"Actually," it says here, "for the purpose of simplicity I am leaving out a few subtle differences."

So a recent conversation in other precincts reminded me that I have long held the idea that it would be a good and right thing to learn a little Gaelic, me being of mostly Irish descent, and that it would be nice, for a start perhaps, to learn at least to pronounce the words I occasionally see in that language.

Oy.

By Googling "irish gaelic pronunciation guide" I came upon "A Beginner's Guide to Irish Gaelic Pronunciation" at http://www.standingstones.com/gaelpron.html, which is nicely written and unpretentious and encouraging ("Never again need you feel uneasy when confronting words like bhfuil or Maedhbh!"), and seems genuinely to want to make a complex subject amenable to even the meanest understanding, but which reveals that comprehending Irish pronunciation is not going to be a simple matter of learning a few rules -- as, say, in Spanish, that lovely language so welcoming of the newcomer -- but rather will require actual brain-engaged study. I hate it when that happens.

Vowels come in "slender," "broad" and "glide" varieties, which govern the "slender" or "broad" pronunciation of consonants, which by the way apparently can be of the plain old, or of the "aspirated," or of the "eclipsed" varieties. Then again, "There are a few exceptions to these rules. Broad dh or gh in the middle of a word is usually pronounced "y", such as fadhb "fibe" ("problem"). Sometimes broad bh or mh ("w") can result in a combination which is hard to say, like mo bhróga ("my shoes"). In that case, a "v" sound is used instead. Also, sometimes a "v" sound occurs when bh or mh is at the end of a word, such as creidimh "krej-iv" ("belief")." And don't even get me started on "double consonants."

Only at the very end does a bit of a wry acknowledgment of the complexity of the task sneak in... "So by looking back at our first examples, we see an bhfuil (the verb "to be" in the present tense question form), the bh eclipses the f, and the u is just a glide vowel making the bh broad, so we say "an will". For Maedhbh (a legendary queen), ae diphthong is pronounced "ay", a slender dh is a "y", a slender bh is a "v", so we say "Mayv". Simple, isn't it?"

Simple? Ah, sure, not atall atall.