Our seven year old has a very slight issue with some of her 's' sounds. For example, in a word like 'saoirse' the first 's' sound has a slight difficulty, the second (sh sound) is perfect. Interestingly, the issue is more obvious when speaking English than when speaking Irish - it seems that the problem sound occurs more frequently in English than Irish - yet ANOTHER reason to speak Irish.

Anyway, the next focus is word endings such as the 'ts' sound in English as in when a word ending in 't' is made plural eg. hats, cats etc. Can anyone think of any Irish words where that sound exists at the end of a word? The speech therapist seems to have decent Irish, but hasn't the confidence to carry out the sessions through Irish - one of the difficulties in finding services for Irish speakers, particularly outside of the Gaeltacht. We need to find lists of words with the soft s sound, but cannot come up with any that finish with that 'ts' sound.

Although, we are supposed to be looking for them at the end of a word and not the beginning, we are now wondering about the 'ts' combination at the beginning of words eg. an tseachtain. The way we say it, the 's' sound cannot be heard at all. Is there anywhere - start, middle or ending of a word in Irish that has that 'ts' sound that is in the English 'cats'?

We can never be accused of not covering a diverse range of topics on ILF! Thanks in advance.

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leatsa, ortsa, díotsa

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WARNING: Intermediate speaker - await further opinions, corrections and adjustments before acting on my advice.
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

Foirfe! We couldn't get further than it being the absolute final sound. Grmma!

We have to come up with lists for the sound at the start, middle and ends of the words. It's funny how difficult it is to identify them when you have to. As a non-linguist, I clearly don't pay enough attention to the sounds of words at all. It's only when I had to put a list together that I realise just how little attention I pay. And then, I begin to question the pronunciation of words I have been saying for years!

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It's amazing how hard it can be to think of a specific example of something. When I was doing lesson materials a few years ago, I was always on the forum saying things like "can anyone think of an example of a regular first-conjugation verb other than "ol" that begins with a vowel?" and then going "d'oh" when presented with a list!

Redwolf