Fadas in the wrong place

[heidyho]

I've seen so many people name their dc an Irish name but they've spelt it with the fada in the wrong place eg Croiá or putting in a fada that doesn't exist eg Fíonn . Do they just decide that it looks better that way or what? A quick Google will tell you how it's spelt, you can't just add a fada in where you please!

Drives me bananas!
People keep adding fadas to my child's name 😆😆
Something else I think is strange - Pádraig but pronouncing it Páraic, I'm baffled

Yes where im from (a city) it was always Pádraig, is the other pronunciation more midlands/country?

That’s just regional, rather than a mistake, though. Like Caoimhe being Queevuh or Keevuh etc. Though my sister, who is a Mairéad, doesn’t like the MY-raid pronunciation much, and I have a distant US relative who has my name, but with the fada in the wrong place, which makes a nonsense of it. But it’s unlikely to bother her somewhere in the Midwest…

Unlike Aoibheann pronounced Ay-veen, which is a mistake and an abomination.

To me they're two separate names though, different letters, different sounds - I can see why Caoimhe can be pronounced both ways

Aoibheann I will always be baffled by esp by how popular it got being completely wrong

The fada mistakes are baffling as well as annoying. Easy to look up these days.

Pádraig pronunciation is regional, agree with the others there.

@Rowen32 sorry to be stupid but how is it pronounced? I live in Ireland and my friend has just called her little girl this pronounced ay-veen so I’m intrigued

It's hard to spell it phonetically, I would say eve - in or eve - un, nothing like ay-veen at all so it's really strange

Yes 'Aoi' is pronounced as 'e' isn't it not 'a' for eg.Aoife, you wouldn't say Ayfa

Thanks @Rowen32 that makes sense and sounds really lovely, so many of my friends now have more traditional Irish names for their children while they themselves have very generic names, it’s really interesting to see and lovely to hear them used (when used properly of course 😂)

There's awful spellings of names but yes, very popular now!

Slightly off topic bit...there is a FB page Gaeilge Dána where ppl post horrendous garbled Gaeilge, often from official signs or publications.

There's something a bit ..sad? infuriating? sloppy? or all three, about Irish people making a half-hearted attempt at continuing their culture, but getting it wrong.
And FFS if you can't have your Irish name spelt or pronounced right in Ireland, what hope is there?
As other posters have said, it's so simple to look up the correct spelling of Irish words, there's no excuse.

I'm also hacked off at how bad even the most common Irish words used in English are pronounced in the media: Dáil is 'Doll', Taoiseach is 'Tee-shock' etc.

It's like people have unilaterally decided that Irish is really just English written funny, so when the Irish language came up with a word like 'Sorcha', they really meant it to be pronounced Sor-ka, or even, as I heard it on the radio, Sore-tcha!
Can it be that for centuries native Irish speakers have been getting it wrong by saying Sur-uh-c(h)a?🙄
Yes, three syllables because Irish puts a vowel in between to adjacent consonants.

How come professional broadcasters don't, or don't care enough to get it right? The correct pronunciation - including regional variations - are easily found out online. Grrrrrrrrr.....!

I'd probably better not look at Gaeilge Dána, Abhannmor, I might spontaneously combust, as you can guess from the tone of this post😀

I wanted to post one of our local hospital. It reads Naomh Eoin Pobal Ospidéal. Almost literally backwards, probably from Google translate. But Iost my nerve ...didn't think it was fair on people who work there.

God almighty. 🙄

@MarieDeGournay, I agree.its one thing for an Irish-American who’s never been to Ireland to give their child a bastardised Irish name, but sadder and more inexplicable for Irish people living in Ireland to perpetuate mispronunciations, invented spellings, and plain errors. Pronunciations of Sorcha as Sore-sha (which I’ve seen advocated on here) meet my head.

And don’t start me on Tee-shock and Doyle. It’s really not hard to grasp that ‘t’ and ‘d’ in those positions are soft, more like the ‘th’ in ‘thou’ than the ones in ‘tall’ and ‘dog’. Yes, it’s as though Irish needs to be tidied up with nice, crisp English (mis-) pronunciations.

No, Google translate does a better job than that, unless they literally did it word by individual word. I think that is what they must have done actually, wherever they looked it up.

The Facebook site seems to be paused or inactive now anyway?

Aaaaarhg! that would set my teeth on edge!
There's a sign for South Dublin Business Park with a mangled Irish versions - I keep saying 'Must remember that and write it down as soon as I get home' but of course never do!
I think it is something like Deisceart Ath Cliath Pairc Gnó.

I'm glad you share my feelings about the Irish 't' and 'd', ThirstyFruit.
All languages have their specific sounds, Irish is no different.
Just imagine if students learning French were told that 'r' is pronounced exactly the same as in English. Or Allons! is clearly pronounced alonz, because its an a and a couple of ls and an n and there's an s at the end and s is pronounced 'ess', right?

Just imagine if a parent objected to their child coming home saying Japrends lee frankays for 'J'apprends le français', and the other parents doing eye-rolls because 'The important thing is fluency' 'Don't be such a purist' or 'It's that attitude that is killing the French language'!🙄

I believe that the standardised form of a language should be based on how native speakers speak it, and that's what should be taught in schools. That's how we teach Spanish, French, Mandarin, etc., so why not Irish?

I found this list of words where the fada is crucial to the meaning on Our Fada: The Importance of the Accent Mark in the Irish language (with recordings) | Bitesize Irish
Cáca and Caca are such a great example😱

I'm not sure about some of the phonetic pronunciations, I think maybe they are specifically Ulster?
I'd pronounce 'Té' as [Th]ay. and 'Cead' as 'cyad'

Éire (AY-reh): “Ireland”
Eire (EH-reh): “Burden”
Céad (kayd): “First” or “a hundred,” depending on context
Cead (kad): “Permission”
Té (chay): “Person”
Te (cheh): “Hot/warm”
Císte (KEESS-cheh): “Cake”
Ciste (KISS-cheh): “Fund” or “treasure coffer”
Bríste (BREESS-cheh): “Trousers”
Briste (BRIS-cheh): “Broken”
Cáca (KAH-kuh): “Cake”
Caca (KA-kuh): “Excrement”
Seán (shawn): A man’s name; a form of “John”
Séan (shayn): Noun: “characteristic,” Verb: “deny/refuse”
Sean (shan): “Old”

Slender t and d definitely vary depending on dialect.

Te is teh in Munster, not cheh, for example.
https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/te

Sure, but my point up the thread was that the initial ‘t’ of a word like ‘Taoiseach’ is never the crisp ‘t’ of English. Nor is the ‘ch’ at the end pronounced like ‘ck’ in English.

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

So it’s never ‘Tea-sack’. Let’s not even get into ‘aoi’ not being ‘ee’.

Likewise ‘Dáil’ in any of the dialects not being ‘Doyle’.

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

Yes @ThirstyFruit, agree.
I was just commenting after looking at some of the pronunciations in @MarieDeGournay’s list and agreeing with her that some of the phonetic pronunciation listed were Ulster Irish.

Not sure what an English crisp t is actually though. Not sure I say that even in English, I don’t know 😅

Órla ( Órflaith) - golden princess
orla - vomit

This is really interesting as I'm currently trying to name a baby, and though I'm not Irish I married in to a family of gaelgeoirs and this baby will speak Gaeilge so I'm very conscious of trying to make as much effort as possible to get it right (while also choosing a name that my family doesn't mangle hideously to the gaelgoirs' ears].
I've been going through the CSO baby names stats and now that they list names with diacritics separately you can see all the fada variations!

Be careful with the CSO stats.
Sometimes people put fadas in the wrong places in names. Or they include fadas when there shouldn’t be any.
If your DH and his family are gaeilgeoirs then they are well placed to advise.

i know an Aíne and a Fíachra, it makes me unbearably sad.

The other pronunciation is Connemara Irish.