Talk:Puirt a beul
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[edit] Spelling of the name
This article has seen a variety of spellings of its name, including "Puirt á beul" and "Puirt à beul". The actual Scottish Gaelic spelling of the phrase meaning "tunes of the mouth" is puirt a' bhèil (or puirt a' bhéil before the acute accent was done away with a few years ago). But doing some googling reveals that the most common spelling in English is "puirt a beul", so that's what I've moved the article to, while providing the correct Gaelic spelling in parentheses. —Angr 09:39, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest that an even better title for the article would be the original "Mouth music" which is the English name for it. This would avoid the problem that you are talking about entirely. The Gaelic name should be used in the Gaelic Wikipedia as the article title and the English name should be used in the English Wikipedia as the article title. -- Derek Ross | Talk 01:53, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
- But I think the style is more usually called "puirt a' bheul" than "mouth music", even in English. —Angr 08:42, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
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- I think that that depends on where you live. In English speaking areas of Scotland (the vast majority nowadays) it would be called "mouth music" or "diddling". In Gaelic speaking areas it would be called "puirt a bheul". Outside Scotland so few people know about it that it's more a matter of record company marketing than anything else. And because the record companies want to emphasise the "Celtic" angle they use the Gaelic term rather than the English one. There is another problem with the Gaelic term and that is the spelling/pronuncistion angle. You and I may not be misled but the average person who only knows how to read English spelling makes a total hash of the pronunciation of Gaelic words such as "bheil". Hence the "beul" spelling of the article title which is neither good Gaelic nor English. -- Derek Ross | Talk 00:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
- Never heard of "mouth music", but came across puirt a' bhèil loads of times. Went to a lecture about it once, and it was only called puirt a' bhèil. At any rate, it is not clear that "mouth music" is a proper noun , whereas in English puirt a' bhèil clearly is a proper noun. To me it would seem like moving cèilidh to visiting or gathering. Regards, Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 00:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
- I think that that depends on where you live. In English speaking areas of Scotland (the vast majority nowadays) it would be called "mouth music" or "diddling". In Gaelic speaking areas it would be called "puirt a bheul". Outside Scotland so few people know about it that it's more a matter of record company marketing than anything else. And because the record companies want to emphasise the "Celtic" angle they use the Gaelic term rather than the English one. There is another problem with the Gaelic term and that is the spelling/pronuncistion angle. You and I may not be misled but the average person who only knows how to read English spelling makes a total hash of the pronunciation of Gaelic words such as "bheil". Hence the "beul" spelling of the article title which is neither good Gaelic nor English. -- Derek Ross | Talk 00:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
- Out of curiosity, I counted Google hits for:
- puirt a bheul -- 142
- puirt a bheil -- 430
- puirt a beul -- 25,000
- Mouth music is at 147,000 or so, though skewed by the name of the group (and concomitant cross-references). (Disclaimer: I'm not equating number of hits with value; I just wondered.)
- I suggest that 'mouth music' can be a more generic term, in that many cultures have some form of singing with extensive use of nonsense words, often imitating instruments. Puirt is specific to Gaelic, and that seems the point of this article. I'm no Gaelic scholar, but someone who is could identify the orthographically correct version, and we could redirect the others (and possibly puirt, which seems to crop up as shorthand) to that. There's already a disambiguation page for mouth music; it includes the group and this puirt page. — OtherDave 13:42, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
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- The original "Mouth music" article (which was more generic) was moved to the strange title Voice instrumental music which has since beome a redirect. The article still exists but you have to go into the history to see it. -- Derek Ross | Talk 16:43, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Confusing
This article is somewhat confusing - I still don't know what this technique actually is, other than the fact that it's Scottish/Irish in origin and is similar to scat. Can someone who is knowledgeable about the subject beef this up and contextualize it more?--Dmz5 07:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
