Geoffrey
Irish Gaelic speakers/learners to help with pronunciation?
Hello, polyglots!

I am narrating a story about St. Patrick for LibriVox. I underestimated the amount of Gaelic words in it and am struggling to pronounce several phrases. Would any of you be interested in helping me <em>not</em> butcher your beautiful language in an audiobook?

Go raibh maith agat!
Geoffrey
May 14, 2020 10:48 PM
Comments · 4
3
Is it Modern Irish you're looking for, or Old Irish, as was spoken at the time of St. Patrick? Either way, I can help you with the pronunciation.
May 15, 2020
2
Well, it's Modern Irish, with some transcription errors: "felemuir" should be "feilmiúir" a dialect form of "feirmeoir"; "comthineol" should be "comhthineol", a dialectal form of "comhthionól" (looking at the link you sent, I see that the lenition is missing from the "m" in "domnach" too, which should be "domhnach" [ˈd̪õːnax]).
Here are the pronunciations for those. I hope you're well versed in IPA.
[ˈɸʲɛlʲɪmʲuːɾʲ ˈgə̯ɪːhə]
[ˈkoːhʌnˠoːlˠ ˈxɾə̯ɪmʲ ˈɣə̯ɪβʲ]
[ˈtʲeːdʲax]
[ˈpɔl̴̪ ə ˈtʲeːtʲə]
[ˈɸʲɛʃ tʲiː ˈxɔnaːnʲ]
If really necessary, you can replace [ɸʲ] with [fʲ] and [βʲ] with [vʲ].
Don't hesitate to ask if you need any further explanations, I know it's complicated.

May 15, 2020
1
Thanks! I'm not very familiar with IPA, but this is finally my excuse to learn!
May 15, 2020
1
Thanks! I'm actually not sure. Many of them are old names. Here are some examples:

<em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">felemuir gaoithe</em>
<em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">comthineol Chruim Dhuibh</em>
Téideach
poll an t séidte
Feis tighe Chonáin

I pulled these from chapter 1 of this story: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/45910/45910-h/45910-h.htm#Page_1
May 15, 2020