Dia daoibh, everyone! I'm a new member, Seán is ainm dom. I've only been studying the Irish language for a couple of months. I was hoping to get some general guidance regarding the pronunciation of the vowel combinations 'io' and 'oi'. There seems to be so much variation! Scoil, le do thoil, oileán, iomarca, oibríonn, oifig, iontu... I listen to pronunciations on Forvo and teanglann.ie, but I haven't really recognized many patterns or consistency in how these are pronounced. My problems with this only extend to short vowels -- it's much easier when one of them is long, e.g., croí, beoir (my understanding is the that the 'eo' combination is pronounced like ó, with a slender 'b' -- please correct me if I'm wrong).

That is true, eo in Irish orthography is a long /ó/ after a slender consonant. In older texts you can sometimes find it actually written as eó, and in Scottish cognates the length is often marked too, eg. beò vs Irish beo. And yes, when you have a long vowel, then you basically just read that one, while others on its side are just to mark consonants as slender or broad.

As to the others – maybe look at fuaimeanna.ie, it has example recordings and IPA-ish phonological transcription of some words (although, for some reason, it finds wrong ones for words beginning with oir- for Connacht dialects, instead it shows transcription of words with /f’el’/…).

AFAIK io- at the beginning of a word is /u/ in Connacht (iomarca /umərkə/), and judging from fuaimeanna.ie /o/ in other dialects. But it’s not clear to me if there is a clear rule for it in the middle of a word: it seems to be mostly /i/ in the middle of a word, but then there are pioc /p’uk/ or /p’ok/, sioc /ʃok/ or /ʃuk/… oi is /e/ or /i/ or /o/… Like io sometimes mean slenderization and /o ~ u/, and sometimes /i ~ e/ and broadening, and oi the same in opposite order. I’d be glad to learn if there is a rule too.

Here are some useful rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_ort ... _trigraphs :

oi
stressed
/ɛ/
scoil /sˠkɛlʲ/ "school", troid /t̪ˠɾˠɛdʲ/ "fight" (imper.), toitín /ˈt̪ˠɛtʲiːnʲ/ "cigarette", oibre /ˈɛbʲɾʲə/ "work" (gen.), thoir /hɛɾʲ/ "in the east", cloiche /ˈkl̪ˠɛçə/ "stone" (gen.)
/ɔ/ before s, cht, rs, rt, rth
cois /kɔʃ/ "foot" (dat.), cloisfidh /ˈkl̪ˠɔʃiː/ "will hear", boicht /bˠɔçtʲ/ "poor" (gen. sg. masc.), doirse /ˈd̪ɔɾˠʃə/ "doors", goirt /ɡɔɾˠtʲ/ "salty", oirthear /ˈɔɾˠhəɾˠ/ "east"
/ɪ/ next to n, m, mh
anois /əˈn̪ˠɪʃ/ "now", gloine /ˈɡl̪ˠɪnʲə/ "glass", cnoic /kn̪ˠɪc/ "hills", roimh /ɾˠɪvʲ/ "before", coimeád /ˈkɪmʲaːd̪ˠ/ "keep" (imper.), loinge /ˈl̪ˠɪɲɟə/ "ship" (gen.)
/əi/ before syllable-final ll
coill /kəilʲ/ "forest, woods", coillte /ˈkəilʲtʲə/ "forests"
/iː/ before syllable-final nn and word-final m
foinn /fˠiːnʲ/ "wish" (gen.), droim /d̪ˠɾˠiːmʲ/ "back"
/oː/ before rl, rn, rd
coirnéal /ˈkoːɾˠnʲeːl̪ˠ/ "corner", oird /oːɾˠdʲ/ "sledgehammers"
unstressed
/ə/
éadroime /eːdrəmʲə/ 'lightness'

io
/ɪ/ before coronals and th
fios /fʲɪsˠ/ "knowledge", bior /bʲɪɾˠ/ "spit, spike", cion /cɪn̪ˠ/ "affection", giota /ˈɟɪt̪ˠə/ "bit, piece", giodam /ˈɟɪd̪ˠəmˠ/ "restlessness", friotháil /ˈfʲɾʲɪhaːlʲ/ "attention"
/ʊ/ before noncoronals
siopa /ˈʃʊpˠə/ "shop", liom /lʲʊmˠ/ "with me", tiocfaidh /ˈtʲʊkiː/ "will come", Siobhán /ˈʃʊwaːn̪ˠ/ "Joan", briogáid /ˈbʲɾʲʊɡaːdʲ/ "brigade", tiomáin /ˈtʲʊmaːnʲ/ "drive" (imper.),
ionga /ˈʊŋɡə/ "(finger)nail"
/iː/ before syllable-final nn
fionn /fʲiːn̪ˠ/ "light-haired"

Though there are some inaccuracies (like boicht /bˠɔçtʲ/ - it should be rather /bˠɔxtʲ/) and usage isn't that clear and pronunc. differs in dialects and even within dialects.
E.g. here oi in oifig is pronounced /ɔ/, /ɛ/ and /ɪ/:
http://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/oifig

not right in all dialects... Donegal (afaik) skɔlʲ, tɾɛdʲ, tɔtʲinʲ, ɛbjɛ, hɛj (for "cloiche" iˈm not sure).



fʲɔnˠ

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Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

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Sometimes your edit will be reverted because some idiot disagrees, or sometimes because some expert disagrees, ...and sometimes your edit will be kept because you've made it clear from your edit and from your edit summary that you are correct. Wikipedia is something *we* own, and it's very useful and widely used, so we should try to improve it.

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Pages I made:
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• Teaching Young Kids Irish (It's just my notes, a work in progress.)
• CD transcript and translations for the book Learning Irish

Is that so? I have been pronouncing it as /bˠɔçtʲ/ . Can you explain why this isn't the case and in what circumstances the same happens in other words?

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ЯГОН ТОҶИК НЕСТ ИНҶО???

For whatever reason I had forgotten about this resource. Thank you so much I will add it to my daily pronunciation exercise routine.

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ЯГОН ТОҶИК НЕСТ ИНҶО???

Reviving since a similar question on Unilang prompted me to check what Ó Sé’s Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne had to say on the matter, and what I think is true for Munster Irish (the whole § 29 from Ó Sé’s cited on Unilang) is:

1. ui is generally always /i/,
2. oi is /e/ after a dental consonant (d, t, n, s) or r or l (with the exception of toil /tol’/) and in the beginning of a word (like oibre /eb’ɪr’ɪ/),
3. oi is /i/ in most other cases, esp. when it comes from historical /u/, eg. cnoic /knik’/ (historically written as cnuic),
4. oi is /o/ in some other cases, eg. scoil /skol’/.

But those are only for stressed oi, otherwise it is /ɪ ~ ə/, so eg. coinín /kɪˈn’iːn’/; and also Ó Sé gives eg. kin´ɪ coinne which doesn’t follow those points. So maybe a better rule would be assume /i/, and if not then /e/ after dental or /r/, /l/, and /o/ otherwise.

This is basically what I understood. But because of so many exceptions, I try to remember how to pronounce words individually. If I am around a native speaker, I usually ask how they would say it.