Conas athá sibh a chairde? Thá súil agum go bhfuil sibh go maith ar fad.


Can anyone knowledgeable on Ulster dialects explain to me when do é and ó have the open long vowel sound [ɛː] [ɔː] and when do they have the closed long vowel sound [eː] [oː]? Does it just depend on the word? Do different dialect within Ulster have variation, i.e. a certain word having [oː] in one part of Ulster and [ɔː] in another?

I know that this also occurs in Scottish Gaelic (they even used to have a different diacritic for it until recently, é and ó for [eː] [oː], and è and ò for [ɛː] [ɔː], I really don't understand why they got rid of this, they should really bring it back), I found that mór in U.I. and S.G. are both pronounced with [oː] and that bó in U.I. and bò in S.G are both pronounced with [ɔː]. Is it a general rule that if a word has an open or a close é/ó in U.I. it will also have it in S.G.?

According to Wikipedia (which I know, and am sorry, is not such a great source) says that ó is pronounced as o: when next to m, ṁ, n, and ɔ: in other positions. I wonder if this is related to how ó is pronounced as ú in some Munster dialects when next to a nasal. It also lists that e: is pronounced as [e:] when morpheme final, [ɛə] when before broad consonants, and [ei] when before slender consonants (but I couldn't find [ɛ:]).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Irish#Vowels

phouka.com (which is, in my opinion, probably better than Wikipedia) also says that closed ó occurs beside n, m, but nothing about open é.

http://www.phouka.com/gaelic/sounds/sounds.htm

The main author of Irish phonology articles on Wikipedia is Mahagaja (f.k.a. Angr) who is a knowledgable linguist even under his real name (which I don't remember at the moment).
So, these articles - at least his contributions - are trustworthy.

Okay. Thank you, I just wasn't sure, that's why I also posted the quote from phouka.com