The Fog of Terminology

Symbols

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Why all these brackets? Linguists have come up with these three different brackets to get around having to literally say all the time whether some word you are citing is in normal spelling or phonemes or something else. It simply saves time and typing. Angled brackets are used for giving words or sentences in "normal" orthography. For example: <a' ghaoth a tuath is a' ghrian> <the north wind and the sun>

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Square brackets indicate phonetic transcription. For example: [əɣˈɯːiatˈua s̩ əʝɾˈiːən̴̪] [t'n̩ˈɔːʷθ wɪnd ɛ̈n t'sʌn]

Terms Used

Adjective

buadhair - a word category which describes nouns, eg: green, big, sleepy.

adverb

co-ghnìomhair - a word category which modifies the verb, eg: cordially, feverishly, slowly.

1. (Originally) easily identifiable in English by the -ly ending.
2. Temporal/locational adverbs express concepts of time and location/movement, eg: yesterday, lately, up, downwards.

aspiration

analachadh - a puff of air either before or after a consonant. If it comes before the consonant it is often referred to as pre-aspiration.

dental (sound)

 fiaclach (fir)   	

a sound which is produced with the tongue and the teeth, eg: Engl. the, though. feminine

 boireann   	

a noun class. Gaelic nouns are distributed into two groups according to their different behaviour in terms of grammar (eg lenition.) incisors initial labial

 bileach (fir)   	

a sound which is produced using either both lips or one lip and the tongue, eg: Engl. bark, puddle, murky lenition

 sèimheachadh (fir)   	

a process by which the nature of a stop consonant is changed to a fricative. A stop (eg Gaelic p t c) is produced by blocking your speech tract at some point (eg at the lips for p) and then suddenly releasing. A fricative is produced by constricting the vocal tract without closing it off (eg narrowing the lips for Gaelic f.) Do NOT confuse this with aspiration, which is an entirely different process, although sometimes people confuse these two terms. liquid non-initial phoneme phonetics phonology phrase

 fràs (fir)   	

a number or words which form a sort-of independent structure larger than simple words, but smaller than a full sentence. possessive pronoun preposition

 roimhear (fir)   	

a word category which expresses relations of space, time and modality, eg with, through, during, under. tap trill velar

 co-chòsach (fir)   	

a sound produced with the back of the tongue and the velum, ie the part of the palate involved in making English g, k. vocative case vocative particle