I may be playing “The Christ Child’s Lullaby” this weekend, and since I prefer to give tune names in the original language, I need to check and make sure that what I’ve found is the correct Scottish Gaelic name of the tune. I have Tàladh Chriosta…does that sound right?
Also, as I have no Scottish Gaelic, a bit of guidance on pronunciation would be useful. My Donegal Irish wants to make it TAL-oo HRIS-tuh (that “h” sound actually being closer to the German “ich”). Am I anywhere near the ballpark?
I would pronounce it TAAL-ugh (gh = softly voiced gutteral), not TAAL-oo, but maybe some dialects would.
The only other change I would make is to make Chriosta into 3, or 2.5, syllables. (HRI-uh-stuh by your formulation), with the middle “uh” being slight but present. Think of the -stuh as being at the broad end of the spectrum and the HRI at the slender end - you need the -uh- to give your tounge and mouth time to get all the way down!
Grand. I wondered if there should be an accent on the “i”, as there is in Irish (it would be “Chríost” in Irish, in this genitive position). The gutteral “gh” sound in “tàladh” is also close to some dialects of Irish, so it’s not far off.
Just out of curiosity, does “tàladh” mean “lullaby”? The Irish word would be “suantraí” (in fact, we sing an Irish version of this song called “Suantraí an Chríost”). I like to be accurate with my translations as well, when I’m attributing music.
Seonachan nailed the pronunciation already. I would also prefer the spelling “Chrìosda”, but as in Irish spelling reforms 50+ years ago, a lot of intervocalic and word-final Ds in Scottish Gaelic words are getting shifted to Ts because the Ds tend to be devoiced, anyway, so I imagine “Chrìosta” might also be considered acceptable.
Tàladh, according to my dictionary, can mean lullaby. It also lists terms such as “allurement”, “soothing”, “enticing”, and “taming.”