much enjoyed interview with Carson on last friday's The Verb on radio 3 -
listen again - on The Tain, encountering Kinsella's translation, getting to grips with the text for himself, what a "warp spasm" (?) is, and then reading a bit.

Maybe a forum member form NI or Éire could help me with this: Ian McMillian pronounced Táin 'toyn', but I was assuming it would be the same vowel as in the southern pronunciation of Áine, i.e. more like 'torn', with a longer 'o' and a silent 'r' ... or maybe even a northern 'taan'.

Carson seemed to pronounce it with the long 'o', but I couldn't make out if he had that 'oy' dipthong in there as well, of if it was just McMillan mis-pronouncing it slightly.

If no one's got back to you on this, the only person here I can think of for this sort of query might be BoW (see member list). He's an expert on Celtic languages at Oxford. But I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for. :mellow:

For what it's worth, I've always pronounced Táin more or less as Ian McMillan did, 'toyn', though that 'oy' sounds a bit short: more like something between 'tawn' and 'toyin', if that makes any sense (Carson is an Irish-speaker and it sounds like he has it about right). I don't speak much Irish but I have friends who are fluent in the language and none of them has ever corrected this pronunciation. One thing I am aware of is that there are very different regional pronunciations. In the Irish college I went to, Coláiste na Rinn (or Ring College), 'Rinn' might be pronounced 'Rin-ah' or 'Rhine' (as in Rhineland). As far as I know, there is no Irish equivalent to RP, which is just as well I guess.

Thanks Mark,

I think I can hear it now.

About the RP thing, I did have friends from Donegal who insisted that Gráinne was pronounced with a flat (but slightly lengthened) 'a' and that the southerners had got it wrong with the 'aw' ... which seemed to me a bit pedantic, given the regional variations in every language, but I didn't think it was wise to argue the point, being a visitor.