Photo by Sarah777 at Wikimedia Commons Many Irish place names have their linguistic roots in the Irish language and speak of nature, landscape features or buildings, perhaps long since built over or demolished.
If you've ever made an Irish road trip you will be familiar with bi-lingual road signs like these. You might even have tried to pronounce the Irish names, sounding out the syllables phonetically, just like my 8 year old self marvelling at "Sio-ban" as an exotic Irish girl's name and being perplexed at learning that Siobhan was pronounced "Shivawn."
If you've ever made an Irish road trip you will be familiar with bi-lingual road signs like these. You might even have tried to pronounce the Irish names, sounding out the syllables phonetically, just like my 8 year old self marvelling at "Sio-ban" as an exotic Irish girl's name and being perplexed at learning that Siobhan was pronounced "Shivawn."
I've met Irish work colleagues who were adept at switching to Irish when they wanted to gossip privately, having had to learn the language in order to complete their secondary education and matriculate to university. It's a wonderfully melodic language, don't you think, but perhaps difficult to learn?
I must admit I greatly enjoyed reading Charlie Connelly's book, "Our Man in Hibernia", telling his story of not only moving to Ireland and being determined to learn the language of his ancestors, but also re-appraising what he thought he knew about their story of emigration to England as he hunted for his roots.
Maybe we should all take the time to learn a few words as for some branches of our tree this may have been the language they used every day. Therefore, I was interested in a recent post on the Irish Genealogical Research Society's Facebook page alerting me to a free online Irish Language and Culture course offered by Dublin City University, which I might have a go at as, according to the syllabus, you learn some good curses!
I must admit I greatly enjoyed reading Charlie Connelly's book, "Our Man in Hibernia", telling his story of not only moving to Ireland and being determined to learn the language of his ancestors, but also re-appraising what he thought he knew about their story of emigration to England as he hunted for his roots.
Maybe we should all take the time to learn a few words as for some branches of our tree this may have been the language they used every day. Therefore, I was interested in a recent post on the Irish Genealogical Research Society's Facebook page alerting me to a free online Irish Language and Culture course offered by Dublin City University, which I might have a go at as, according to the syllabus, you learn some good curses!
However, in the meantime I can at least hear how Irish place names should be pronounced with a somewhat hidden feature of the marvellous free Placenames Database of Ireland website. Turn your sound on and click on the small white triangle inside the grey circle to the right of the Irish version of the name and you will hear how it should sound. This is a really good website for finding all sorts of places and from a genealogist's point of view you will also be able to learn other useful geographical information that you may need to find other records. In the example above, you can learn that Killegar, Co. Leitrim is actually in the civil parish of Carrigallen and the barony of the same name - useful for finding land records. Oh, and of course, there's a map - always a winner with me!
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