Phonemic transcription and Irish

[Antony Green]

As the person responsible for the vast majority of Wikipedia's discussion of
Irish phonology, I would say we use it there because we can't expect readers
to know the conventions of Irish phonology and there's no terribly
convenient way of explaining it. (There is a page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:International_Phonetic_Alphabet_for_I
rish that explains the IPA system for people used to the conventional
Foclóir Póca system.) Also, the conventional system varies slightly from
author to author (some people use [s'] for slender s, others use the IPA
long s; some people use [j] for slender dh/gh, others use gamma-prime).

For your thesis, I'd say consider your target audience, by which I mean not
your committee, but the larger community of people you're hoping will read
it. If you're writing for phonologists who don't necessarily know Irish, use
IPA. If you're writing for Celticists who don't necessarily know the details
of theoretical phonology, use the conventional system. And in either case,
provide a key translating one system to the other.

Tonio Green

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-celtling at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
[mailto:owner-celtling at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Elizabeth J.
Pyatt
Sent: Mittwoch, 2. Januar 2008 18:56
To: CELTLING at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: Phonemic transcription and Irish

For what it's worth, I think it would be fine to use IPA (unless your
advisor has serious objections). You may also want to include key somewhere
with a "transliteration" guide between the two systems.

If an article is published in a general phonetics journal, then IPA is used
to transcribe Irish, and I have noticed that IPA is really becoming more
standardized (even on the Wikipedia).

The issue may come up if you publish in a journal focusing more on "Irish
Studies"  and they expect the C´ notation for palatals - but again you can
either make a key or just redo the transcriptions.

Elizabeth

P.S. This is why I think it's important for linguists to be familiar with
"quirky" 
transcriptions. besides strict IPA.. ;)


>I am drafting my master's thesis, the subject of 
>which is the sociolinguistics of Irish 
>orthographic reform. Every scientific text on 
>Modern Irish uses a phonemic transcription 
>convention that many of us know from 
>dictionaries such as Foclóir Póca, which is to 
>use an apostrophe to mark palatalization and 
>leave velarization unmarked. For example:
>
>bean /b'an/ 'woman'
>bán /ba:n/ 'white'
>
>However, I.P.A. designates a superscript "j" and 
>superscript lower-case "gamma" symbol to mark 
>palatalization and velarization, respectively. 
>Of course, I can't display this easily in email 
>but the following link displays what I mean in 
>the box labeled "diacritics," under "secondary 
>articulation":
>
><http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ipa.htm>http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ip
a.htm
>
>The word processor that I am using to write my 
>thesis can render I.P.A. So, my question is this:
>
>Which transcription method should I use for a 
>scientific paper on Celtic linguistics? And why 
>is it that no scholarly articles on Irish 
>linguistics (at least not the ones I have found) 
>use the I.P.A. convention?
>
>Le gach dea-ghuí,
>Brian Doyle
>M.A. Candidate, Linguistics
>Northeastern Illinois University


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