Help talk:IPA/Irish

Common pronunciation?
Just thought I'd ask, does no one else think the pronunciations as given are a bit too... I don't know, maybe traditional? They're certainly a lot more deviant from English than I had always been taught was acceptable. The velarisation and palatisation were things I was never taught as being required for correct pronunciation, and given that the majority of Irish speakers learn it as a second language, I would assume that the ommissions are more common. - Estoy Aquí (t • c • e) 21:13, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The page reflects how Irish is pronounced by native speakers, not learners. This is because it's based on the information at Irish phonology, which in turn is based on published sources describing the pronunciation of native speakers. In any language, you'll be largely understood if you have a foreign accent influenced by the phonology of your native language, but that doesn't mean that should be given as the suggested pronunciation. For example, if you look up some English-language placenames at the German Wikipedia, you'll see pronunciation guides indicating how the places are pronounced by English speakers, not how they're pronounced with a German accent. It's the same idea here: the pronunciation of Irish words shows how the words are pronounced by native speakers, not how they're pronounced with an English accent. —Angr 21:19, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That's not the same thing though. German speakers of English are not in the majority. - Estoy Aquí (t • c • e) 22:17, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Information on the Irish pronunciation of English speakers would go at Anglophone pronunciations of foreign languages. I'm not sure how well this has been studied.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  22:43, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I find this very strange, why would you give a non-native pronounciation as a suggested pronuncitation? This would be like giving a German phonological guide for pronouncing French words. Just because the Irish education system is deficient doesn't mean Wikipedia should be aswell. - Dalta —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.92.71.32 (talk) 18:10, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Audio Files
Audio files would be very useful here. For those learner's or people interested in Irish who are unfamiliar or not fully familiar with IPA. - Dalta —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.92.71.32 (talk) 18:08, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Scottish Gaelic
How easy would it be to cover Scottish Gaelic with this key? They are a good number of Sc. Gaelic transcriptions, but not enough for a Sc. Gaelic key to be a priority. kwami (talk) 14:59, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it would probably be confusing, since in Irish b d g stand for and p t c stand for, while in Scottish Gaelic b d g stand for  and p t c stand for . Also, the Scottish Gaelic vowel system is quite different from that of Irish: ScG has nine short and nine long stressed monophthongs, with little or no quality difference between the long and short vowels, while Irish has five short and five long stressed monophthongs, with a tense/lax distinction similar to English. If we put Scottish Gaelic on this page, it would still basically need a whole section to itself because there wouldn't be a lot of overlap with Irish. So it might as well have a page of its own. +Angr 16:13, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

L and N
Capital L and capital N are not IPA usage. -- Evertype·✆ 14:17, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Never says they are. +Angr 14:38, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * "IPA for Irish"? -- Evertype·✆ 16:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * D'oh! Wrong column. -- Evertype·✆ 16:16, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Oíche Shamhna
'Preciate it if s.o. could add the IPA for Oíche Shamhna at Halloween around the world. —kwami (talk) 21:25, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅. Your wish is my command. +Angr 21:14, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I prefer to have a choice over my wishes, but thanks. kwami (talk) 21:35, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Another at Padraic, which looks like it might be an English approximation, though this is hardly unique. (Hopefully, everything linked here will eventually be ironed out.) kwami (talk) 23:54, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Orthography
I still think I might be useful to indicate the orthography somehow in this chart. WP:IPA for Polish, for example, does. We do this for non-Latin scripts, perhaps we should for nonintuitive (but regualr-ish) Latin scripts like Polish and Irish, too? I know I for one use them heavily when checking IPA. Still, a line needs to be drawn somewhere, as we have orthography-specific pages for many (most?) languages for a reason. And orthographies as irregular as English's or Danish's are beyond help on pages such as this. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 01:38, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Irish words are generally spelled the same across dialects even when they're pronounced differently. For example, ceann is pronounced in Munster,  in Galway, and  in Mayo and Donegal; and Irish doesn't have a standard dialect, so all three pronunciations are equally valid/prestigious. And even within a single dialect, divining the pronunciation of word from its spelling can be extraordinarily complicated in Irish, not to mention exception-laden (I made a start at Irish orthography, but see User:Angr/Irish orthography, User:Angr/Irish bh and mh, User:Angr/Irish dh and gh, and User:Angr/Irish l and n for an unfinished attempt at a thorough discussion that shows how complicated it really is). In the original version of this page there was a column for "common spellings of this sound", but I think that's adequately superseded by the column of example words.
 * What I do think was helpful in the old version of this page, that you got rid of, was the columns showing the equivalents in Learning Irish and Foclóir Póca. A lot of people use those sources, as well as other sources that use similar transcriptions. The strict IPA system we use at Wikipedia is relatively poorly known by comparison, so it's probably good to show people how to "translate" the IPA system into a set of characters they may be more familiar with. +Angr 16:08, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
 * These IPA for X pages are used by both editors in knowing transcription standards and by readers in knowing what the symbols mean. While the comparison chart with Learning Irish and Foclóir Póca is a common reference point for the former, it may be less useful to readers who are less likely to be familiar with those works or those transcription systems.  Perhaps a collapsable table would be in order.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  20:58, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
 * All the more reason to include both the proper IPA and the traditional transcription. Is there a way to collapse individual columns of a table? +Angr 08:53, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Not that I know of, but it would be awesome if we could. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  20:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Changes to transcription style
While we're modifying this page, I'm wondering if we shouldn't simplify the transcription. Two things that come to mind:
 * Do we really need the dental marker for broad /t d l n/?
 * Is the distinction between and  phonemic at all?
 * — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 20:32, 22 February 2010 (UTC)


 * From what I've seen, we don't usually include dental markers and other relative articulation diacritics unless they are directly contrastive, and on /tˠ, dˠ, sˠ/ they are not. For that matter, should /sˠ/ even be marked for velarization? (I am inclined to say yes, if only for consistency with the other broad consonants).  At the same time, according to Irish_phonology, /lʲ, nʲ/ vs. /l̪ʲ, n̪ʲ/ is contrastive in some dialects, but not in others.  But far be it from me to think I understand Irish dialectology...
 * — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 21:14, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I think your recent overhaul caused the loss of so my question also applies to that.  I'm inclined to keep the velarization marker because, if I understand correctly, "broad" and "slender" don't translate exactly to "velarized" and "palatalized" exactly and that, depending on context, either can be plain.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  22:19, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * When I started this page, I used the dental markers to be consistent with Irish phonology, and I use them there because the IPA transcription is based on Ní Chasaide's article in the JIPA, which uses them. Strictly speaking, neither the dental markers nor the velarization markers are absolutely necessary for, but there are dialects where dental are distinct from alveolar , and in those dialects it's good to be reminded that the stops are homorganic with the dental sonorants, not with the alveolar ones (especially since the alveolar sonorants become dental before the dental stops). The velarization markers are nice because they serve as a reminder of the velar offglide that broad consonants have before front vowels: if we transcribed tuí as  people might be inclined to pronounce it like English tea, when if anything it's closer to Russian ты or тый if that's a word. The transcription  helps avoid that temptation. To the second question: the distinction between  and  is phonemic outside Munster in noninitial position. +Angr 22:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, so there's:
 * Alveolar velarized
 * Dental velarized
 * Palatalized alveolar
 * Palatalized retracted
 * No dialect makes all these contrasts but if we put all of them in our guide, then we won't be putting one dialect over any others, which is appropriate since there's no standard. Right?
 * The question then is how to pair these sounds up into the slender/broad categorization. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  22:38, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Aeusoes, to answer your comments that I edit-conflicted with: "broad" and "slender" come very close to matching up with "velarized" and "palatalized" respectively, keeping in mind that (1) /h/ is neither broad nor slender, and (2) sounds that are already velar can't get additionally velarized and sounds that are already palatal can't get additionally palatalized. Broad sounds all have some degree of constriction between the back of the tongue and the velum, either as the primary articulation in the case of the broad velars or as a secondary articulation in the case of the other broad consonants. Slender sounds all have some degree of constriction between the front of the tongue and the hard palate, either as the primary articulation in the case of the slender velars and the alveopalatals ( is actually  in Irish) or as the secondary articulation in the case of the palatalized alveolars and labials (although there's a chance the slender bilabials  are not literally palatalized in Ulster at all but are rather distinguished from their broad counterparts by having the lips spread and closed tight, while in the broad labials the lips are more "loose and floppy"). +Angr 22:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * If you look at the chart at Irish phonology, you'll see that Glenties and Mayo have been described as having the four-way contrast for both the nasal and the lateral (although for Glenties at least, Quiggin says the four-way distinction is present only in the speech of older people -- and he did his fieldwork in 1903 and published in 1906!). Matching them up into broad and slender is easy: the velarized ones are broad and the palatalized ones are slender. In addition, the alveolars are "lenis" and the dentals and alveopalatals are "fortis". (They're usually described as being produced with "greater muscular tension", whatever that's supposed to mean, than the "lenis" sounds, and as being somewhat longer.) +Angr 22:52, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I should've worded that better. What I meant was, which slender consonant is paired with which broad consonant?
 * I was under the impression that the broad and slender consonants were contextually variant. In Russian, "hard" consonants are velarized (or more strongly velarized) before front vowels; "soft" consonants are plain before front vowels and palatalized elsewhere.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  23:27, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The palatalized alveolars are paired with the velarized alveolars (the lenis set), and the alveopalatals are paired with the velarized dentals (the fortis set); see the table.
 * {|class=wikitable

! ! Fortis ! Lenis ! Broad ! Slender
 * }
 * I don't know if I'd say the broad consonants are "plain" before back vowels and the slender consonants are "plain" before front vowels, though it's true the audible offglides are missing in those contexts. The [t] in is certainly velarized in the sense that the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum, but you don't hear it much because it's swallowed up by the following vowel. In that context, you could say the velarization of the [t] is the same thing as the articulatory anticipation of the [u:]. The same things goes for the palatalization of the [b] in : an English speaker will hear it as "bee", not "byee", because while the [b] is produced with a raising of the tongue toward the hard palate, that palatalization is the same thing as the anticipatory articulation of the [i:] during the [b], so it isn't acoustically salient. +Angr 10:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I've added all four to the table, though I'll let you fill in the examples. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  04:35, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I did my best to give a similar treatment to WP:IPA for Scottish Gaelic, but it could use a lookover. The fortis/lenis contrast confuses me the same as it does for Irish.  — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 08:23, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty busy in real life right now, but I'll try to flesh this out some when I get a chance. +Angr 08:39, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * As for "there are dialects where dental are distinct from alveolar, and in those dialects it's good to be reminded that the stops are homorganic with the dental sonorants, not with the alveolar ones", doesn't that apply to slender /t d/ too? They are palatoalveolar and often even affricated. Should we transcribe them as [t̠ʲ d̠ʲ]? --A. di M. (talk) 19:43, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
 * As for the "plain" C's, I wonder if we shouldn't delete the [ˠ]/_back-V or [ʲ]/_front-V, since this is a phonetic transcription and they aren't distinctly audible. That would make the transcription more legible for people who are already having difficulty with all the diacritics. — kwami (talk) 20:34, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * As for "there are dialects where dental are distinct from alveolar, and in those dialects it's good to be reminded that the stops are homorganic with the dental sonorants, not with the alveolar ones", doesn't that apply to slender /t d/ too? They are palatoalveolar and often even affricated. Should we transcribe them as [t̠ʲ d̠ʲ]? --A. di M. (talk) 19:43, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
 * As for the "plain" C's, I wonder if we shouldn't delete the [ˠ]/_back-V or [ʲ]/_front-V, since this is a phonetic transcription and they aren't distinctly audible. That would make the transcription more legible for people who are already having difficulty with all the diacritics. — kwami (talk) 20:34, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

English Approximation
Why isn't there an English approximation, as is done with, for example, the IPA-chart voor Dutch and Afrikaans? The way it is written now doesn't make it any clearer on hów a letter is pronounced, since the words that are there as an example are Irish words. :s --Robster1983 (talk) 20:14, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I've started the column. Many of the examples can be ripped directly from those at WP:IPA for Russian. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  04:20, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much, it looks great! :D --Robster1983 (talk) 16:07, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * In the vowel section, the word 'bán' does not correspond to 'llama '. I was thinking the English word 'fawn' would be better, but Im not sure because I think its the 'w' in fawn that gives it the sound. Should it be changed? Dylan (talk) 16:38, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It's the first a in "llama" that is an approximation of the vowel of "bán". It's true there is a fair amount of variation in the realization of á across Irish dialects. In Waterford, as well as in the speech of many fluent but nonnative speakers from outside the Gaeltacht, it is indeed quite far back and often rather rounded, and is a lot like the "aw" of "fawn". In Kerry, Galway, and Mayo it's more like the first "a" of "llama" (as pronounced in RP or in American English, not so much as pronounced in Hiberno-English), and in Donegal it's similar to the "a" of "man" but retracted. +Angr 16:43, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Ní dóigh liom go bhfuil llama ceart ar chor ar bith. -- Evertype·✆ 00:14, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Why not, and what would you suggest instead? --A. di M. (talk) 12:11, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Because I never ever hear anybody say [baːn]; they say [bɒːn]. (Not in Ulster of course.) The "fawn" vowel is more widespread—including on TG4 broadcasts from Conamara. -- Evertype·✆ 13:37, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, fawn can be as close as [oː] for young speakers from England or Australia, which IMO is even worse. (What about something like song?) --A. di M. (talk) 13:51, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think anybody rhymes "fawn" and "phone". -- Evertype·✆ 18:27, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * "Phone" has [əʊ] or similar for those people. (Recent British dictionaries even use /əʊ/ in their transcriptions.) --A. di M. (talk) 23:16, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * (Even though song for á and cloth for o might suggest that they only differ in duration. Meanwhile, I'm replacing the example in Irish with one where the vowel doesn't follow a bilabial.) A. di M. (talk) 18:12, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Again with this. Is llama really pronounced 'law-ma'? I always thought it was the same vowel as in 'hand'. And shouldn't song and cloth be the opposite way around above? As in, it's 'song', not 'sawng', and cloth is pronounced clawth, right? Have I been pronouncing everything wrong forever? 109.76.241.208 (talk) 22:42, 4 April 2013 (UTC) What I really mean to say, is that a fada is pronounced like the vowel in 'saw', not the vowel in 'off'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.76.241.208 (talk) 22:44, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The trouble with the English approximations is that there are so many different accents of English. Llama for me has neither the vowel of law nor the vowel of lamb but the vowel of calm or father—but I'm from America, and (to judge by the geolocation of your IP address) you're from Ireland, so for you lamb and calm may rhyme anyway. Song was recommended above by a native Italian speaker, so who knows what he was thinking. For me, song and cloth have the same vowel, so replacing cloth with song won't make a jot of difference. Angr (talk) 09:25, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Can we have a clarification on the english equivalent given as "noon, new". The two words in standard english are nothing like each other, so unless "new" is the American "noo" pronunciation the examples are confusing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 20.133.0.13 (talk) 10:42, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The "English equivalent" column (almost) always has two words, one corresponding to the velarized sound and one corresponding to the palatalized sound. The closest English equivalent for /nˠ/ is noon (because the [n] in this word is velarized in anticipation of the [uː]), while the closest English equivalent for /nʲ/ is new (in accents like RP where this is pronounced [njuː], because the [n] in this word is palatalized in anticipation of the [j]). Angr (talk) 11:39, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

request
I've templated all unformatted IPA I could find in the March 12 dump, with just 9 articles to go. 3 of those are Gaelic: Danu (Irish goddess) (lede), Hurling (2nd paragraph), Micheal O'Siadhail (lede). Could s.o. here template them with IPA-ga, IPA-sga, or IPA-en, as appropriate, and fix up the transcription if needed? — kwami (talk) 10:39, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I made a stab at the first; the 2nd was English (OED), and the third was taken care of by s.o. else. Maybe Danu should be dbl checked. — kwami (talk) 21:02, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Glides
Since this transcription is intended to be phonetic and to be used by non-Irish speakers, wouldn't it be a good idea to add ɰ between a broad consonant and a slender vowel, j between a slender consonant and a broad vowel, ə̯ between a slender vowel and a broad consonant, and i̯ between a broad consonant and a slender vowel? A. di M. (talk) 14:21, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that would make the transcriptions unnecessarily complicated. Most broad and slender consonants are already marked with ˠ and ʲ respectively, which should serve as sufficient reminder for the off-glides. —Angr (talk) 19:06, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Why brackets rather than slashes?
Is this transcription intended to be relatively narrow? It looks to me that it just juxtaposes transcriptions for the individual phonemes, with no account of allophony at all. (And the symbols used for some of the phonemes are not even the best reasonably-simple approximations to their most typical realization, e.g. I'd use ɑː rather than aː.) I'd consider the use of brackets in this situation to be somewhat misleading, and replace them with slashes (assuming that a narrower transcription would be too complicated to be practical). --A. di M. (talk) 17:07, 26 March 2011 (UTC)


 * That might be a result of trying to cover more than one dialect.
 * In general, we transcribe foreign pronunciations phonetically, because we do not define the phonology of the language and a phonemic transcription would therefore be ambiguous. The idea is that a reader should be able to read the transcription without any knowledge of the language; the key is there primarily for those who do not know the IPA. Where the phonology is defined, as in the various Irish-language articles, we often do use a phonemic transcription. If you think our transcription should be more precise, we can discuss it here and update the transclusions if we make changes. — kwami (talk) 20:30, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry I didn't see this thread before; I wasn't around Wikipedia much in March. It is partially the result of trying to cover more than one dialect, and partially the result of aiming for consistency with the article Irish phonology, which uses a quite broad transcription unless a particular allophony is under discussion. We could introduce both allophony (as WP:IPA for Spanish does, listing both stop and fricative allophones of b d g) and dialectal differences to the transcription (as WP:IPA for Dutch and Afrikaans does, representing both Northern/Netherlands Dutch and Southern/Belgian Dutch), but then we have to confront the possibility that articles on Irish words that are not region-specific (e.g. Taoiseach) will list three or even four (if the English pronunciation is also included) pronunciations before the lead sentence can get off the ground. (See Akerbeltz's comment at Talk:Crom Dubh: "I'm known for being a fan of IPA pronunciation guides but having THREE Irish variants is insane.") In its current state (i.e. without allophony and dialects added) I prefer to use aː as it's a good compromise between Donegal's [æː], Connacht's [ɑː], and Munster's allophonic/dialectal [aː ~ ɑː ~ ɒː]. Angr (talk) 14:41, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

"An"
What is used for the word "an" or the sound itself, for example "an geata". Sheodred 11:42, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * in most cases, including an geata. It's usually reduced to between consonants, as in adhmad an geata. It's  before a word starting with a, o or u and  (the full stop means there's a syllable break: the n gets assigned to the following syllable when the next word starts with a vowel). Angr (talk) 20:58, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

tiny &gamma; looks like Y
The superscript gamma ‹› is so small, especially in the footnotes, that it's nearly impossible to distinguish from a capital "Y". I've added a clarification to the footnote. --Thnidu (talk) 04:27, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

"aoi" pronunciation?
I was looking for some indications on how the vowels in the name 'Saoirse' are pronounced. The article on the name says the 'english re-spelling' would be "SEER-shə", but I see no corresponding sound for it in the vowels list. Am I missing something? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Star-lists (talk • contribs) 17:29, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The vowel is . Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:57, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Vowel
Are the vowels 'a' in solas and 'i' in milis The same. They are not the same sound, or am I missing something?

ə	solas, milis	sofa

Comparison to other phonetic transcription schemes
Why not Ulster-Connaught-Munster-"Standard" rather than Ulster-Munster-Connaught-"Standard" as it is right now? Catrìona (talk) 18:31, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Help talk:IPA which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:16, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Superscript ˠ after nearly every consonant
I have to question whether putting ˠ after nearly nearly consonant in this chart is helpful in any way. It makes the pronunciation keys difficult to read for no clear benefit. Someone unfamiliar with the language is not likely to be able to picture the difference between gˠ and g in their mind's ear, and speakers of the language already know how consonants sound in it. We're being much more loose (and helpful to more readers, I would say) in the IPA for English page. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:00, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Phonetic or phonemic transcription?
[ This is continued from this topic after it was suggested to be moved here.

''Addendum: I incorrectly conflated narrow/broad transcription and phonemic/phonetic transcription in the original message, I have corrected my mistake here. ]''

This page does not specify whether to use slashes or square brackets for the transcription of Irish on this site. However, Template:IPA-ga uses square brackets, and Template:IPAc-ga uses them by default. The problem is that the transcription style set out in this help page is clearly phonemic, and the templates should reflect this. I propose that this page is updated, and the templates are changed to use slashes by default. Alpha2 5232 (talk) 16:19, 31 May 2023 (UTC)


 * You still seem to be conflating the two and thinking that a phonetic transcription is necessarily narrow. It is not. Any phonemic transcription can be put in square brackets and it would be correct, because narrowness is a continuum. As designated in MOS:PRON, all IPA-xx templates except IPA(c)-en use square brackets, because readers of the English Wikipedia cannot be presumed to be familiar with the phonology of any language other than English. That doesn't mean the transcriptions in them should be narrow (if all phonetic transcriptions had to be maximally narrow, we should see what is basically zalgo text anywhere we see a transcription in brackets). The square brackets signal to the reader that the transcription is a reasonably accurate representation of the realization. A phonemic transcription may or may not be a fairly faithful representation of the realizations depending on how much allophony there is in each language, and it just so happens that it is for Irish, but that doesn't mean we should stop signaling that for Irish. Nardog (talk) 02:26, 1 June 2023 (UTC)