Alba

[purpletigron]

As I'm spending a lot of time visiting Skye, where Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic, as distinct of course from e.g. Irish or Manx Gaelic, and Scots) is an important language, I have been trying to learn some basic conversational phrases.

I have discovered that both the sounds and the writing system of Gàidhlig are difficult for me.

Then I remembered that I'm already a fan of one song in Gàidhlig - Alba, by Runrig (http://www.runrig.co.uk/home.html). So I'm learning that. For me, song sounds are easier to learn than speech. For most people, I understand, setting words to music makes them easier to remember too.

So if you hear me, please be patient - I don't have a great singing voice at the best of times, and I presume that my Gàidhlig accent is very bad :-)

[All that said the "Conversational Scottish Gaelic" course (http://www.routledge.com/books/Colloquial-Scottish-Gaelic-isbn9780415206754) which I've borrowed from the library is also very good.]

Comments

[feorag.livejournal.com]

It's Gàidhlig, and it's pronounced almost exactly the same as the English word (the a is longer in the Gaelic, as the accent tells you). Yep, the middle of it is, effectively, silent. The first i is there because of the second one - there are two sorts of vowel, the "wide" (aou) and the narrow (ei), and you cannot mix the two types surrounding a consonant. Hence that first i gets stuck in, and it affects the pronunciation of the à ever so slightly. dh is one of those nasal sounds, but it's so subtle that not pronouncing it at all will be fine, especially when singing.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

It's also distinct from Cornish and Bretton, if you want to be completist :-)

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that - I was lazy not to take the time to encode the accent, which I did know about.

I pronounce the English word 'Gay-e-lic' which I'm told is very wrong!

By the way, did you get an email from me professionally about a week ago, when I got back from my most recent trip to Skye?

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

That's nothing like a complete list of p and q Celtic languages :-)

(I have heard people talk about 'Welsh Gaelic' which is very confusing!)

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Yep - that would be a vaguely anglicised version of the Irish language word for itself.

And I suspect the new anti-spam arrangements are not behaving themselves. Did it go to the gmail account (safest)?

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Hmm - I believe that might have been the destination, yes.

I shall try emailing you from home, but that will definitely test your spam filters (would you find it amusing that I've been known to call it 'nuttolene' for vegans?).

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

I do like the Routledge books :) As an obsessive learner of languages I'd say ignore the writing part for a bit until you're more confident with pronunciation and making sentences. Singing works very well though - having started Italian recently its good to find the various operatic arias I learnt as a teen are helping me with pronunciation and I'm finally finding out what on earth I've been singing all these years :)

There's a gaelic television channel, Alba, that I came across on Sky the other week, not sure if you can get that but worth a mention.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Good advice :-)

Only on iPlayer at the moment, which allows me to adopt some righteous indignation as a BBC license payer: why not on Freeview? (but on Freesat).

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Well, I've looked in the spam traps for both main accounts and I haven't found a message from you in there. Most mysterious.

I have also been known to use the term "Nuttolene" to refer to the pink stuff.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

It's worse - we don't get it here in Scotland's capital because it's only on satellite, and most of the centre of Edinburgh consists of highly-listed buildings situated in a World Heritage Site, so no dishes allowed.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

OK, that's just insane. The penny hadn't dropped about it being a digital-only channel.

Is there an organised fuss being kicked up?