Why is Irish orthography so weird?

The reason why Irish spelling looks weird at first is that it makes slender and broad consonants explicit. Instead of using a different character for broad and slender, Irish uses vowels (and sometimes extra consonants) to indicate if a consonant is slender or broad.

What does ó sound like in Irish?

ó as in bó pronounced “boe” á as in tá pronounced “taw”

What are broad and slender consonants in Irish?

Those are important terms, as they describe how consonants sound, based on the vowels that surround them. A consonant is “broad” if the vowels on either side of it are “a,” “o,” or “u.” A consonant is “slender” if the vowels on either side of it are “i” or “e.”

How many phonemes does Irish have?

What languages in Europe have the most or least phonemes?

Why is there no K in Irish?

There is no K in the Gaelic Alphabet, ancient or modern; nor had the ancient Latins any character like that letter: they gave the sound of K to C, as in the word sacra (pronounced “sakra”), where the c has the sound of the English letter k.

Why is Siobhan pronounced?

Pronounce the “Sio” portion of the name as “Shi” with a soft “ih” sound. Pronounce the “bhan” portion of the name as “vawn.” “Vawn” should be pronounced to rhyme with “lawn” or “gone.” Combine both syllables of the name to pronounce “Siobhan” as “Shi-vawn.”

How do you know if a verb is leathan or caol?

The rule caol le caol agus leathan le leathan means that the vowels on either side of a consonant (or group of consonants) should agree; they should both be broad or both be slender. The rule is primarily used when you add an ending to a word (e.g., when conjugating a verb).

How do you say slender consonants in Irish?

The n, s, t, and r are slender. The ch is broad. It just depends on which vowel is closest. You’ll find that broad consonants are mostly pronounced the way they are in English….

How is H pronounced in Ireland?

The oddly named letter H is usually pronounced ‘aitch’ /eɪtʃ/ in British English, but in Ireland we tend to aspirate it as ‘haitch’ /heɪtʃ/. This haitching is a distinctive feature of Hiberno-English, one that may have originated as an a hypercorrection but is now the norm in most Irish dialects.

Which language is the most phonetic?

The most phonetical consistent and complete language would be Esperanto, as it was engineered as such. Esperanto is an artificial language, and is not spoken by any large population. Apart from Esperanto, the most phonetically consistent language would be Korean, or Arabic.