NYT--slightly OT--Gaelic

[Mark Mandel]

Interesting partial reanalysis of "come a cropper", which the OED has as
literally 'a heavy fall' (cropper3).

m a m

On Nov 11, 2007 7:43 PM, Geoff Nathan <geoffnathan at wayne.edu> wrote:

> Wilson Gray wrote:
> > <pre wrap>"Anonn" is pronounced ['an at n]. As for whether a unilingual
> > speaker of
> > Irish would confuse this or replace this with ['^nj at n], further
> > deponent sayeth not, though I do wonder why such a speaker would say
> > "(Big) Anonn" instead of "Anonn (Mór), if he was speaking in Irish.
> Slightly off-topic, does anyone know of a reliable Gaelic dictionary
> that gives IPA transcriptions for Gaelic words?  I have on occasion sung
> in a choir that sang Gaelic songs, and wasn't happy with the
> pseudo-phonetic transcription they gave (and, being a linguist, was
> asked for help too) but came a-cropper trying to find something useful
> on how to pronounce the stuff.  Some of the rules I could get, but other
> pieces of the (laughingly called) spelling-sound correspondances were
> hopeless.
>
> Geoff
>
> Geoffrey S. Nathan
> Computing and Information Technology and Department of English
> Wayne State University
> Detroit, MI, 48202
> geoffnathan at wayne.edu
> C&IT Phone (313) 577-1259
> English Phone (313) 577-8621
>
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