Are Hugh the bombardier Yossarian?
Boyd is Uilleam really Gaelic for Billy? My sons name is Billy and he wants to know how its pronounced. Thanks…
How do you pronounce “uilleann” ?
I can’t believe that not one of you gave the correct answer, which is, of course,
“EL-bow”.
“Uilleann” means “elbow,” in Irish. It is pronounced “ILL-yan,” and the two vowels rhyme with those in the word “sylvan.”
'luck now,
brian_k.
C4 Madeline My christian name is UILLIAM which is the gaelic for WILLIAM.
It is pronounced ILLIAM or LIAM for convenience.Hope this info is of use to BILLY.
Slan go foill
UILLIAM HAICEAD
[ This Message was edited by: Uilliam on 2002-10-12 03:58 ]
Thanks, he thought this was pretty cool..Now he wants me to call him Liam..
ill-yun,-comes from the same root as the ever popular sacroiliac, that is, a part with an elbow in it
[ This Message was edited by: brianormond on 2002-10-12 23:17 ]
ill-yun
Regarding the Villain (sic) Pipes…
What’s this yun business? Are yous saying that it should be pronounced as yun = young? Or perhaps you mean as in the Christian name Ian or eon (a very large passage of time).
But if you can pronounce my christian name (correctly), you are oh so close.
cheers
Alan
Alan or is it ALYUN aka Cornish Celtic have a look at best tuning device and the link.Lo! a picture of you grinning like a Cheshire beaming back at me bit Woodstocky eh? Slan
LiYum aka Alba
Alyun pipes. 
Whoah! Do we have people now saying it’s pronounced “ill-yun” where “yun” is like in the word “onion”? I don’t think there are any dialectical discrepancies here as far as Gaelic pronunication. It’s pretty well pronounced to rhyme with “villain” no matter what part of Ireland you learned your Irish. Unless of course you’re fom Kerry 
Slainte!
Aaron
I’ve been watching the Liam O’Flynn video, The Pipers Call, When refering to the pipes He says ILL-un, like Aaron says, sounds like villian. Phonetically it could be ILL-un, ILL-an, Ill-in or ILL’n.There’s always going to be variations to take account of accent/dialect etc. I think in Scottish (gaelic) the word for elbow is Uillin, said OOH-lin, and bellows blown pipes in general are refered to as Cauld wind pipes. Maybe Uilliam could confirm or correct this.
Slainte Math, Mac
Irish has roughly two /l/s. “Broad” /l/ sounds closer to that in English “full”, and “slender” /l/ to that in English “million.”
Slender consonants usually sound as if followed by a /y/. This /y/ can be subtle and require at times a nearly spiritual faith in its existence. But it does exist, and the difference between broad and slender /l/ in Irish is as important to the meaning of a word as say the difference between /m/ and /z/ in English.
So “uilleann” does sort of rhyme with “million”; find a speaker of British English and have them say “million”, then make your /ly/ a shade subtler yet and you’ll be getting close.
(On the other side of the coin, find any Hollywood movie featuring a badly-accented “Russian” character. Every /l/ will be excruciatingly broad.)
The thing is, when conversing about uilleann pipes we are very often speaking English; the slender/broad thing is a very Irish feature. The decision on whether to make a super-careful slender /l/, then, is akin to the decision on whether or not to roll the heck out of your /r/s when discussing burritos.
Just an obsessed linguist’s way of saying that both “ILL-un” & “ILL-yun” are probably kosher when speaking English.
[ This Message was edited by: Bok Choi on 2002-10-14 12:26 ]
Those are some interesting points. So I guess if you’re one of those people who makes all Spanish origin words sound like they would in Spanish (ie roll your “R” when you say burrito) then maybe you could try your tongue at “uilleann” sounding almost but not quite like “million”.
I’m no linguist but on an Irish-Gaelic instruction tape one of the phrases they taught was “cloisim an pib uilleann” (I hear the uilleann pipes) and in the pronunciation guide “uilleann” was diagrammed “ILL-in.” Now this could have been done so as to be easier for the new learner who isn’t ready for the intricacies but I think we would be wandering way off topic from here on. Not that I don’t enjoy esoteric and Sophist discussions.
Cheers,
Aaron
BWONG!!! The bell rings, the round’s over!
Game, set and match (to mix sports metaphors) goes to Bok CHOI!!!
Mark
(the roar of the millyuin-person crowd can be heard best if you press your ear to your CPU)
I resisted, but the topic got into its third page and something just sort of snapped…
BC
“It was the eighth subscription card that convinced me.”
Ten out of ten, Bok Choi, go to the top of the class.
Anyway, if we’re to mix sports metaphors I’d as soon be credited with a hurling goal as they’re damn hard to get. Almost as hard as that blasted roll in Garrett Barry’s which has driven me to fiddle for a week.
NOW we are officially off-topic…as penance, here’s a fun book: “Les Cornemuses” (I think), having some lovely and rarer paintings/woodcuts of pipers, to include a fair number of the bellows ilk.
Bac tSeoigh
Okay, but which one sounds COOLER?
Slainte!
Aaron