I am in the uncomfortable position of having to introduce Casadh An Tsugain (Twisting of the Hayrope.) Help! Any advice on how to pronounce this would be most appreciated. Consider it a favor to the Gaelic languages.
Thanks
joe
Ye Gads, it is so tempting to invent something here…
joe, I think it’s supposed to sound something like a sneeze. (Usually played followed by “Ghiuseagh an T’Cheighiat”)
I should have known I’d get wize guys here. This is like the Monty Python skit where the Germans have a copy of the naughty German-English dictionary.
“Which way to the bus station” = “Please fondle my bum.”
I should say that I am not an Irish speaker by any stretch of the imagination. But since nobody has yet given a plausible response to Joe’s question, I shall offer what help I can. I have heard this tune name pronounced by the West Clare piper, Michael Falsey, who is a native Irish speaker (in his childhood, West Clare was still at least partly Irish speaking).
I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but to my ear, it sounded like:
KOSS-an TOO-gawn
There may well be nuances in there that my ears didn’t pick up on. Hopefully an Irish speaker will read this sooner or later and clarify.
N.B. ‘-gawn’ to rhyme with ‘fawn’, ‘seán’ etc.
Thanks David. This will certainly work for us West Texans.
A slight variation of David’s pronunciation, I’ve heard it pronounced as:
An KOSSan SooGAWN
“An” being the article “The”, and the stress falling on the syllables in capitals.
Like David, I am not an Irish speaker so I await correction from someone who is.
I think -
Cahs-uv ahn tchoo-gihn… or if you want Ulster Irish
cahs-soo ahn tchoo-gihn.
-Pádraig
’t was Hungarian-English, Carrmuse! 🙂
My hovercraft is full of eels!
Three blocks down, first left and then on for twenty metres. Can’t miss it.
(I think you’ll find it’s a bit runnier that you like it, sir)
Well yes, but what’s it in Hungarian?
My #2 son once asked me, “How do you sneeze in French?”
Sorry, I’m off task here. Does anyone else get frustrated by tune names that they don’t know how to pronounce? I find that often I can’t play a tune if I don’t know the name of it. I will sometimes hear a familiar tune, but if I can’t remember the name I don’t remember how to play it. Does this condition have a name? A name I can pronounce?
If you can’t pronouce it or remember it, you get to make up a new name?
Why not use the translation…The Twisting of the Hayrope? Saves too much tongue twisting…and you won’t, with any luck, have the wize guys putting you right.
Sue
a bit off topic, but you can apparently search google in irish gaelic:
http://www.google.com/intl/ga/
is this really a cheese shop??
caw-sey on soo-gawn
All my schooling in Irish
In the North…. Donegal ’specially (
the eee at the end of the word is pronounced
as a “u” sound so
caw-su on su-gawn
if you want to wow the audience…. in Donegal speak!
Thank you one and all. The idea of a Texan pronouncing anything correctly is humorous in itself.
Casadh An Tsúgáin
Munster: cusug un choogaoyn
Ulster: cusoo un choogaoyn (u as in up)
So how do you pronounce “choogaoyn”?
kasə n tu:ga:n’
is the correct transcription, or as correct as the font here will allow. Sorry if that’s pretentious but this is my field… (Irish phonology, not pretentiousness!)
the one thing, is that in the north, the t’s end up sounding like ch’s
How do you pronounce: “y‘all needa git ya’lls truuuhk outaheeya, y’heeeah?!”
Just to clear up some general misconceptions that are appearing here. The t in an tSúgáin is never pronounced ch /t’/, in any dialect! It is a broad /t/ and so will always be pronounced t.
Only slender t’s (i.e. those in the vicinity of an i or an e, have the secondary palatalisation rendering them tch, just like Italian “cento”), an example of the difference would be
“talamh” ground, which has a broad t and is hence always pronounced t.
“teach” house, which has a slender t and may be pronounced tch.
This secondary palatalisation occurs in the Ulster and Connacht dialects, but in the Munster dialects this doesn’t occur as much.