no, it's just because of the set of sounds, in my opinion, the u-sound and the throat r (although in many dialects old people use an Irish r) especially. But many French people say Breton sounds like German or like other languages, just because of the throat r and the "broad ch" sound. Now, most non-native speakers of Breton pronounce Breton as if it were French, and that's those speakers you hear in the media, unfortunately, not native speakers (or very few and only in certain programs)



well, Cornish is quite close to Breton ; Cornish died and has been revived, now I think most speakers use an English r so Revived Cornish sounds a bit like English, but when it was spoken by native speakers it would rather sound like Breton, I think.



concerning Corsican, it depends on the person. If they use a French r, it sounds a bit like French, but I think most people use an Italian r and then it sounds like Italian, with a different prosody. I don't know how many Corsicans use the French r, but almost all Corsicans I heard use the Italian one, and their Corsican doesn't sound like French at all. Anyway Corsicans have a very distinctive accent when speaking French.


Concerning the Catalan ll sound, as said before, it exists in Irish, it's the sound of the double slender L, which is a non-lenited initial L-, and a slender ll at the middle or at the end of a word (and in some consonant clusters like slender rl, etc). That sound is written [ʎ] in the IPA.
It's good if you can pronounce it because many learners can't pronounce it or put it everywhere there's a slender l, typically learners use that sound in "baile" and "abhaile" while it's wrong, in these words it's a single slender l, ie. a slightly palatalised l sound.

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

This is more for me to learn, but I would have thought the Catalan double l was further back in the mouth, being palatal where as the Irish double slender l is alveo-palatal. I'm probably making a silly mistake here though!

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

I admit I've only heard Corsican on a few YouTube videos so you're probably right.

Aha! So this ll sound does exist in Irish. I was almost sure I had heard it. For example, I think I can hear it here in this audio file that An Lon Dubh posted: http://ca.forvo.com/word/leoithne/ Am I hearing it right? He said:


And you say:


The info matches, right? So I guess I got it right.


Yeah, I guess I'm lucky. But I'm still so confused with all this information, double slender unlenited l... uff... it sounds very complicated. Actually I don't even know what "lenited" means, maybe if I knew that it would make more sense to me...

Yeah you did!! It isn't further back then, that's my inaccurate ears!


Lenition is something that happens to the first consonant of words in certain grammatical situations.
Here you listen to the word gá meaning need:
gá

Here you have a ghá, meaning his need:
a ghá

So the sound of the g changes because of the possessive pronoun a = his.

You usually write h directly after the letter to show this. It's not an actual h though, just a way of marking this change. Another
way, not as common today, of conveying it was to put a dot above the letter.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Oooh, ok, I had heard about this before, of course! I didn't remember it was called lenition. Like croí ---> mo chroí, right? But in this case (leoithne), why doesn't the l have a h after it if it's lenited? And also, why is it called double slender l?

Yes exactly!


No real reason in a sense, just historical convention. There's probably a reason why, but I don't know it myself.


This is because sometimes, especially when not at the start of words the two sounds are distinguished by being written
l and ll.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Then, if I understand it right, it's just like in Catalan, isn't it? Our ll being ll in Irish most of the time and the l being like a "normal l". Right?

There's a broad and slender version of both l and ll. Your ll is the slender version of Irish ll. I'm not sure which of the two Irish l's your l is closer to.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Catalan has a velar l (i.e. IPA [ɫ]) in most positions, even word-initially. That would make it most similar to broad single Irish l, I would think. (I'm hazy on the precise differences between lenis and fortis sonorants in Irish, as the variety I speak doesn't have them.)

Now you can check out your private messages - you have posted ten times!

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