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Tag Archives: baoth

“Sweet Nothings” as Gaeilge Posted by on Oct 12, 2011

(le Róislín) “Baothbhriathra mealltacha” – a curious phrase, especially since, as mentioned last time, it contains neither the word “sweet” nor the word “nothing.”  First let’s discus the two words that aren’t in the Irish phrase (nothing like the roundabout route!). “Sweet” is most typically the adjective “milis” [MIL-ish], although there are other possiblities (cumhra, for…

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Saying “I love you” in Irish and Minding Your Velar Fricatives Posted by on Oct 9, 2011

(le Róislín) We’ve recently been looking at different ways to say “I love you” in Irish.  Some of you might have been wondering how to pronounce them, especially the phrases where the straightforward “grá” [graw] changes to “ghrá” [γraw, to be explained below, note the IPA gamma symbol for the “gh”] and the straightforward “croí” changes…

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More Irish Pronunciation Notes: Broad and Slender “B” Sounds Posted by on Aug 17, 2010

Getting back to the pronunciation series that was started a few blogs ago, there are a few more points I’d like to add.  As I said before, what I’m doing here is primarily explaining the transcription system that I use, not attempting to account for every possible sound or variation of a sound in Irish…

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