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User:Blisco/Gaelic

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This is a project to correct inaccurate IPA Gaelic pronunciations of Scottish mountains. Collaboration is encouraged, especially if you have a good knowledge of Gaelic (I don't!) and/or IPA.

These are the rules I'm following (comments welcome!):

  • No need to give transcriptions for anglicised names - as a rule of thumb, any hills spelled Ben rather than Beinn.
  • Transcriptions can be fairly broad (so diacritics can mostly be omitted), but should be as a native Gaelic speaker would pronounce them. (If the non-Gaelic-speaking majority of walkers pronounce them differently that's up to them - it can be dealt with in the text if appropriate.)

Some issues I can't quite resolve:

  • There seem to be various ways of dealing with the distinction between voiced and unvoiced broad consonants. I'm going with the simplest option, using b=[b], d=[d], g=[g], and p=[p], t=[t], c=[k], but transcribing g as [k] after s (sgurr = [skur]). I'm not sure how accurate this is, but it somehow feels right.
  • The Fuaimean na Gàidhlig site (see below) gives slender t and d as [tʲ] and [dʲ]. I've been going with this, but wonder if [tʃ] and [dʒ] are a) more usual and b) more accurate for most speakers?

Useful links:

  • Munromagic - has sound files for all the Munros but I'm not convinced of its accuracy.
  • Fuaimean na Gàidhlig - complete guide to Gaelic pronunciation with very narrow IPA. This is my main source.
  • My own IPA charts (not using these any more)

Munros

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  • Liathach λiəhəx - spidʲən ə xorɪ lei, muləx an rahən
  • Beinn Eighe ben ei - ruə stak moːr, spidʲən korɪ nan klax
  • Beinn Alligin ben aλigin (best omitted from text) - skur voːr, tom na grugəx
  • Ben Hope done, but isn't really necessary

Corbetts

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Grahams

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