I dislike being wrong far more than I dislike being corrected :3
So please do correct me if the following is wrong:
Someone posted this on Tumblr:
To which I replied:
Well, “Seán” is actually said [ʃa:n], not “shawn” in most Irish dialects; English [usually] lacks this vowel, so I guess that's why the Brits think it's the vowel in “aw” which is actually a back [ɑ] (unrounded in some dialects, rounded in others, and some have both... I think? I can't vouch for the accuracy of this; I confuse English's back vowels all the damn time as they all sound alike). The last name “Bean” is of Scottish origin (apparently), and it’s said like “ben”, with an open /ɛ/ like in English “pen”. I don’t know how to spell “Sean” in Scottish Gaelic but I think it’s something like “Seann” in which case it’s said [ʃɛn], thus both “Sean” and Bean” rhyme (“Shen Ben”, lol). Finally, I don't get why it's spelled “bhawn” instead of “bawn” (humour? lol?); while “sh” is a digraph of English, “bh” is not (it doesn’t represent anything); English doesn’t have a broad vs. slender consonantal contrast the way the Goidelic languages do. O_o;
...We are aware that this is just meant to be lulzy. We get it, XD. However I couldn't help it. Now, I obviously speak neither Irish nor Scottish Gaelic; I just know enough about them to think that I provided a more or less accurate answer (hopefully I'm at least half-right, otherwise I just made myself look like a fucking noob, yaey :D). I am mostly relying on general IPA for these languages, not dialect specifics. Still, if there's anything that's not quite right do let me know, so I can rectify my post. THIS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS Y'ALL!!!!111one
I don't know how many Celtic lang speakers we have on the comm. but I know at least muckefuck should know something about this, hmm? :]
And yes, I have no sense of humour sometimes (but usually I do). Some notable exceptions include certain things like "The verb asked the noun to conjugate. The noun declined." (from a friend of mine; this actually made me lol irl) and "Une consonne affriquée n'est pas une consonne qui vient d'Afrique" (from my Analyse linguistique du français prof who is hysterical anyway so I laugh at everything he says :P). Or like when people learning Spanish giggle at "molestar" (lol so matoor) or the kids in my high school French classes lol'd at "phoque" ("seal"; reminds them of "fuck"; I didn't laugh because I say "phoque" more like "fok" and "fuck" rather like "fak"~ yay non-native ghetto pronunciations~). Feel free to use this post to post about linguistic humour if you can't answer the above, lol.
Someone posted this on Tumblr:
To which I replied:
Well, “Seán” is actually said [ʃa:n], not “shawn” in most Irish dialects; English [usually] lacks this vowel, so I guess that's why the Brits think it's the vowel in “aw” which is actually a back [ɑ] (unrounded in some dialects, rounded in others, and some have both... I think? I can't vouch for the accuracy of this; I confuse English's back vowels all the damn time as they all sound alike). The last name “Bean” is of Scottish origin (apparently), and it’s said like “ben”, with an open /ɛ/ like in English “pen”. I don’t know how to spell “Sean” in Scottish Gaelic but I think it’s something like “Seann” in which case it’s said [ʃɛn], thus both “Sean” and Bean” rhyme (“Shen Ben”, lol). Finally, I don't get why it's spelled “bhawn” instead of “bawn” (humour? lol?); while “sh” is a digraph of English, “bh” is not (it doesn’t represent anything); English doesn’t have a broad vs. slender consonantal contrast the way the Goidelic languages do. O_o;
...We are aware that this is just meant to be lulzy. We get it, XD. However I couldn't help it. Now, I obviously speak neither Irish nor Scottish Gaelic; I just know enough about them to think that I provided a more or less accurate answer (hopefully I'm at least half-right, otherwise I just made myself look like a fucking noob, yaey :D). I am mostly relying on general IPA for these languages, not dialect specifics. Still, if there's anything that's not quite right do let me know, so I can rectify my post. THIS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS Y'ALL!!!!111one
I don't know how many Celtic lang speakers we have on the comm. but I know at least muckefuck should know something about this, hmm? :]
And yes, I have no sense of humour sometimes (but usually I do). Some notable exceptions include certain things like "The verb asked the noun to conjugate. The noun declined." (from a friend of mine; this actually made me lol irl) and "Une consonne affriquée n'est pas une consonne qui vient d'Afrique" (from my Analyse linguistique du français prof who is hysterical anyway so I laugh at everything he says :P). Or like when people learning Spanish giggle at "molestar" (lol so matoor) or the kids in my high school French classes lol'd at "phoque" ("seal"; reminds them of "fuck"; I didn't laugh because I say "phoque" more like "fok" and "fuck" rather like "fak"~ yay non-native ghetto pronunciations~). Feel free to use this post to post about linguistic humour if you can't answer the above, lol.