Ok, day six of sharing what I’ve learned of Irish. Today I’ll be sharing how to pronounce Irish Vowels (Which in hindsight probably should have been my first lesson...) The vowels come in long and short versions. Long vowels are marked with an acute accent. This accent is called a fada in Irish, a word which simply means long.
I’ll be formatting as follows: Vowel | Pronunciation (example)
Long vowels:
á | aw (as in “taw”)
é | ay (as in “hey”)
í | ee (as in “knee”)
ó | oh (as in “woe”)
ú | oo (as in “shoe”)
Short vowels:
a | uh (as in “ago”)
e | eh (as in “peck”)
i | ih (as in “in or pick”)
o | ah (as in “mock”)
u | uh (as in “put” or “muck”)
Then there are letter combos that are always pronounced as long vowels, though they don’t have the fada:
ae | ay (as in lae pronounced “lay”)
eo | oh (as in eol pronounced “ohl” (to rhyme with “hole”)
ao | ay or ee (as in lao pronounced either “lay” or “lee”, depending on dialect)
Hope this has helped someone else learning. (Again, if anyone following sees I’ve made a mistake, go ahead and politely inform me so that I can correct it so I don’t accidentally spread mis-information!)
Next lesson I think I’ll share about consonants.