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Séimhiú + Broad with Broad, Slender with Slender · At the Learning of Irish

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hello Diochritahara, I guess Falcha.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Today we are going to be talking about I think a decently meaty topic, but I think you're ready.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's Fagerlat.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's possible with you.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, we're gonna be talking about the Shaivu and Lachen Lalahan Esquail Quail.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Two really important parts of the Irish language.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Morris Gana, there are going to be more videos explaining this made by a variety of other creators linked in the show notes, so I'd really recommend you watch those videos just to get a better idea of it.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, Unwill Touray.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing we're gonna talk about is a phrase in Irish.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Lachen La Lachen Isquale La Quail.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that means broad with broad and slender with slender.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And what it's talking about is spelling within Irish.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It means that some vowels will always pair with other vowels within the same syllable.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you may also hear it referred to consonants.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: That just means that the vowel next to the consonant is making it slender or broad.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So what's broad and what's slender?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well the vowels considered broad are A, O, and U, and the vowels that are considered slender are I and E.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what this usually means is that if you are spelling a word out, and let's look at the word dog, for example, M A D R A.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: The A is broad, so it is followed by another A, another broad.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't see the word spelled like M A D R E.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't work.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's broad with slender.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: We have to keep the broads with the broads and the slenders with the slenders.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: We have another word, the word for river, which is A B H A I N.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So again we have two A's, broads next to each other.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we see there though, we have this A, and then we have an I right after it, and it doesn't have another vowel paired with it.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can have one by itself, but if there were another vowel after that i, it would have to be a slender.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're having a pair of vowels, one after the other, they have to match.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got one on its own, that's okay.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: We can see it in the adjective for rich, which is severe, and it is spelled S-A-I-B-H-I-R.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: This rule governs a lot of things in Irish when you're learning conjugation, for example, in the different verbs there are going to be different endings, and the ending that you need to put on the verb is going to be determined if the end of the verb is slender or broad.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: So just keep in mind when you're looking at words, when you're spelling them, broad with broad, slender with slender, they have to pair up with the matching type.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the next topic I'm gonna broach is going to do a lot to understand Irish spelling and Irish pronunciation.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: As English speakers in particular, I think we look at Irish spelling and it doesn't make a lot of sense because we are trying to use English sounds in the Irish letters.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't work, even though they are the same letters.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a different language, these different sounds.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that we're going to be talking about next is shaivu.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Shavu means softening, because it softens the sounds that it affects, and it does this to help us speak Irish fluidly.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: This type of change is called initial mutation, because it changes the initial sound of the word.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: We use it in a variety of ways, putting a verb into past tense, we use it with possession, we use it making adjectives feminine, and many more things which you will pick up throughout your Irish learning adventure.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now shaivu nowadays is written with an H, but back in the day it was a dot above a letter in the old script or Sean Clo, which you may have seen online.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Only certain letters can take a shaivu, and as I've said, when they take the shavu, they soften.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: The letters that can take a shaivu are B, C, D, F, G, M, P, T, and S.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: The Shaivu sounds differently for many of them, so we're gonna go through them one at a time, and I'm gonna say to you how they change.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: The first letter is a B, and it is going to change to a BH or a B with the little dot on it.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a W or a V sound, and that depends on your dialect.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: In Connacht, the BH paired with the broad, so remember, the broad, the A, the O, or the U is going to be a W.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And in Konnacht, if the B H is next to a slender, so an I or an E, it is going to be a V noise.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: In other dialects it is always a V.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you see a B, let's do like shoe brogue, B R O Fata G.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: If we add a shavu to it, it becomes Vrog.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So brogue to Vrog.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Spelled then B H R O Fata G.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: M behaves in the same way as B.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So when M gets a Shavu and becomes MH or an M dot, it will make a W or a V sound in the same way.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: In Connacht, if the MH is next to a broad, it will be a W.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's next to a slender, it will be a V.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And in other dialects it is always a V.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say ma, which is good.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: M-A-I-T-H.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: If we add a shavu to it, it's Va.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Next up we have C H.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this one is a little tricky for people who are monolingual speakers of English, because it makes noises that we simply don't make in English.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now if you study German, you will be familiar with it already, because at least Hochdeutsch does the same thing as Irish.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have a CH next to a slender in Connacht anyway, it sounds like the German Ich, like sh.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's next to a broad, it sounds like the German Brauch, and it does more of the chok and a luggy noise.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So as an example of a slender, we have Hela, as in the phrase Ninarka Kerle Hele, which means strength through unity.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in the broad example of the CH we have mohara, which means my friend Mohara.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now for the T and the S, you already heard an example of what happens when it gets a shavu when I said va because M H A I T H.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: When you add a shavu to a T or an S, it silences the T and the S.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So for example, uh in the word harlar, which means overseas, T H A R and then space L E A R Har and with the S, like saying maybe mohil for my life, life normally being S A O L, but with the Shaivu it's just Mohale.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now when you add a shavu to an F it cancels the entire noise.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: It silences both the F and the H.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So for example the word for truth is Firny and it is feminine.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So with the shavu it would be Irny.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Moving on to another noise I think that is difficult for monolingual speakers of English is the DH.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: If it's slender, it's sort of a Y noise like instead of Jenov, which is a verb for to do in a particular form, it would be Y nof.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's broad, it's a very guttural noise.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: You've actually already heard it when learning to say gia that would be a shavu noise, even though it's not spelled like that today.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, G H is the same way.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So like the D, if it's a slender, it's gonna be a Y noise.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: For example, when we say German, it's on your mall, with the Shaivu after the G.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's broad, it is gonna be that same sort of rough scraping noise.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, we have P and if P gets a shavu, it acts like English.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: It just becomes an F sound.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like instead of picture, which is picture, it would be like ficture mo ficture.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you can see on the face of it, if you just look at the spelling and you're approaching it as if Irish is English, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if you learn what's going on and the sounds that these word combinations make, then it really clarifies a lot of the spelling.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: I want to add this last part, because there are times when you will see some of these letter combinations, and it is not a shaivu.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: You may see a dh together, an m h together.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Often it's going to be in the middle of a word or at the end of a word, and in these cases it can be pronounced differently.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that will also really clarify the spelling is that if you see a D and an H in the middle of a word after a vowel, it acts like a foda.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: An a fada, which is that dash over the vowel, lengthens the vowel.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if you see a vowel and a dh, that just means that the vowel sound is longer.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's how you can get something like the spelling of MAV being M-A-E-D-H B H and it's pronounced MAV because that dh is drawing out the uh and then as we've learned, BH can be a V sound.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So on that note, B H and M H in the center of the word can be said in the same way that you've learned today with Shaivu, and also at the end.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now we will note that its pronunciation at the end of the word depends on your particular dialect.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: In Munster it's a V.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: In Ulster, it's not a V, it's an oo sort of noise.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: So for example, where I would say Jenov, they might say in Ulster like Jnu instead.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, I know that was a lot.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: If it's helpful, listen to the episode again.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: As I've said, I would certainly recommend watching the videos.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: I know some of them are long, but they are quite helpful, and the more you see it and the more you put these words into ABR.ie, the better your pronunciation will be.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And now that you have some knowledge of both the Shaivu and Lahan La Lachen, Isquail La Quail, you'll be set up pretty nicely for some of the subsequent episodes.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, Shane, that's it, Akara.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I will see you next time, Saslan Gol.