jmm@bonnie.UUCP (Joe Mcghee) (06/18/84)
For Bruce Peters or anyone else interested in learning Gaelic/Irish I have to say that as you say there are languages such as German or Spanish which are very regular in pronunciation. Then there are others such as English, Japanese and Chinese in which the pronunciation is either very irregular or else each word has to be memorized individually. Irish pronunciation is irregular and varies from one region to another as English does. In addition, in common usage people tend to speak very fast and run words together so that pronunciations become slurred as they do in English. The best advice is to find a good teacher or native Irish speaker and learn as much as you can from him/her. There are, of course, some general rules and I will try to bring in some books so that I can give you a general rundown on some of these. Joe McGhee bonnie!jmm