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now why in SamHill would they pronounce it that way?
Because Gaelic uses a different orthography than English. The Celtic languages have a morphophonological process called mutation (or sometimes lenition). In the earlier native alphabet this was marked with a dot over the letter affected, but in mordern orthography this is marked with an aitch.
Here's a chart:
b ~ bh => /b/ ~ /w/
d ~ dh => /d/ ~ /ɣ/
g ~ gh => /g/ ~ /ɣ/
m ~ mh => /m/ ~ /w/
p ~ ph => /p/ ~ /f/
Somhain is accented on the second syllable. Hope that helps.
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Joined: Jan 2004
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All the more reason to adopt a nice, logical, strictly phonetic syllabary, such as devanagari.
While I am not a great fan of Gaelic orthography, it is better in its own way than something like English. Almost all languages differ from one another in regards to their phonological inventory.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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thank you all for your erudite discussion. next time I won't forget the smiley face wink tongue...  make me feel like Plutarch or sumpin'...
formerly known as etaoin...
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I believe it's Samhain and pronounced sow (like the lady pig) wen (like the skin defect) or maybe sah-wen.
A little late coming into this thread but I thought I'd throw y hat in the ring since there was a call to the Celts.
You're almost right, Faldage. The spelling is Samhain and is pronounced Sa-wan with the a slightly lengthened like betwwen wan and wawn. The 'sa' sound is like 'sah' but more subtle and only slightly aspirated before moving onto the 'wan' part. It's almost like saying 'seven'. There's no major emphasis on either syllable.
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