ooh aaaaaah

[Fraggle Rocker]

And in Scotland, Och Aye, but there it means the opposite...

That KH sound in Scots dialect: is that a remnant of an earlier form of English when it sounded more like German, or is it something they brought over with them in the Gaelic language? Does Gaelic even have that phoneme? You never hear it in Irish words.

We joke about Scots saying, "The moonlikht is brikht tonikht." Do the people in the back country talk that way?

 

[Smellsniffsniff]

And in Scotland, Och Aye, but there it means the opposite: " That's right, but you aren't telling me anything I didn't know already".

That's interesting, it can mean that here too. Actually i think it's quite common to express yourself in those terms at those occations.

Even if you are not sarcastic etc. Because it is so old.

Probably the vikings came with it, ey?
Or should we call them just pirates?

 

[Captain Kremmen]

A song called "Ooh aah" by hip-hoppers the Grits contains this.

[Hook]
My life be like
Ooh Aah (yeah), Ooh Ooh
My life be like (yeah)
Ooh Aah, Ooh Aah (yeah), Ooh Ooh
Ooh Aah (yeah), Ooh Ooh
My life be like (yeah)
Ooh Aah, Ooh Aah (yeah), Ooh Ooh
My life be like (yeah)​

Just to make things perfectly clear​

This is Barry from Auf Wiedersehen Pet

"Ooh aaaaaah! I never thought of that."





And this is the Grits

"Ooh Aah (Yeah)"

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Fraggle.
Irish words tend to be softened rather than gutteral.
The old Irish alphabet had 27 letters, missing out qvwxyz and k, but adding nine softened sounds bh ch dh fh gh mh ph sh th, which each had their own letter. Their letter c sounds as a k. The nearest to kh is probably in the Irish word loch. In the west of Ireland, many people who speak Engish do so with older sounds, thus water is warther, and steam is shteam.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Irish words tend to be softened rather than gutteral. The old Irish alphabet had 27 letters, missing out qvwxyz and k, but adding nine softened sounds bh ch dh fh gh mh ph sh th, which each had their own letter. Their letter c sounds as a k.

What are some of those "softened sounds"? I see the name "Siobhan" occasionally but I have no idea how it's pronounced. Since S seems to already carry the sound of our SH (Sinn Fein, Sinead O'Connor), how is Irish SH pronounced? I remember songs about Ireland and presumably from Irish immigrants, from when I was a kid, and they mention the shilelagh, a fighting stick. But they always pronounce it "shi-lay-lee" with the GH silent.

The nearest to kh is probably in the Irish word loch.

We always pronounce that with the German/Slavic CH.

In the west of Ireland, many people who speak Engish do so with older sounds, thus water is warther, and steam is shteam.

Those aren't the sounds of an older dialect of English. "Water" goes all the way back to the Old German of the Angles and Saxons when they still lived in Europe. There's never been an R or a TH in it. Likewise the S in "steam." The modern German pre-consonantal SH is a recent shift, probably the same vintage as Vernor's Law, which never made the trip to Britannia except with Yiddish-speaking comedians. At least that used to be a common Yiddish "shtick" in America when people still spoke Yiddish.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

What are some of those "softened sounds"? I see the name "Siobhan" occasionally but I have no idea how it's pronounced. Since S seems to already carry the sound of our SH (Sinn Fein, Sinead O'Connor), how is Irish SH pronounced? I remember songs about Ireland and presumably from Irish immigrants, from when I was a kid, and they mention the shilelagh, a fighting stick. But they always pronounce it "shi-lay-lee" with the GH silent.We always pronounce that with the German/Slavic CH.Those aren't the sounds of an older dialect of English. "Water" goes all the way back to the Old German of the Angles and Saxons when they still lived in Europe. There's never been an R or a TH in it. Likewise the S in "steam." The modern German pre-consonantal SH is a recent shift, probably the same vintage as Vernor's Law, which never made the trip to Britannia except with Yiddish-speaking comedians. At least that used to be a common Yiddish "shtick" in America when people still spoke Yiddish.

They used to use an alphabet called the uncial, which was first used by monks writing manuscripts. Today it is mostly seen on products that are deliberately trying to look old-fashionedly irish. If you buy a shil-ay-lee, it might have the town name written on it using the old alphabet.
In the 50s they went over to a more standard, but less pretty roman alphabet.

You misunderstood me regarding the West of Ireland. Some of the people who lost their own language there then began to speak English as if it was Irish.

There are two German versions of ch. One is as in Ich, which is almost a K, and the other is like the ch in Bach, which is softer. The Ch in Loch is pronounced like that in Bach.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Siobhan is pronounced Shivawn. I don't know how the sh differs from the s. Perhaps someone who speaks the language could let us know.