I thought it might be nice, since this is one of my last blog posts, to give a little bit of an idea of what it\u2019s like to sit down and learn Irish. I\u2019m going to be talking largely about phonetics, the part of Irish which most often makes native English speakers raise their hands to the heavens in despair. It\u2019s also the part of Irish which often makes native English speakers smile when they realize they finally understand it.<\/p>\n
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We\u2019ll talk about my current favorite word in Irish: bhfaighidh<\/em>. Bhfaighidh<\/em>, as we all knew logically from our first glance at the word (or maybe because my teacher kindly\u00a0explained it to me), is pronounced \u201cwee.\u201d It means \u201cwill get\u201d in the future tense, but only if you are asking a question\u2014\u201cWill you get?\u201d\u2014or using a negative\u2014\u201cI won\u2019t get.\u201d If you want to use plain old \u201cI will get,\u201d you\u2019re looking for gheobhaidh<\/em>, which is pronounced \u201cyo-wee.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I had seen bhfaighidh <\/em>before I came to the Gaeltacht, but I never felt comfortable using it. I wasn\u2019t sure how to say it\u2014my approximation would have been \u201cwhy-gig,\u201d and I knew that couldn\u2019t be right. In retrospect, though, the pronunciation of bhfaighidh <\/em>makes perfect sense and is an example of how consistent Irish phonetics are.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n First, I should explain the bhf. In Irish, some words modify others by placing an ur\u00fa on the second word. An ur\u00fa is when a new letter or letters are placed in front of a word. The letters placed are specific to the letter that begins the word, and after they are placed, you pronounce them instead of the first letter of the word that\u2019s being modified. Bh is the set of letters that modifies f, so it replaces the sound of f in pronunciation. In Irish, bh is pronounced like a w when it is followed by an a, o, or u. That is why \u201cbhfa\u201d becomes \u201cw.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After the beginning of the word, it gets simpler. In Irish, \u201cai\u201d is pronounced \u201cee.\u201d In the Ulster dialect, which is what they speak in Donegal, \u201cgh\u201d and \u201cidh\u201d at the ends of words are normally not pronounced. Even though \u201caigh\u201d is not at the end of bhfaighidh<\/em>, it is at the end of the root of the word, faigh<\/em>. That\u2019s it: Bhf+ai+gh+idh = wee. Everything has been pronounced as it should be.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It can be hard to get the old English rules out of my head sometimes. Reading out loud in Irish brings me back to the first grade, when I sounded out words one letter cluster at a time. Back then, I couldn\u2019t believe anyone would be so silly as to give \u201cth\u201d and \u201csh\u201d their assigned sounds. Now, it feels natural. It\u2019s pretty amazing all of the different ways humankind has invented to write the same sounds. I still have a lot of Irish phonetics left to learn, and a lot about Irish in general, but it\u2019s fun to sit down and learn about it. If you\u2019re reading this, I hope you had fun, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I thought it might be nice, since this is one of my last blog posts, to give a little bit of an idea of what it\u2019s like to sit down and learn Irish. I\u2019m going to be talking largely about … Continue reading