# Why is Irish spelling so--unusual? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 4, 1999, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-irish-spelling-so-unusual/10761 "1999-11-04T19:39:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2023, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-irish-spelling-so-unusual/10761/41 "2023-08-07T09:56:30Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > > [@hibernicus](#): > > > > you can’t predict from the pronunciation whether the word is written with “b” or “v”, and some dialects have “ll” = “y” > > As a speaker of the South Texas dialect of Spanish, I’d say some dialects have ll = j, which sounds odd to my ears 😜. I suppose you mean like an _English_ “j”? Yes, speaking of “unusual” spelling and lenition/mutation being some crazy Irish thing, in some types of Spanish ll = y. But I have also heard ll = z (or maybe zh, sh), that was in Argentina, though, don’t know about Texas. Gaelic spelling was based on what they learned from Brythonic people, not Romans (at least that is what I learned in this thread). ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2023, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-irish-spelling-so-unusual/10761/42 "2023-08-07T11:46:03Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I suppose you mean like an _English_ “j”? > > Yes, speaking of “unusual” spelling and lenition/mutation being some crazy Irish thing, in some types of Spanish ll = y. But I have also heard ll = z (or maybe zh, sh), that was in Argentina, though, don’t know about Texas. Right, an English j. To my ears, a Spaniard like Julio Iglesias sounds like he’s saying eja (line jam) for the word ella, while a fellow South Texan line Selena sounds like she’s saying eya (line yarn). In my own speech, the Spanish ll and English y are pronounced the same way. ETA. Regarding Irish and Spanish, my mother’s family name has an interesting story I recently found out about. The name starts with an F, but it turns out it was originally an Irish name that started out Ph. Apparently at some point my ancestors immigrated from Ireland to Mexico (possibly via France from what I’ve been able to gather), and the spelling was changed from Ph to F. ---
**Author:** ![Jagraze1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jagraze1/32/14870_2.png) [@Jagraze1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jagraze1)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2023, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-irish-spelling-so-unusual/10761/43 "2023-08-07T13:14:33Z")
Irish was influenced ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2023, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-irish-spelling-so-unusual/10761/44 "2023-08-07T13:51:27Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Gaelic spelling was based on what they learned from Brythonic people, not Romans (at least that is what I learned in this thread). Not Romans, but almost certainly people who knew Latin. I don’t actually know who it was that developed the Latin-based Irish writing system, but I’m assuming it was monks or clergy who were educated in Latin. I actually thought of another example of a vowel being used to condition or disambiguate the sound of the previous consonant: in Lithuanian if a consonant is followed by a front vowel such as “i” it is palatalised, while if it’s followed by a back vowel such as “u” it is velar. So an (otherwise silent) “i” is added as needed to indicate that the preceding consonant is palatalised: noriu, myliu, … ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2023, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-irish-spelling-so-unusual/10761/45 "2023-08-07T14:01:51Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > but it turns out it was originally an Irish name that started out Ph. I was intrigued by this because I couldn’t think of any at first, but after a few minutes I was able to come up with one. If your ancestors emigrated from Ireland to France and then to Mexico, their story could be an interesting one to learn more about! “Was it for this the Wild Geese spread A grey wing on every tide…” ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2023, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-irish-spelling-so-unusual/10761/46 "2023-08-07T14:22:53Z")
Yes, absolutely people who knew Latin, but who knew 5th-century British Latin, not first-century Roman Latin. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2023, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-irish-spelling-so-unusual/10761/47 "2023-08-07T14:30:30Z")
I am imaging that many pronunciation details in many languages were slowly lost with the development of written forms of those languages. There are changes we know of that I don’t think were to due to limitations of spelling like English with words like ‘knight’. At a minimum I’d think written languages consolidated varying local pronunciations and accents. Also maybe one of the great linguistic scholars here could comment on an alleged reworking of Polish to make spelling and pronunciation more regular. Can’t recall who told me that. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2023, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-irish-spelling-so-unusual/10761/48 "2023-08-07T15:02:44Z")
Take a language like Hebrew, which at some point developed some consonant mutations, but some of those are not reflected in the written language at all. But those details still occur when the language is spoken. Your comment re. consolidating varying local pronunciations and accents reminds me of the influential Chinese “[qieyun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qieyun)” which originated when a bunch of scholars speaking different dialects got drunk and tried to create an authoritative dictionary: > [@](#): > > When it grew late and we had been drinking wine for most of the evening, we began discussing the sounds and the rhymes. Modern pronunciations are naturally varied; moreover, those who have written on the sounds and the rhymes have not always been in agreement. … > > So we discussed the rights and wrongs of the North and the South and the comprehensible and incomprehensible of the ancients and moderns. We wanted to select the precise and discard the extraneous, … > > So under the candlelight I took up the brush and jotted down an outline. We consulted each other extensively and argued vigorously. We came close to getting the essence. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-irish-spelling-so-unusual/10761.md?page=2)