That O.J. Bergin article is: Analogy in the Verbal System of Modern Irish in Ériu, Vol. 1 (1904), pp. 139-152

Thanks! I'm gonna check it out and get back here.
Found it at this link for any fellow travellers: https://archive.org/details/riujournals ... 2/mode/2up

I gotta say that was an interesting read, thanks for the link! The first bit was tricky as I have zero knowledge of earlier forms of the language, but fun to get through.

Can I clarify a few pieces from the article with you guys?

p142

From the above, is it safe to say that the verb forms follow the same rule as nouns do? i.e. we lengthen or diphthongise the vowel preceding ll, nn, rr and m unless followed by a vowel.
And I presume these pronunciations still hold nowadays (given the age of the article)?

p142

The author gives 'codail' as an example, which you guys already covered for me over here - https://irishlanguageforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=7100&sid=4c5dea761e67fff9091afd987358b3d4 so no questions on that one - although interesting call-out that the author mentions that the change from cholas to cholaíos is only in the 1st and 2nd person singular, although it seems to have extended to all forms listening to Eoiní https://corkirish.wordpress.com/verb-conjugation/codlaim/.

The author also gives 'innis' in the same example - which is good to see it spelled like this vs 'inis', as my first question was why the initial 'i' was lengthened, as this would be following the same spelling rule mentioned above.
The author makes the point that d'inis sé doesn't get the long initial í, though I noticed that Eoiní doesn't use the initial í in the simple past beyond the 2nd person singular https://corkirish.wordpress.com/verb-conjugation/insim/. Does anyone know why?

p143 answers my question directly although I'm slightly more confused with the example for nigh. So the author gives the past tense as 'nig' and 'nǐ' before pronouns. But after listening to Eoiní here https://corkirish.wordpress.com/verb-conjugation/nim/, slowing it down as much as possible and looking for a 'g' sound, I could swear he says ní sé and not nig/ni sé.
My old memories from Ring are bugging me that "nig séan é" and "ní sé é" are correct and Eoiní seems to be doing much the same. "ni sé" is also correct, but it's only something I'd expect to hear in Donegal.
But please correct me if I'm wrong on this, as it was a long time ago.

Yes.



There is a long i before -ns-, but always a short i before -n- + vowel (here: -ni-)
That is the rule.
He doesn’t say "d’inseamair" (which would have a long i) but "d’iniseamair" (which wouldn’t)
Syncopation is often made undone in Munster Irish by inserting a "helping vowel" again
inis -> d’inseamair -> d’iniseamair



I hear "nig sé" (or "nic sé" because of devoicing)
Short monosyllabic verbs in -igh or -idh differ from polysyllabic verbs in -igh (that is what I learned from the discussion above), thus "nig sé" instead of expected "ni sé".

d'ínseamair is definitely right - you can find this in Amhlaoibh Ó Loingsigh's Irish as transcribed by the Folklore Society. If a native speaker has a different pronunciation, you can't really argue with natives about it. You have to accept a degree of variation. If he put in an additional vowel, which is not required, then that breaks it up and means the long vowel in íns- is no longer needed.

He definitely says : do nig sé or do nic sé ( the /k/ would be unreleased, so not exactly what we normally would be talking about when referring to a k-sound)

Thank you thank you! This makes a lot of sense now, I never knew about the ins rule.


That's the discussion in the thread above, but the article itself (unless I'm reading it incorrectly) states that dropping the 'g' and keeping the short vowel as is is also an option. From the article on p143:


He then gives 'nigh' and 'luigh' as examples and implies their pronunciation as 'nǐ sé' and 'luǐ sé' is correct - assuming ǐ is a short i, I'm familiar with the Irish of West Muskerry's system but not this one.
But I think djwebb's comment below makes sense, and that it's best to keep the 'g' in. Tbh I don't think I've heard a Munster speaker use a short i in these instances, but it could exist.



Thank you both, I think I was searching hard for a 'g' but yes I can hear an unreleased/devoiced g (=c) before the 'sé'. I also think the 'i' sound is pretty close so it's approaching an í. I'll keep tuning my ear in.

For any future readers of the thread, there are some other fun facts in here, like on p144:

I've definitely noticed this with Kerry speakers on the radio, ní rabhas [ni: raus], ní rabhais [ni: raus'] but then ní raibh [ní r'ev'].
Which probably points to another thing worth mentioning for other learners - many books mention that slender r's don't show up word initially and they're always broad, this is partially true, but slender r's are still retained between vowels when part of a sentence spoken in the same breath.
So in 'ní raibh' the r is not broad, even though it's at the start of the word.

You're confusing many things. The vowel in nigh in "do nigh sé" is definitely short. It is not "do níg sé" at all. I can't remember what Bergin meant by the irrational vowel. Maybe he mean the neutral vowel (the vowel in "mo"). It is not a long vowel at all.

In "ní raibh", the r is not slender. I don't believe the Kerry people slenderise them either there. What you should be noticing is that the r is not the English r, but the Spanish style flap as in the Spanish word "pero", one tap - that's what should be used between vowels there, although many younger speakers use the English r throughout, which can't be considered correct. The slender r at the end of the word "obair" is something else entirely.

Yes I don't think it's an í sound, perhaps my response was imprecise. On re-read of my comment this part may be confusing "Tbh I don't think I've heard a Munster speaker use a short i in these instances, but it could exist.". What I meant here was that I haven't heard Bergin's version "ni sé".


Yes this is ok. I've heard broad r's show up as either velarised taps/rolls, a velar fricative/weakly articulated type sound and then as you've outlined an English r sometimes.
I've heard slender r's as slenderised taps and fricative (like at the end of obair).

I think I was going off this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPDtgAk8GKQ) with the speaker Donncha (on the left).
He's a young speaker, but his slender r's seem intact - see him at 0:50 say 'fir'. And it's at 1:40 where he says 'ní raibh' where the r sounds slender to my ear. Just prior to that he says 'ní rabhas' where the r is clearly different.

Looking through IWM for instances of 'raibh' I see all references as broad alright, so chances are that I am not yet able to discern all the r sounds correctly, but let me know what you make of the speaker above.

They are great speakers. It's a shame that is the only video I've ever seen of them. I don't think they podcast or videocast regularly. Ní rabhas - he seems to have the English r there. Ní raibh - he has the broad flap there. Have you ever found anything else by either of them, Seán or Donncha?