Jake Lambert @LittleLostLad
The spelling of Irish names is my pet piamh
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Caoimh - kweeva
Siobhán - Shivawn
Sinead - Shin-ade
Níamh - Neev
Grainne - Grawn-ya
Sorcha - Surka
Bláthnaid - Blawnid
Clíodnadh - Clee-ona
Órlaith - Oar-la
Ciara - Kee-ra
All these names make sense when one understands Irish grammar and pronunciations, but I can absolutely see how people elsewhere would struggle with these.
I wonder if its an accent thing but I’ve allways heard Niamh as “Nee-uv” and not “Neev” and I know quite a few Niamhs.
Nee-uv is correct. The ‘i’ carries the stress, as indicated by the accent, so the ‘a’ turns into an unstressed vowel /ə/.
To anyone else who has studied Irish, this is purposely a simplification.
Ah Ok. I get ya. I wouldnt say I “studied” Irish despite doing it for 16+ years lol. I can read and write it, and speak it, but the actual intricacies of the phonetics is beyond me.
I did an MA in Welsh and Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth.
I did a few courses involving Old Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and while I enjoyed them I definitely can not speak any lol
Ond, mae fy Nghymraeg ddim yn ofnadwy.
Oh… I always though Siobhan was really pretty, but it turns out I was just pronouncing it wrong.
Thanks for sharing this! Found a few others as I was looking up my family members names:
Kevin - Caoimhín Maeve - Meadhbh
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Play on the name Niamh, pronounced Neeve
Damn I thought english was bad. How do you get neeve from niamh?
Irish spelling rules are actually very internally consistent, they just don’t use the Latin alphabet the same way that English does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_orthography
Oh I thought they meant irish as in irish english (the dialect, like how I speak australian english)
A lot of people think that Gaelic is what Irish actually is. Which they are two different languages
Because Irish is literally a different language. You wouldn’t ask the same thing about French or Vietnamese or whatever.
Yeah I know lol, I was thinking irish english
Because “v” isn’t a letter in Irish, but it is a phoneme approximated by “mh” or “bh.”
I imagine it is similar to peeve
This comment said:
Somebody please tell me how that’s pronounced… Please… I beg of you.
Say it ain’t Siobhan
Tell that to Aoife
I’ll submit Scáthatch as the one I was most relieved to learn the correct pronunciation of.
