Confusing words

[miguel]

Halò,

I've found some words very similar, do you make any difference between them when you pronounce it ?

Examples :

taigh (masc., house) / taidh (fem., tie)
nithean (pl., things) / nighean (fem., girl)

Do you know other examples of words which can create some confusions ?

[Stìophan]

Taidh is pronounced as in English but Taigh has a different, shorter sound, roughly: tuh-ee where uh is the u in butter.

Nithean and Nighean have the same sound.

Other examples are:

Ruadh (red/brown colour) and Rubha (headland)
Sian, Sìon and Sìthean - Storm, whisper and flower respectively.
dian (eager) and dìon (protect) but NOT dèan which is pronounced differently.

There are many other examples

[Bhoniar]

Blame it on age, but I hear a difference in those words, especially some dialects tend to add a soft 'ch' sound for a 'th' or 'gh'

sian and sìon should be distinguishable because of the stressed ì.

a bheil mi ceart?

[An Gobaire]

Nithean and Nighean have the same sound.

Sorry, this is not true. "Nithean" is pronounced "nee-han"; "nighean" is pronounced "nee-yan or nee-yen"

"Ruadh" and "rubha" are pronounced differently too, as are the other examples!

Sian, Sìon and Sìthean - Storm, whisper and flower respectively

Sìon with the accent actually means "something/anything", without the accent it can mean "whisper".

Sìthean means hillock, knoll. Are you thinking of "Dìthean", which means "flower", or in particular, "daisy"?

[Stìophan]

I have never heard Ruadh and Rubha pronounced differently. The -dh is silent in Ruadh, although I have heard it pronounced in the plural ruadha

My translations came from Stòr-data on the SMO website.

Also -th- is silent in some dialects, or pronounced 'h' in others. The only examples I can think of it being pronounced -ch is in the verb ìth and the adverb gu bràth.

[Coinneach Cìr]

I have never heard Ruadh and Rubha pronounced differently.

I certainly pronounce these 2 words differently, and I should know better than many as my mother hails from An Rubha area near Stornoway. Perhaps our very strong accents are to blame but there is a clear distinction between the 2 words as I say them to myself.

[Bhoniar]

Well like I said, I may have a hearing problem, :shock:
or I may hang out with the wrong people (mainly from Uist)
or - even more likely - I am lacking the correct words to describe the sound I hear:

mar eisimpleir:
ruith
taigh

[Bhoniar]

I should add that I heard the complaint that many native English speakers do not bother with striving for correct pronunciation as they struggle with the 'r' and the 'ch', especially in its soft, hinted version.

[Stìophan]

Totally agree with you there Bhonair.

We often call them "Footies", because of their inability to pronounce Faodaidh correctly