Pronunciation of "tionol"

[straycat82]

The woman who I just made the trip to the SoCal Tionol with is from Clare and she pronounced it something like:

"tin-Ol" or "tun-Ol" or "t'nOle" (this makes sense in my head so hopefully it translates to you all). There wasn't much emphasis on the first syllable so the (arguably) "i" or "u" sound was barely audible (which is what the last spelling above attempts to capture)

There was no "ch" sound, but a distinct (yet soft) "t". The emphasis was more on the second syllable, especially the long "O".

[MTGuru]

Basically right, with the caveat that it's always iffy reporting the sounds of a language you don't actually speak, because you tend to hear things through the lens of your own language.

Yes, an Irish speaker would not say "ch", but some flavor of palatalized "t".

Regarding the emphasis ... Technically, the Irish word is stressed on the first syllable, not the second. But we don't make a distinction in English between stress accent and vowel length accent. So to English speakers, the long "o" in tionól (o fada) tends to sound like the stressed syllable - "t'n-OLE", as you said. Same problem with "feadóg".

[s1m0n]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Colmhaltas pronunciation is the prescribed standard ...

Bossy bunch of gits, ain't they?

[pancelticpiper]

As I understand it, the accent over the "o" means that it is to be pronounced as an "o". Without the accent that "o" would be pronounced as a schwa, the "uh" sound, written as an upside down "e" in IPA.

That accent does NOT mean that that syllable carries the weight. The weight/stress always falls on the first syllable. (I think that people who are used to the conventions of other languages sometimes incorrectly infer that the accent marks in Irish indicate the stressed syllable.)

The "o"s are somewhat more complex in Scottish Gaelic, and their accent marks tilt both ways accordingly.

My understanding (which might be wrong) is that in Scottish Gaelic, slender "t"s are always pronounced more or less "ch" while in Irish it varies as to dialect. I used to know one old Irish woman who spoke Irish and who pronounced all her "t"s "t" regardless whether broad or slender.

[Jeff Cullen]

I used to know one old Irish woman who spoke Irish

Hey Pan....was that our Dr. Dorthea Kenny?

[Nanohedron]

Regarding the emphasis ... Technically, the Irish word is stressed on the first syllable, not the second. But we don't make a distinction in English between stress accent and vowel length accent. So to English speakers, the long "o" in tionól (o fada) tends to sound like the stressed syllable - "t'n-OLE", as you said. Same problem with "feadóg".

Right. Nevertheless I have heard that in Munster dialect (which would include Care), long vowels at the end of words are indeed often stressed. So, while any other Irish speaker would probably say TION-ól, according to that it would not be unusual for a Munster speaker to say tion-ÓL.

As for hearing it as stressed when it's not, you're so on the money. There was one fellow that I spent a good few minutes with just on the very word "tionól" itself, alternately stressing the first and last syllable, and he just couldn't hear the difference.

[No E]

Pat Mitchell once told me that he preferred the term "cruinniú" to "tionól," as one of the possible translations for tionól is "orgy."

No E

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

As I understand it, the accent over the "o" means that it is to be pronounced as an "o". Without the accent that "o" would be pronounced as a schwa, the "uh" sound, written as an upside down "e" in IPA.

That accent does NOT mean that that syllable carries the weight. The weight/stress always falls on the first syllable. (I think that people who are used to the conventions of other languages sometimes incorrectly infer that the accent marks in Irish indicate the stressed syllable.)

The "o"s are somewhat more complex in Scottish Gaelic, and their accent marks tilt both ways accordingly.

My understanding (which might be wrong) is that in Scottish Gaelic, slender "t"s are always pronounced more or less "ch" while in Irish it varies as to dialect. I used to know one old Irish woman who spoke Irish and who pronounced all her "t"s "t" regardless whether broad or slender.

More or less close, though the schwa (ə) is only used in IPA to represent unstressed sounds. In the case of a stressed sound, you'd use the wedge symbol (ʌ). Also, as Nano points out, Munster Irish speakers do tend to place stress on long vowels at the ends of words, where other dialects would place the stress at the first syllable, e.g., tion-Ól vs. TION-ól. An Irish speaker I know from West Kerry living in Belfast once told me a story about speaking in Irish with a Belfast cabbie one night and this difference in stress led to a rather humorous bit of miscommunication.

Because it's followed by a high front vowel, the T in "tionól" would indeed be slenderized and represented phonetically as a palatalized T, i.e., ['tʲɪnol]. Palatalized T is--to my knowledge--not generally found in North American dialects of English, but as has already been noted, it is found in some British and Irish dialects of English, as in the case of some people's pronunciation of "tunes" sounding to a North American like "chunes." It's subtly yet distinctly different from the affricate "ch"/t͡ʃ sound; it's a bit hard to describe, really. I'd say maybe something more or less halfway between [ts] and [t͡ʃ].

I'm not an expert on Goidelic linguistics by a long shot, but I would concur that there tends to be a little more complexity with slenderization of T depending on the dialect in Irish as opposed to Scottish Gaelic. To my ear, a Scottish Gaelic speaker saying "an t-eilean" ("the island", what many native Sgitheanaich still call the Isle of Skye) sounds like [ʌn 't͡ʃelan].

[fel bautista]

Tylenol.

No I think its Asprin

[Ceann Cromtha]

Palatalized T is--to my knowledge--not generally found in North American dialects of English, but as has already been noted, it is found in some British and Irish dialects of English, as in the case of some people's pronunciation of "tunes" sounding to a North American like "chunes."

Palatalized [t'] is found in North American dialects of English, but is an allophone of /t/ (in musical terms an allophone is a variant of a basic [meaningful] sound that doesn't change it enough to be considered another basic [meaningful] sound, so it would be like playing the first C natural in the air "The Green Fields of America" very flat; it's not the textbook version of C nat, but it would still be considered such in musical transcription, teaching the tune, etc.). Good examples would be the pronunciation of words like tube, tune (by many), stew, etc. (see http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tube, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tune, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stew).

It's not enough to make a difference in meaning, but its presence puts it in the running for phonemic status at some latter date, e.g., if the combination car + tune became one word over time (say some sort of IPod application "Cartunes" starts it), the palatalized [t'] in it might be the only element that differentiates it from the [t] in 'cartoon' and then [t'] and [t] would become the separate phonemes /t'/ and /t/, respectively. (See http://www.xolopo.de/sprach-_und_litera ... _7483.html for more information [or if you want to commit suicide by reading].)

If I remember from my phonology classes, the difference in the American pronunciation of a consonant before /u/ and the British pronunciation is that the Brits (and others, I presume) palatalize everything while the Americans will palatalize only the consonants produced at the front of the mouth (what Jakobson called [+grave] sounds; e.g., few [f'u] and at the back of the mouth, e.g., cue [k'u]).

[uillmann]

Ya'll are sposed to say tee-knoll in Sath Calina.

[Ceann Cromtha]

Well, I ain't nuthin' but an ole cawntry boy, but I know my [t] from my [t']! Yee haw!

[Ceann Cromtha]

According to this webpage (http://www.fact-archive.com/encyclopedi ... _phonology), at least in Ulster, the "slender t" goes to something like English ch/[tʃ] in 'church' and, I would assume, they use that for the first sound in 'tionól' there:

"The realization of the slender consonants varies somewhat from dialect to dialect; for example [t´] is an affricate [tʃ] in Ulster, a palatalized [tj] in Connacht, and an apical postalveolar [t] in Munster."

Back to Uillmann's comment... yes, I once pronounced it that way but was severely fined for palatalization without representation.

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

Thanks for the info, Khan Krum. The more I think about it, I suppose I have heard some people that I know that have palatalized T in their dialects of (North American) English. (It definitely does NOT occur naturally in mine, though.) "Stew" is a good example; I've heard it less commonly than in British English with the other examples listed. It's nice to see so much linguistic scholarship on display here in the uilleann piping forum of all places.

Here's one way to settle the dispute: How did Séamus Ennis pronounce the word "tionól"? (Or did he vary his pronunciation of it depending on which part of the country he was in...?)

[Ceann Cromtha]

Here's one way to settle the dispute: How did Séamus Ennis pronounce the word "tionól"? (Or did he vary his pronunciation of it depending on which part of the country he was in...?)

Exactly!