Jake Lambert @LittleLostLad
The spelling of Irish names is my pet piamh
Tell that to Aoife
Say it ain’t Siobhan
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.
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
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.
Somebody please tell me how that’s pronounced… Please… I beg of you.
I imagine it is similar to peeve
Play on the name Niamh, pronounced Neeve
Damn I thought english was bad. How do you get neeve from niamh?
Because “v” isn’t a letter in Irish, but it is a phoneme approximated by “mh” or “bh.”
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.
Neeve in the north/east of Ireland, Nee-uv in the south/west where I’m from, making this meme even more annoying.
This comment said:
Somebody please tell me how that’s pronounced… Please… I beg of you.
I’ll submit Scáthatch as the one I was most relieved to learn the correct pronunciation of.