Quote Originally Posted by auld argonian
...just a dumb newbie question (two questions, actually):

...could someone please give me a phonetic pronunciation of sgain dubh so that I don't make an *** of myself if the topic comes up in conversation...

...and would the plural be "sgains dubh" or "sgain dubhs"?

I had a buddy who was very up on Gaelic languages and I once pinned him down on why some of the words are pronounced so differently from their spelling even when they are "anglicized" for consumption by the unenlightened...he had no good answer for the question...go figure.

best

argonian
Argonian,

We're talking anglicisms here, really. So Archangel's phonetics are as close as any. I'd plump for "sgian dubhs" in the plural.

Gaelic does have a system about its orthography, it's just not an English system, which is why it often seems incomprehensible. And why the way a word sounds seems nothing like the way it's written - such as "man from Skye" sounds like 'skee un okh' but is written sgitheanach or sgiathanach: or a "man from Islay" sounds like "un chee lyokh" but is written an t-Ìleach.

Actually, strictly speaking and a matter of interest, the "black" part should be written dhubh (and pronounced with a sort of gentle gargling sound 'ghoo') as sgian is a feminine noun, and the plural in Gaelic would be sgèine-dhubh ("skay nyu ghoo").

But in our everyday lives we are dealing with a loan-word into English, so sgian-dubh and sgian-dubhs, in my opinion, works fine. It's like two other loan-words from Gaelic: "galore" and "smashing" (I don't know whether you have this in American English, it means "really good" or something) - we wouldn't expect to see them written as gu leor or 's math sin, although they sound very much like they do in English.