Top Document: Irish FAQ: Irish Names [9/10] Previous Document: 1) Does anyone have a list of Irish first names? Next Document: 3) Are there any books of Irish names? See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge You may have noticed that there's a fair bit of duplication above. There are anglicised spellings, Irish spellings and slight variations of the same name, even in the modern Irish spelling. Some of the variations are probably regional. This guide is, needless to say, incomplete and may contain serious mistakes. Here are approximate transiliterations for the letters that don't exist in English. The slash above the letter is called a fada in Irish, meaning long, because it lengthens the vowel). á = aw - awe, crawl (a - flat in Ulster) é = ay - hay, bray í = ee - feed, creep ó = o - owe, flow ú = oo - cool, fool (more like the French word for "where") Some of the consonants are pronounced differently. s = sh (when it is in the stressed syllable) bh = v dh = g mh = w th = h Note that the letters j,k,q,v,w,x,y,z do not occur in Irish. The letter c is always pronounced hard, as in cow, never soft as in cigarette. Irish spelling insists on grouping "fat" vowels and "thin" vowels when they are separated by a consonant. The fat vowels are a, o and u. The thin vowels are e and i. So if a word would have a fat vowel followed by a consonant (or several) followed by a thin vowel breaks the rule: a vowel must be inserted to balance the spelling. Thus "Osín" is wrong; it must be "Oisín"; "Sibhán" must be turned into "Siobhán". The extra letter is generally silent. User Contributions:Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic:Top Document: Irish FAQ: Irish Names [9/10] Previous Document: 1) Does anyone have a list of Irish first names? Next Document: 3) Are there any books of Irish names? Part00 - Part01 - Part02 - Part03 - Part04 - Part05 - Part06 - Part07 - Part08 - Part09 - Single Page [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: irish-faq@pobox.com (Irish FAQ Maintainer)
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:11 PM
|
Regards
Ivan Brookes