*(If someone could explain to me the principle behind the organisation of the Breathnach books I'd be grateful- but that is a side issue for the moment.)
What we are lucky enough to have here is a collection of x-thousand tune titles in Irish, with their English equivalents and variants- a superb resource for teachers and learners seeking a musical slant or way into the Irish language.
What's missing, of course, is a pronunciation model for each title, providing an initial bridge to the spoken language for all those, who (like myself) would be highly motivated to learn Irish vocabulary in this way.
So my questions are:-
a) Does such an oral resource exist already?
b) Would anyone out there be willing to take on such a project?
c) Does anyone have ideas on how best it might be organised and made accessible?
Thank you for reading- or should I say 'listening'?
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
This is problematic as you will have to decide which dialect your going to model your pronunciation on as they are considerable differences in pronunciation for various consonant blends.
Lots of Learner books have a pronunciation guide at the start but they will generally favour one or other of the dialects. O Siadhail's book is good -I think it's called 'Learning Irish' and if I remember correctly it has a phonetic guide at the start and a series of tapes with it to model. It is unfortunately Connacht Irish and not the beautiful blas Dhun na nGall
Go mo leithsceal -ni feidir liom seimhiu a fhail ar mo rhiomhaire.
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
I agree asbout the "blás"
However there is a web-site I once found that one could put in an English (Bearla) phrase and it would translate it and give approx phonetic pronunciation as Gaeilge.
If I find it I'll post it - though someone may have more time/ideas.
Get back to if you're stuck.
Peter
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Many thanks for these helpful suggestions, lads, which are most welcome, but, at the risk of seeming ungrateful, this is not quite what I'm after- though I take on board Mac's advice about the fundamental question of which dialect.
What I'm suggesting here is a very specific way in to the language for people whose main preoccupation is the music, who like learning by ear, and who are fascinated by tune names.
Putting those three things together, you have the *motivation* for getting going, recognising titles, pronouncing them properly- with the spin-off of recognising them in print.
I recognise that these would only be first steps, but they would have a relatively defined starting point and context in the music.
As any language teacher will tell you, motivation is the key to progressing with a language, and many fall at the first fence because they do not have a strong enough reason for going on with something difficult.
Love of the music and its history might just supply that reason.
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Take the Irish, copy exactly into box on www.abair.ie
press button marked 'déan sintéis'
and you get a sound file of the wonderful Gaoth Dobhair accent reading your phrase!
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Frank- that's a great one! - could be *just* what I'm looking for. Am in the process of trying it out with Firefox to see if I can get the 'roll the cursor over the text and it speaks' feature to work. Will report back- in the meantime, many thanks to one and all for the inputs.
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Works a treat!- many thanks. For anyone interested, follow proinsiasrua's link above, download the Firefox browser (Irish version) with the recommended plug-ins, and you're away.
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
He explains it in the introduction, if you care to read it. Here's part of it:
'The division of [...] follows the usual classifications, jigs, reels, hornpipes etc and inside those divisions the tunes have also been sorted by their endings. [...] The tunes are finally placed in ascending order of pitch by reference to the accented notes in the first two bars. This order had to be departed from occasionally to avoid having t oturn over the page to complete reading the tune.'
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Thanks kilfarboy- I don't have that text.
That seems a fairly arcane system to me, though I'm no musician, so perhaps it makes more sense to you guys.
One more question- is there some logic to the sequence of books, or did he just keep adding more tunes as he encountered them?
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
The first book is a collection of tunes as he had collected them at the time, the second follows on from that although for this one volume the notation of ornamentation is in full. For the third tunes from commercial recordings were taken so the actual playing would be available to learners.
Just after vol 3 was published Breandan died (he signed my copy shortly before he departed) and further selections from his collection were made for volumes 4 and 5 by Jackie Small. The selection for vol 4 was done from tunes Breathnach copied from manuscript sources while for vol 5 Jackie selected good tunes that were not wellknown but which he considered well worth playing, from both recordings and manuscript sources.
Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Those not interested in tune titles in any language should look away now. This is about the Breathnach books 'Ceol Rince naHÉireann'.
The tune titles and notes to all five volumes are to be found in translation via Nigel Gatherer's great site
http://www.nigelgatherer.com/books.html.
*(If someone could explain to me the principle behind the organisation of the Breathnach books I'd be grateful- but that is a side issue for the moment.)
What we are lucky enough to have here is a collection of x-thousand tune titles in Irish, with their English equivalents and variants- a superb resource for teachers and learners seeking a musical slant or way into the Irish language.
What's missing, of course, is a pronunciation model for each title, providing an initial bridge to the spoken language for all those, who (like myself) would be highly motivated to learn Irish vocabulary in this way.
So my questions are:-
a) Does such an oral resource exist already?
b) Would anyone out there be willing to take on such a project?
c) Does anyone have ideas on how best it might be organised and made accessible?
Thank you for reading- or should I say 'listening'?
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
This is problematic as you will have to decide which dialect your going to model your pronunciation on as they are considerable differences in pronunciation for various consonant blends.
Lots of Learner books have a pronunciation guide at the start but they will generally favour one or other of the dialects. O Siadhail's book is good -I think it's called 'Learning Irish' and if I remember correctly it has a phonetic guide at the start and a series of tapes with it to model. It is unfortunately Connacht Irish and not the beautiful blas Dhun na nGall
Go mo leithsceal -ni feidir liom seimhiu a fhail ar mo rhiomhaire.
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Mac Donn
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
P-K
Here are some links that might help:
http://www.standingstones.com/gaelpron.html
http://www.utm.edu/departments/english/everett/496pron.htm
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/irish.htm
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/irish.htm
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
P-K - another thought - I believe that you probably know Tom D (From Co. Kerry, plays spoons, sings a bit - and dances a lot!).
He mentioned to me that he is going to lessons ...
... if you're that serious about it, maybe you could join him!
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
I agree asbout the "blás"
However there is a web-site I once found that one could put in an English (Bearla) phrase and it would translate it and give approx phonetic pronunciation as Gaeilge.
If I find it I'll post it - though someone may have more time/ideas.
Get back to if you're stuck.
Peter
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Peter O'Connor
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Many thanks for these helpful suggestions, lads, which are most welcome, but, at the risk of seeming ungrateful, this is not quite what I'm after- though I take on board Mac's advice about the fundamental question of which dialect.
What I'm suggesting here is a very specific way in to the language for people whose main preoccupation is the music, who like learning by ear, and who are fascinated by tune names.
Putting those three things together, you have the *motivation* for getting going, recognising titles, pronouncing them properly- with the spin-off of recognising them in print.
I recognise that these would only be first steps, but they would have a relatively defined starting point and context in the music.
As any language teacher will tell you, motivation is the key to progressing with a language, and many fall at the first fence because they do not have a strong enough reason for going on with something difficult.
Love of the music and its history might just supply that reason.
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Take the Irish, copy exactly into box on www.abair.ie
press button marked 'déan sintéis'
and you get a sound file of the wonderful Gaoth Dobhair accent reading your phrase!
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by proinsiasrua
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Frank- that's a great one! - could be *just* what I'm looking for. Am in the process of trying it out with Firefox to see if I can get the 'roll the cursor over the text and it speaks' feature to work. Will report back- in the meantime, many thanks to one and all for the inputs.
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Works a treat!- many thanks. For anyone interested, follow proinsiasrua's link above, download the Firefox browser (Irish version) with the recommended plug-ins, and you're away.
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Great question, P-K!
Great answer, proinsiasrua!
Thanks
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by deFacto
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Can anyone explain the principle behind the order of tunes in Breathnach's Ceol Rince na hÉireann?
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
He explains it in the introduction, if you care to read it. Here's part of it:
'The division of [...] follows the usual classifications, jigs, reels, hornpipes etc and inside those divisions the tunes have also been sorted by their endings. [...] The tunes are finally placed in ascending order of pitch by reference to the accented notes in the first two bars. This order had to be departed from occasionally to avoid having t oturn over the page to complete reading the tune.'
(from the introduction to CRE 2)
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Prof. Prlwytzkofski
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Thanks kilfarboy- I don't have that text.
That seems a fairly arcane system to me, though I'm no musician, so perhaps it makes more sense to you guys.
One more question- is there some logic to the sequence of books, or did he just keep adding more tunes as he encountered them?
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
The first book is a collection of tunes as he had collected them at the time, the second follows on from that although for this one volume the notation of ornamentation is in full. For the third tunes from commercial recordings were taken so the actual playing would be available to learners.
Just after vol 3 was published Breandan died (he signed my copy shortly before he departed) and further selections from his collection were made for volumes 4 and 5 by Jackie Small. The selection for vol 4 was done from tunes Breathnach copied from manuscript sources while for vol 5 Jackie selected good tunes that were not wellknown but which he considered well worth playing, from both recordings and manuscript sources.
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Prof. Prlwytzkofski
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
Many thanks for that. What an undertaking. I hope people will look at the notes and comments on the tunes- full of interesting detail.
# Posted on January 19th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Tune Title Pronunciation- labour of love for an Irish-speaker?
To Peter O Connor- I think it's
www.focal.ie
or
www.englishirishdictionary.com
# Posted on January 20th 2009 by jlocky