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 [əɡ̊] 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 > gràdh; ag ionnsachadh > gionnsachadh. If it comes before a vowel it generally assumes the quality of the vowel, ie if it comes before e/i it becomes slender, before a/u/o it stays broad: tha mi gionnsachadh [ha mi g̊ʲũːNsəxəɣ].

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):

Gaelg IPA Gàidhlig 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 [gu leòr] - back to Gaelic.