How would you spell Cara?

[Jan2026x]

Would you spell it with out without an accent?

Cárá
Cára
Cara
Cará

There's no @ in Ç-A-ŕřü'H 🙄

Well there is if you want the Southern English which uses either the Anglo Saxon @ or you can opt for the € as in Ca’r€

Pidgin Irish isn’t a bad way of thinking of it, though depressing when coined by Irish people.

It’s interesting how much people see it as Irish. For me, I immediately think of the Latin/Italian “dear one” or “ beloved.”

Maybe op brought the Irish to
mind by suggesting accents.

To me it’s Cara, pure and simple.

Omg you're such a know-it-all!

I like 3-1-18-1 myself, it's the maths nerd spelling.

I did a bit more digging and croidhe was used in Ireland too more recently than I realised. So probably the spelling was only changed in the 1950’s spelling change @mathanxiety mentioned? Croidhe is listed in the dictionary as an obselete spelling of croí. But would have been pronounced Cree-eh more than Cree as is used today…I think? I’m really not too sure actually.

Anyway, maybe that’s how the name Croía was derived, but it’s a bit of a mash-up of a spelling all the same 🤔

tl;dr I think your friend’s name probably has the meaning of heart (used as a term of endearment), rather than friend @Andoutcomethewolves.

The changes of the Caighdeán Oifigiúil were only in spelling, though, not pronunciation — that was the whole point, to simplify Irish orthography by removing silent letters that were hangovers from earlier forms of Irish, simplifying some vowel clusters etc eg ‘imithe’ rather than ‘imighthe’, though in practice some letters not pronounced in any dialect were preserved, and some of the new spelling doesn’t reflect some dialect’s pronunciation. There was an update of the CO in 2017, so it’s ongoing!

But no, ‘croídhe’ wouldn’t have been pronounced differently to ‘croí’.

@Andoutcomethewolves I know a Crea in her forties in Cork.

@IfIDid Yes, I know pronunciation wasn’t meant to be changed…but sometimes it sort of still happened a bit, for learners anyway.

For example, arís is pronounced ah-reesh or ah-reesht…so why is the standard spelling arís?

Pronunciations for the word for fortnight include kie-keesh or Kie-keysus. They can’t both be reflected by a single standard spelling. You can’t write a broad and slender ‘s’ at the same time when spelling a word.

Native speakers sometimes have to sort of ignore the CO spelling. They do all pronounce croí as cree though, at least that I’ve heard.

A second syllable does seem to be pronounced for heart in Scottish Gaelic at least.

Oh but you can only register letters so it has to be Roman Numerals: III-I-XVIII-I.

And then people might confuse it with Ivy…

I’m Irish and am impressed by the Irish language and pronunciation shown on this thread. Did you go to Gael-schoils or are from a Gaeltacht area - or you just learnt all this from standard secondary school? My knowledge is very lacking!

Cara is the correct spelling no accents are needed just leave it how it is! Nothing original about ruining names with horrible spelling!

I don’t know about other people but I just have a bit of an interest in the language. Not from a Gaeltacht unfortunately and gaelscoileanna were rare enough when I was at school. So my Irish isn’t all that great but I love it.

The Irish version is Cara which means friend.
No fada (accent) required.
If you put an accent on the first a it would be pronounced in Irish as Caw ra.
If you put an accent on the second a in Irish it would be pronounced Ca raw.

Just Cara is lovely.

In Irish cara is pronounced corra though.

Agree with pp that the name seems Italian in pronunciation at least.

No accents. It's a lovely name just as it is.

I’ve only heard one person ever pronounce it Corra and maybe that was due to the regional dialect.

I know a few people called Cara (all Irish) who all pronounce it Car Rah.

My dog's name is Cara - the "friend" meaning is one reason I chose it. 🐶 🥰

Perhaps @Lastmoon you heard somebody from Ulster pronouncing it like that. Most Irish people wouldn’t pronounce it Corra.

Yes, any Cara I know says Kar-ah too @Sunnyevenings, but the Irish word for friend, cara, is pronounced corra.
So they’re not using the Irish pronunciation for the name iyswim.

I know they don’t.
I must be expessing myself badly 😁

What I mean is Irish people use the Italian pronunciation for the name Cara.

When Irish people use the word cara, ie when speaking Irish, they say corra.
The word cara in the Irish language is not pronounced as the name is.

I’ve only heard the word friend, pronounced, as ‘a chara’ (a car rah).

It could be dialect. Eg Connaught Irish is practically unrecognisable in comparison to the Munster dialect imo. Likewise with Ulster Irish.

I don’t think it’s dialect. It seems similar to corra in all dialects.

https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/cara

When Irish people use the word cara, ie when speaking Irish, they say corra

Yes I se what you mean. It’s true a broad ‘a’ might not be universally used eg a South Dublin schoolchild might say ‘corra’ and some dialects but many more people would say ‘car rah’ for the word friend.

It’s all theoretical really as so few speak the language at all.