even in the Pale, `all the common folk … for the most part are of Irish birth, Irish habit and of Irish language'. However, the resumption of English expansion following the Tudor conquest of Ireland saw a revival in use of their language, especially during the plantations. By the mid-19th century, English was the majority language spoken in the country; it has retained this status to the present day, with even the minority whose first language is Irish usually being fluent in English as well.Modern English as spoken in Ireland today retains some features showing the influence of the Irish language, such as vocabulary, grammatical structure and pronunciation. Unlike the United States and Canada, Ireland does not have its own spelling rules and "British English" spelling is used throughout the island.¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English Decline and revival. Between the 17th and early 20th centuries, the Irish language was gradually replaced by English in most parts of Ireland. Famine and migration in the 19th and 20th centuries led to its further decline. However when the Republic of Ireland came into being in 1922, Irish was adopted as an official language, along with English, and the government and civil service become, in theory at least, officially bilingual. Irish terms were also adopted for the titles of public figures and organisations - Garda (Police), Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Dail (Parliament).Recently the Irish language has experienced a revival with the foundation of new publications, a radio service, a television station and the growth of Irish-medium education. Irish is also increasingly being used on independent radio stations in Ireland. Derived words. Another group of vocabulary that is unique to Ireland is that of words derived from the Irish language.

These words and phrases are often an Anglicised version of words in Irish, or a direct translation of these words into English. In the latter case, they often give a meaning to a word or phrase that is generally not found in wider English use. Another class of vocabulary found in Hiberno-English are words and phrases common in Old- and Middle-English, but which have since been lost or forgotten in the modern English language generally.

Origin of writing in Ireland. Irish first began to appear in writing in Ogham inscriptions between the 4th and 6th centuries AD.

When St Patrick introduced Christianity to Ireland in the 5th century, Irish writers began to write in Latin, and at the same time Irish literature written in the Latin alphabet began to appear.

The Viking invasions of the 9th and 10th centuries led to the destruction of many early manuscripts, so most surviving manuscripts were written after that time.

The Ogham alphabet was used to write Archaic Irish, Old Welsh and Latin and Ogham inscriptions have been found in various parts of Ireland and the British Isles.

The Irish uncial alphabet originated in medieval manuscripts as a variant of the Latin alphabet. It was used for printing Irish until quite recently and is still used on road signs and public notices throughout Ireland.

Irish alphabet in Modern linguistics

Today Irish is usually written with a version of the Latin alphabet similar to the one used for Scottish Gaelic, though a spelling reform in 1957 eliminated some of the silent letters which are still used in Scottish Gaelic.

The letters j (je), k (ka), q (cu), v (ve), w (wae), x (ex), y (ye) and z (zae) do not occur in native Irish words, but do appear in some English loanwords, for example jab (job) and veain (van).¹¹ http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaeilge/gramadach/aibitir/

Features of the Irish phonetics

Lenition (seimhiu) is a change in sound that occurs to the beginning of words caused by a preceding word, such as a preposition. Lenition is indicated by adding an h after the initial consonant. For example, the Irish for shoe is brog, [brok] but my shoe is mo bhrog [m? vrok].Eclipsis (uru) happens after certain words, such as i, which means "in". Eclipsis in indicated by adding a extra consonant before the initial consonant. For example, the Irish for "in Paris" is i bParis [? bari?]. The important thing to remember about eclipsed consonants is that only the first consonant is pronounced.Irish vowels are very easy. They are only single sounds, not diphthongs like English vowels. They come in two varieties, long and short. Long vowels are marked with an acute accent, called in Irish a fada (which simply means "long").

For Irish consonants, things work a bit like Spanish or Italian. Note the two different ways the letter "c" is pronounced in "cappucino" or "San Francisco". In these languages, when a "c" is followed by an "i" or "e" it is pronounced differently than if it is followed by "a", "o" or "u". Irish does the same thing in a very systematic way. "i" and "e" are called slender vowels, "a", "o" and "u" are broad vowels. Each consonant is pronounced either in a broad or slender way, according to the surrounding vowels. Irish spelling requires that the vowels match on either side of a consonant, which is summarized as Caol le caol, leathan le leathan ("Slender with slender, broad with broad"). When foreign words are taken into Irish, extra "glide vowels" may be introduced to meet this rule, e.g. California might become Caileafoirnia. Irish has fewer consonants than English. As you can see, most of them are pronounced very much like English. Actually, for the purpose of simplicity I am leaving out a few subtle differences.

Aspirated consonants .Some consonants in Irish can undergo a transformation called seimhiu, which is somewhat inaccurately (to a real linguist) translated as "aspiration". In the old Irish script this was shown by putting a little dot above the letter. Nowadays Irish is printed using the standard Western alphabet, and the little dot has been replaced by the letter "h" following the consonant. "h" in Irish is not a letter, it is an operation. That's why there seem to be so many "h"s in Irish. ("h" sometimes appears at beginning of a word before a vowel, or in words borrowed from English. It is pronounced the same as in English when used by itself before a vowel.)¹¹ Abduazimov A. A. T., 2006 “Theoretical Course”; The operation of aspiration changes the pronunciation of the consonants, and naturally there is both a broad and a slender version for each.

There are a few exceptions to these rules. Broad dh or gh in the middle of a word is usually pronounced "y", such as fadhb "fibe" ("problem"). Sometimes broad bh or mh ("w") can result in a combination which is hard to say, like mo bhroga ("my shoes"). In that case, a "v" sound is used instead. Also, sometimes a "v" sound occurs when bh or mh is at the end of a word, such as creidimh "krej-iv" ("belief"). Eclipsed consonants. In English, in different grammatical situations, we sometimes change the end of words, such as "child" becomes "children". We also can change the middle of words, such as "man" turns into "men". In the Celtic languages, the beginning of a word can also change. If you were learning to speak Welsh, for example, this might produce difficulties for the beginner. If you see an unfamiliar word, you could have trouble looking it up in the dictionary, because you might not be sure what the first letter of the root form is. In Irish, things are much easier. When the first letter of a word changes in what is called uru or "eclipsis", the spelling gives first the letter as pronounced, followed by the original letter before it was changed. The following letter combinations at the beginning of a word should be interpreted this way: mb, gc, nd, bhf, ng, bp, ts, dt. Note that bh is considered to be a single letter! Diphthongs. This is the trickiest part of Irish pronunciation, when two vowels come together. The reason it's tricky is that sometimes one of the vowels is favoured in pronunciation, and the other is just a glide vowel. You remember that a glide vowel simply changes the quality from broad to slender. The slender glide vowel is easy because we have it in English. Irish tun would be English "toon", Irish tiun would be English "tune". So the slender glide vowel is sort of a very quick "y" sound. Similarly, the broad glide vowel is sort of a very quick short "u" sound, almost a grunt. In Munster dialect it can sometimes sound like a "w". When two vowels are together, and one of them is long, the long vowel sound predominates. There are only a few words in Irish where two long vowels come together, in which case you simply say them one after the other. So the case we really need to look at is when two short vowels come together.

Long diphthongs. These are written with short (non-accented) vowels, but actually you speak them rather as if one of the vowels were long.

Note this can be followed by an "i", which just makes a slender glide vowel afterwards.

Short diphthongs. These are combinations of two short vowel sounds. For most of them you simply say the two vowels rather quickly one after the other. The table gives a few where one vowel predominates and the other is strictly a glide vowel. I'm not putting in the glide vowel in the table, but it should be added to the sound shown.

Accent. In Ulster Irish, the accent always occurs on the first syllable. Especially, please note this includes the name "Clannad". In Munster Irish, things are different, but we are not dealing with that.¹¹ Vasslyev V. A. M., 1970 “Theoretical Course”. The exceptions are a few words which were historically compound words. The most common are: anois ("a-NISH"), ariamh, aris, anall, aru, amhain, aneas.

Double consonants. Some combinations of double consonants are hard to say together as written. Normally an indistinct vowel sound is introduced between them. The Irish often do the same in English, like pronouncing "Dublin" as "Dubbalin". The introduction of such sounds does not affect the placement of the accent. Thus gnothach ("busy") is pronounced like "ga-NOE-hakh". The accent is placed on the first syllable, the o, because the little added sound doesn't count as a syllable. You can put in the added indistinct vowel wherever you find any of the following consonant combinations difficult to say: gn, lm, lg, bl, mn, nm, nc, rb, rbh, rch, rg, rm, rn, thn. Note that aspirated consonants are considered as a single consonant. Don't confuse these with eclipsed consonants which appear only at the beginning of a word, in which the second consonant is not pronounced. These double consonants can appear anywhere in a word. They don't include the eclipsed combinations, which even the Irish wouldn't try to pronounce! Exceptions - Irish spelling is really quite regular, especially compared to English. Think about "through", "rough", and "cough". Now tell me how Gough Street in San Francisco should be pronounced! But there are a few exceptions in Irish, like most languages. But just as Irish has only 11 irregular verbs, the number of spelling exceptions are few. The most important are:

· The word is is always pronounced "iss", although by the spelling rules it should be "ish". It's said as though it were spelled ios.

· f in a verb ending is always pronounced "h". This is easy if you are actually learning the language, but otherwise how to tell which is a verb? In simple sentences the verb comes first. (The usual order is verb subject object.) The most common endings are -faidh, -faimid, -far, -fainn, -fadh. These also have slender versions -fidh, -fimid, -fear, -finn, -feadh. There are a few others but they are not so common.

· In Donegal the word ending -adh is usually pronounced "oo" as in "moon". In Munster you would hear "ig" in this case.

· Munster Irish also has some other exceptions, but by sticking to Ulster Irish you don't need to know about these.

So by looking back at our first examples, we see an bhfuil (the verb "to be" in the present tense question form), the bh eclipses the f, and the u is just a glide vowel making the bh broad, so we say "an will". For Maedhbh (a legendary queen), ae diphthong is pronounced "ay", a slender dh is a "y", a slender bh is a "v", so we say "Mayv". Simple, isn't it?

Pronunciation. Irish spelling often baffles the beginner. Much of this can be attributed to the complete difference between pronunciations in Irish and English.

· mh at the start of a word is pronounced as a w - e.g. mo mhala (my bag) is pronounced mu wall-ah (/m?? ?wa?l???/).

· mh in the centre of a word is pronounced as a v sound - e.g. nimh (poison) is pronounced niv (/n??v?/)

· bh is pronouced as a v sound - e.g. sa bhearna (in the gap) is pronounced sa varna (/s?a ?va??n???/)

Note: The Pronunciation of mh or bh varies regionally. In Ulster the General rule is that they are pronounced w when broad and v when narrow. In Munster (as in the Western isles of Scotland) the tendency is to pronounce as v at the beginning or the end of a word and w in the middle. I've never been able to figure out exactly how it works in Connacht. e.g. the final syllable of Gaillimh (Galway) is pronounced "ih" in Galway but "iv" in Donegal or Kerry. Within the regional variations there are also local variations In Munster both Abhainn (river) and amhain (sole, single or only) pronounced with a v sound. surnames and personal names may not always follow the "rules" either. The standard pronunciation of Siobhan (Shivaun approx) does not correspond to any modern regional pattern. The alternative pronunciation "shoe-un" (approx) exists in Munster and Ulster. To the Gaelic ear the sounds are, to a degree, interchangeable. Examples. bo = a cow beo = alive The broad b is pronounced almost as if it were "bw" (/b?/) or something like the b in the English word "but" (as pronounced in Ireland), using both lips, as if you were about to kiss someone! The slender b is pronounced sometimes as if in the Scandinavian Bjorn (/b?/) for example or like the b in English bet. The lips are tenser, almost as if you were tightening them in exasperation.

Stress - An Bheim Stress is in Irish usually on the first syllable, except in the southernmost (Munster) dialects, where non-initial syllables are usually stressed, if they include a long vowel or a short a followed by -/ch/. Thus, a word such as direach = "direct, straight" can in Munster dialect be stressed on the second syllable.¹¹ http://studentguide.ru; Some borrowed words, notably tobac = "tobacco" are stressed on the second syllable. There are also quite a few of common adverbs which are so stressed, above all these:

abhaile "home" (movement)

abhus "on this side"

aduaidh "from the north" ("northward" is o thuaidh, "in the north" is thuaidh, and "the North" is an Tuaisceart)

amach "out" (movement)

amuigh "out" (state)

amainiris "the second day after tomorrow"

amanathar "the day after tomorrow" (aru amarach is probably more common)

amarach (dialectally even amaireach) "tomorrow"

anall "from the other side, to this side"

aneas "from the south" ("southward" is o dheas, "in the south" is theas, and "the South" is an Deisceart)

aniar "from the west" ("westward" is siar, "in the west" is thiar, and "the West" is an tIarthar)

anocht "tonight"

anoir "from the east" ("eastward" is soir, "in the east" is thoir, and "the East" is an tOirthear)

anoirthear (dialectally in Ulster even anoirtheal) "the day after tomorrow"; also "the second day after" - i.e. the second day after what happened last, in a narrative

anonn "from this side, to the other side"

anseo (in Munster, anso) "here"

ansin (in Munster, ansan) "there"

ansiud (in Munster, ansud) "out there, yonder"

anuraidh "last year"

areir (in some Ulster dialects, areireannas, areirnas) "last night"

aru is an adverb that is added to amarach "tomorrow" and inne "yesterday" to create aru amarach = "the day after tomorrow" and aru inne = "the day before yesterday"

inne "yesterday"

inniu "today"

isteach "in" (movement)

istigh "in" (state)

laisteas "southside" (also taobh theas)

laistigh "inside" (also taobh istigh)

lasmuigh "outside" (also taobh amuigh)

lastuas "overhead" (also taobh thuas)

laistios "below" (also taobh thios)

This kind of adverbs are historically speaking compound words or word groups, which accounts for their unusual stress. The locative adverbs beginning with la- include the word leath, which means "half" or "direction (towards)". They are most usual in southern dialects; northern dialects prefer taobh "side", with the relevant local adverb added¹¹ http://www.experiencefestival.com

CONCLUSION

pronunciation alphabet linguistic consonants

In a conclusion I want to say that I have known a lot of interesting information, due to this course paper. If we look at the grammar of Irish language, we can notice that the structure in sentences is VERB+SUBJECT+OBJECT, which of course differs from Uzbek, Russian and many other languages. Moreover, I am surprised by the pronunciation of some consonants and vowels. For example, there are only single sounds, not diphthongs like in English vowels. They can be long and short, where long vowels are marked with an acute accent, called in Irish a “fada”. As I have mentioned before, some consonants in Irish can undergo a transformation called seimhiu, which is translated as "aspiration". In the old Irish script this was shown by putting a little dot above the letter. Nowadays Irish is printed using the standard Western alphabet, and the little dot has been replaced by the letter "h" following the consonant. "h" in Irish is not a letter, it is an operation. That's why there seem to be so many "h"s in Irish. ("h" sometimes appears at beginning of a word before a vowel, or in words borrowed from English.) The actual realization of a vowel may vary considerably according to the following phoneme: in words like bay, say the vowel is a monophtong [?] preconsonantally it may be a diphthong of the type [?? - ??];

1.[l] is mainly clear;

2.intervocalic [t] is often a voiced flap [d]: city [`sidi:];

3.between vowels [?] may be lost: mother [`m?: ?r]¹¹ Sokolova M. A. M., 1991 “ English Phonetics A Theoretical Course”

Also I would like to add about Irish spelling, which often baffles the beginner. There are a lot of differences between pronunciations in Irish and English. For example, mh at the start of a word is pronounced as a w, mh in the centre of a word is pronounced as a v sound and bh is pronouced as a v sound, however, the pronunciation of mh or bh varies regionally.

I want to tell some words about stress in Irish language. Stress in Irish language is usually used on the first syllable, however, in the southernmost (Munster) dialects and in some borrowed words, notably tobac = "tobacco" are stressed on the second syllable. The Irish type of pronunciation and the phonetics of the Irish language are distinctive, interesting and allow to think over about them. If we speak about Northern Ireland, it is true to say that English here is not homogeneous. Areas of the far north are heavily Scots-influenced. Other parts are marked by less heavily Scots-influenced varieties of English. It is, of course, obvious that the language distinction is not conterminous with the political division of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, some areas of the Republic, Donegal, for instance, speak Northern Ireland English, while some of the Northern provinces speak Southern Ireland English.

Thus, I can draw a conclusion. The course paper is dedicated to the theme “The Irish type of pronunciation”. Today, this theme is very interesting, refinement and helps to find similarities and differences in features of the English and Irish languages.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1) Abduazimov A.A. Theoretical Course, T., 2006

2) Alimardanov R.A. Pronunciation Theory of English, 2008

3) Vasslyev V.A. Theoretical Course, M., 1970

4) Sokolova M.A. English Phonetics A Theoretical Course, M., 1991

5) http://www.experiencefestival.com

6) http://www.google.com

7) http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaeilge/gramadach/aibitir/

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