B' àill leibh or fast speech 2

In the first part, we looked a little bit at the way in which speaking fast and informally affects the sounds - in particular the weak sounds like schwas which go to way all schwas go - away.

There is another dimension to this of course. All languages do this and it's called truncated forms. Which essentially means that you chop part of a word off because people figure it's too long for speaking fast.

So what can we chop in Gaelic? Here's a non-exhaustive list of very common ones:

carson	⇨	con
urrainn	⇨	urra
a bheil	⇨	bheil	⇨	eil
chan eil	⇨	'n eil [Nʲel]
càite	⇨	càit	⇨	cà
ag	⇨	a'	⇨	nothing

In particular the last one is important as a lot of learners get it wrong. Even at the best of times, the ag is only pronounced as [əɡ] and in fast speech it generally drops out completely. The only exceptions to this are ag before r, where the [g] gets fused to the r; and before vowels where it latches onto the vowel: ag ràdh ⇨ [ə'graː]; ag ionnsachadh [ə'gʲũːNsəxəɣ]. If it comes before a vowel it generally assumes the quality of the vowel, i.e. if it comes before e/i it becomes slender, before a/u/o it stays broad: tha mi 'g ionnsachadh [ha mi gʲũːNsəxəɣ].

And before anyone asks - I'm not suggesting you hand in your school essays with forms like *gionnsachadh, it's just to show how the spoken language works.

Here comes the rambling bit: the fascinating thing is that in Manx (never mind the spelling) the ag has fused to the verbal noun in all cases (or dropped out before consonants altogether or even eclipsed them!), so you get things like (the second column is IPA because Manx spelling boggles the mind just a bit):

Manx	IPA	Gaelic equivalant
t'eh janoo	[tiː dʲenu]	tha e a' dèanamh
t'eh tuittym	[tiː toʒəm]	tha e a' tuiteam
t'eh fuirraght	[tiː fuɾax]	tha e a' fuireach
t'eh markiagh	[tiː maːkax]	tha e a' marcachd
t'eh çhyndaa	[tiː tʲinˈdɛː]	tha e a' tionndadh
t'eh çheet	[tiː tʲit]	tha e a' tighinn
t'eh chaghlaa	[tiː kaxˈlɛː]	tha e a' caochladh
t'eh keayney	[tiː keːnˈi]	tha e a' caoineadh
t'eh gee	[tiː gˈiː]	tha e ag ithe
t'eh ginsh	[tiː gʲinʃ]	tha e ag innse
t'eh gynsaghey	[tiː genzax]	tha e ag ionnsachadh
t'eh faagail	[tiː fəˈgeːl]	tha e a' fàgail

Gaelg dy liooar, that's gu leòr this side of the Irish Sea - back to Gaelic.