On a recommend from maidofkent, I went ahead and signed up over at Memrise. I went ahead and started on the course that seems to have the most people that have used it. It's called Basic Irish. I was cross-referencing some stuff between Forvo and the Wikipedia page on Irish orthography. I noticed that many of the ways to pronounce the words in this course are used from that Forvo site while doing so. I have a couple of questions to make sure I am getting this correct.

Beoir has the kind of 'j' sound tacked on, as a combo of 'r' and 'j', it seems. I have a question about two other slender 'r' words that I have seen. One that is on the Wikipedia page, and another that is on that Memrise course: tirim and saibhir, respectively.

The pronunciation for saibhar is the same one on Forvo: http://www.forvo.com/word/saibhir/#ga

I was wondering, shouldn't that have more of a bent to it at the end, rather than sounding more like a regular 'r'? Something that sounds, not exactly like it, but similar to 'savage' in English?

And the word tirim. The slender 't' seems to get a 'ch' sound. Now, does the slender 'r' get something similar to the slender 'r' at the end of a word? So that it sounds something like chirjim (I believe because the 'i' is before an 'm,' it doesn't get the ə sound).

Any input on these or the slender 'r' in particular? Or anything else I might have mistaken in this post, for that matter : P

No, esp. slender r's at the end are rather short, just a flap or even a half-flap, not more.



Have you listened to these?:

http://breis.focloir.ie/ga/fuaim/saibhir
http://breis.focloir.ie/ga/fuaim/talamh_tirim (the Munster version is "trim" instead of "tirim")

I think in both saibhir and tirim, the slender r's sound like y's in Gaoth Dobhair: /sev'ij/ & /t'ijim'/

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
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The Connacht one sounds how I was trying to explain, though I have problems explaining these pronunciations haha


Tirim looks how I imagined that it should sound, but I was under the impression that 'ai' made the same sound as 'ea' when not influenced by surrounding consonants.

For me, all three dialects sound the same: "saibhid".

Mostly, digraphs represent only one sound, but there are exceptions, like ia and au, which seem to always be diphthongs

Ea is usually an 'ah' sound not a short e, but in 'be ag' it is one, actually

Ex :

Fear
Geal

Leat (tho this retracts a lot due to tongue movement)
Cead

The thing is, due to nature of the language, consonants are given greater emphasis and so getting them correct weighs in over the vowels, as for the most part, short vowels get pushed around a lot, so their exact value is not really important.

I would suggest seeing the consonants and long vowels as the towers in a suspension bridge and the short vowels as just hanging like a rope from them, their exact shape due to contingency

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

I guess that's something I have noticed but didn't really think of it in those terms, if that makes sense; consonants weighing more than vowels. That analogy is a good one, too : )

That's right, actually I think you can get yourself understood if you replace all the short vowels in a sentence by the neutral [ə], because what really counts to recognize the words, are the consonants (and the long vowels). There's much variation possible in the pronunciation of short vowels, especially unstressed ones but also sometimes stressed ones

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne