/t/

[pne]

I was flipping through YouTube, from one performance of O Come, All Ye Faithful to the next and happened across this one by “Celtic Woman”.

And listening to it, I found one of the things that struck me was their pronunciation of intervocalic /t/: I found that I really liked hearing a “proper” [t] there rather than the flap that’s characteristic of many American accents.

I guess what you grew up with is what you identify with as “normal” (in the “normative” sense). (I also tend to like non-rhotic accents, probably for much the same reason.)

Comments

[sophie]

I actually have the DVD that video is from, which is called "A Christmas Celebration". (I actually bought it after seeing videos from it on YouTube, heh... that's how I came to know of Celtic Woman in the first place!)

Do take a listen to the other songs. Some of my favourites:

• Beyond the Sea
• You Raise Me Up
• Christmas Pipes (a CW original, I believe)
• And this one isn't by Celtic Woman as a group, but by Chloë Agnew, one of the singers of CW - One World

Yeah, I'm a fan. Can you tell? :)

[pne]

Thank you for those pointers! They do sound lovely.

[ailbhe]

I had no idea who they were but I could hear the Irish t (which isn't the same as the English t) at the beginnings and ends of words, like light, to, etc. It struck me as odd because there was a definite "come and ado'e" without the R I expected given the rest of the accent. Are some of them Irish and some not?

[asciident]

For what Wikipedia's worth, they're all Irish.

[pne]

Except for Hayley Westenra, who's "of Dutch and Irish heritage" but who is from New Zealand.

...though I see now that she joined Celtic Woman after that particular performance.