"Tha i coltach ri Ealasaid."
Translation:She is similar to Elizabeth.
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I was utterly stumped on the last word. It sounded like "ghealabhaidh" or "yollavitch." Every other reader has pronounced "ealasaid" more like "Ellasotch." Is this other pronunciation common?
Yes: Gaelic speakers add and drop consonants fairly freely in order to make the speech rhythms - lilt - work. If you try speaking this phrase with the "t" included, IMO you can feel how it makes extra work for the mouth and interrupts the rhythm.
English speakers often erode t to d for similar reasons (in "water" for instance), but that makes a sound like a tapped Gaelic r, so I suspect Gaelic speakers just tend to drop t entirely when it's in a consonant cluster like this.
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I have been marked correct when I have written 'like' rather than 'similar to', but this time I have been marked wrong - I wrote 'she is like Elizabeth' . Why is it wrong now?
Might just not be in the answer database yet. If it happens again, click the little flag, and then "my answer should be accepted."
