Date: Thu, 6 Mar 1997
From: Brian Baranoski (baranosk@umbc.edu)
Last Christmas I bought an album entitled "Celtic Christmas". It is basically a sampler of various Celtic artists in the same manner as the Narada collection. One of the pieces is by Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh of the group Altan. The title of the piece is Soillse Na Nollag (The Lights of Christmas). I was following the Gaelic lyrics printed in the booklet and suddenly became aware of the difference in pronunciation of the words "an grá" by Enya and Mairéad.
The words are contained in the middle of line 8 (in the Curfa section) of the song Soillse Na Nollag. These same words are in Enya's Smaointe (Shepherd Moons), on line 5 and 17.
Enya pronounces the words as "ahn grah". Whereas Mairéad pronounces the words as "ahn gray". Pardon my attempts at phoenetic pronounciation in print. Yes, this is a small difference. However, I recall a discussion early last year on the different dialects within Ireland. And then to add to the distinctions, some people said that there were differences between villages, etc. within the same county. Well, I was kind of skeptical. But now, I have proof of these differences (I hope). Both women were born and raised in County Donegal.
If anyone else has this Christmas album and would like to comment on this dialectical difference in Gaelic, please do. Then again, anyone is welcome to comment or criticize my findings. Gaelic speakers - arise to the task! I don't know Gaelic.
Criticisms on my listening to Christmas music in March are not welcome. :-) I noticed this difference last December, but was too busy to write out this letter, then could not remember which album the words were on, and only now got around to writing.
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997
From: david.smith@utoronto.ca
Anyway, I have noticed that Enya tends to pronounce the "á" in different words like the "a" sound in (North American English) "cat", "hat", "land", etc. The dialect that I learned tends to prefer a pronunciation like "ah". That means there are at least three pronunciations for this letter!
"Grá", by the way, means "love".
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997
From: Jean Debord (JDebord@compuserve.com)
Here is a summary of the replies that I have received by e-mail after my recent post about the pronounciation of Gaelic in Donegal. The purpose of the thread, started by Brian Baranoski, was to determine if different singers issued from this area of Ireland could use different pronounciations.
1. Aoife Ni Fhearraigh is another singer from Gaoth Dobhair, the village from which Enya hails. She has studied music with Maire Ui Bhraonain (Enya's mother). Her second album, entitled "Aoife" (Gael-Linn CEFCD 172), is co-produced by Maire Brennan and sung entirely in Irish. On the liner notes it is said that most of her repertoire comes from singers from Ranafast, another area in Donegal. It is also said that "Characteristic of Ranafast-spoken Irish she uses 'thin' vowel sounds".
2. "Thin" vowels is an improper term to denote the "slender" vowels (i, e) which occur in Irish, together with the "broad" vowels (a, o, u). I first considered that some of these slender vowels could in some cases be pronounced in the Ranafast dialect, but not in the Gaoth Dobhair one. However, it appears that this is not true. So the assertion on the liner notes seems meaningless. They have probably been written by a person having an insufficient knowledge of Irish.
3. The Ranafast dialect is indeed slightly different than the dialect spoken by the Gaoth Dobhair people. Although Aoife is actually from Gaoth Dobhair, it is likely that she would adopt a Ranafast accent to lend some authenticity to the words or maybe to honour the original Ranafast authors.
Thanks to Willie Arbuckle, Brian Baranoski, David Smith and Jim Waters for their contributions. I am entirely responsible for any error that this summary could contain.
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997
From: david.smith@utoronto.ca
Maire Ui Bhraonain is Enya's mother; Maire Ni Bhraonain is her sister. "Ui" is the prefix given to the last name of a woman whose husband's name starts with "O"; "Ni" is the prefix given to the unmarried daughters' names.