I would never of guessed Cobh was pronounced Cove.
twanda49 Unregistered User (3/2/04 11:53 pm)
Pronouncing Irish Places Great idea, Michelle! My favorite pronunciation is Youghal. Naturally, a West Texas gal would approve of what y'all have done! Marsha
Re: Pronouncing Irish Places Thank you. Since I've started researching for our trip, I find myself often wondering how to pronounce things. How about Kenmare and Kinsale? I'm afraid it may not be as obvious as I thought. Pam
gillespie Unregistered User (3/3/04 7:07 am)
Pronounciation You said Cobh was prnounced cove....is the "o" a long sound....or short sound like cuv??
Thanks for your input! Actually I have heard Portlaoise pronounced both Port-leash-a and Port-leash on the radio. Were they having me on?
Now I'm going to guess that Clodagh is Clo-da. How close did I get?
My all time favorite mispronounciation is my husband's of Youghal. It was something like Yo-gulls. Now maybe that is because he's from Brooklyn. Perhaps he was greeting sea birds.
Re: Pronounciation Bang on with the pronounciation of me name, Klo-da.
I've seen Youghal butchered beyond belief so nothing would surprise me anymore. It's a toughie. The best one I heard was "yog-heel"
Portlaoise is only pronounced Port-leash-a by the older natives. If you call it Port-leash-a, it will be assumed that you're from there or have relatives there.
The Mariska thing is a silly private joke, sorry, I didn't realise it was still up there. It's gone now
wojazz3 Registered User Posts: 379 (3/4/04 11:40 am)
Re: Pronouncing Irish Places Great work Michele, but there if you could edit and point out where the accent lies in each word it would certainly help me. A notorious version of wrong accents are the seemingly easy to pronounce Donegal, but few Americans would realize at 1st glance that the accent is on the last syllable. The musician Gerry O'Beirne (we like to consider ourselves cousins but it's probably only in some primordial ooze sort of way) always makes a joke about how we all pronounce that county/town. He likes to say it with a drawl, which is pretty amusing from an Irishman.
Re: Pronouncing Irish Places The only other way I think she could have spelled Donegal phonetically is Dunnie-gall.
The rest of them are absolutely spot on.
You don't need to sweat the pronounciations, we won't throw stones at ye if ye get them wrong, and the best way to learn is to hear it from the mouths of the Irish people when you go.