It was brought it to deal with foreign words: veidhlín, vóta etc. The sound occurs in Irish and is represented by a ‘bh’….so technically it isn’t part of the traditional alphabet but in practice it exists.

You’re right, there shouldn’t be. Dunno where the guys behind the new focloir.ie got “tvuít” from – I’ve NEVER seen that on Twitter or anywhere else. Tuít, maybe, but I’d prefer to keep it as tweet (e.g. I sent a tweet = Sheol mé tweet).

Still, nice little piece. Shows that the language is well able to keep up with the times, despite what some think about it. (But I’d never call theJournal.ie “An Iris Reatha”! lol!)

Vicipéid? Whose idea was that? Surely it should be Bhicipéid?

To be fair, I have no idea why they went with a V for that either – I know it can exist in borrowed words (as Neil Patrick pointed out) but there doesn’t seem to be any sound etymological reason, that I can see, for making a V sound in that word in the first place. As Scott suggested, a U would seem more logical (‘tuaít’) but I’m happy to defer to the Foclóir based on the work that went into it.

As for Vicipéid… Who knows. Again, there seems to be a desire to stick in a few Germanic-style V sounds where none would be needed. ‘Uicipéid’ would seem more true to form but the spelling with the V is the one Wikipedia adopted itself, so who am I to judge!

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/irish.htm
for info.

Not saying I like it just it does actually exist. But tvuít really looks ugly.

Children in school now learn to put their éadai in the vardrús, instead of the cófra.

Nobody uses tvuít on twitter. I’ve seen tuít, but never tvuít. There are some members within the Irish language community that use ‘v’ quite a lot. Eamon Ó Cuív’s surname is originally Ó Caoimh, but was changed by his grandfather to conform to his own system – An Leitriú Shimplí.

there isn’t….. it makes me want to bhomit !

the sound ‘v’ exists in Irish as ‘bh’, as Scott says above — however, bh can’t be used at the start of a word (it would be delenited and turn into a B). Hence the reason that most of the Vs occur at the start of the words. i.e. vóta (not bóta)

— tuít would be my preference for tweet, however.

When the alphabet was reviewed ‘v’ was added but ‘w’ wasn’t. ‘V’ is supposed to cover both the ‘w’ and the ‘v’ sound so a word like ‘vardús’ is supposed to be pronounced ‘war-doos’. There is no way to tell when one should be used above the other though so in ‘Transalváin’ (Transalbháin) it’s sounded ‘tran-sall-wawn’.
It’s a silly and unnecessary move, the ‘b’ served the purpose fine and is the one heard in native speakers’ speech the most. Listen to RnaG at an election time and there is talk of ‘bótaí’ instead of ‘vótaí’.

With regard to ‘tvuít’, it’s supposed to be pronounced like the English. ‘Giolc’ and ‘tuít’ are far more common on twitter though. I’ve never seen ‘tvuít’.

What about Eamon O’Cuiv so?

Alan – as Seán pointed out above, Ó Cuív’s grandfather formulated his own method for spelling Irish words (‘an leitriú shimplí’, literally meaning ‘the simple spelling’) and this is where the spelling of Cuív (as opposed to ‘Caoimh’) originates from.

This caused some confusion for reporters and editors when Éamon’s mother, Emer I Chuiv, died last year. Usually a woman whose married name is Caoimh would be Uí Chaoimh, but under the simpler alternative model it simply because ‘Í Chúiv’ – which led to a lot of confusion because ‘Í’ would otherwise never appear in a surname.

pleascan jager ??

There’s no ‘j’ either. More like to start with an s and an e fada.

Tinneas cinn

Buama an Deabhail…

jaegerbuamaí is what they use in @clubchonradh on Harcourt st!

jaegerbuamaí is what they use in @clubchonradh on harcourt st!!

Jägerbhuamaí

Méh féin!,!!

1) It’s “Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam” as in soul, not name. 2) Vicipéid was not coined by experts but from a community of speakers. That same community uses tweet left in its English format or tuít, but not tvuít.

The h, believe it or not, precedes the ponc. Initially it was placed in the same place as in modern Irish before being relegated to a superscript position above the lenited consonant. Over time the superscript was reduced to a dot, or ponc. The h was reintroduced as the availability of typing devices with the ability to print the superscript ponc was sparse.

Why refrain from using loan words? You hardly think whiskey, vodka, kayak, moccasin, ship, boat, street, etc are English? All those words are loan words. If it’s good enough for every other language on the planet to have loan words then it’s good enough for Irish.

Indeed if you took the loan words out of English you wouldn’t actually have an awful lot left. Borrowing lexical items from other languages has been standard practice for years. And when they are borrowed they are changed to suit the orthography of the new language. Languages with many more speakers than Irish do it…

Keep loan words as loan words in their original language. Much like German does for words like internet, email and wikipedia. Wikipedia comes from Hawaiian and the irish rewriting mucks it up completely, losing and somehow disrespecting the etymology.

Same for tweets, which come from a brand name, twitter, which has global meaning.

I hated this when at school in the 80s/90s with words like fotocoipeadoireacht or something, where the prefix photo- elsewhere was griain-. No consistency then, and it’s just become worse.

And would you suggest loanwords taken from non-Latin based alphabets also remain in their respective format? Perhaps we could, rather than use the word “carbhat” (tie), instead talk about “fear agus é ag caitheamh хорват”? There is a reason loan words are modified in different languages. It’s down to grammar. If you expect Irish to adopt loanwords unadulterated then you are placing an onus on speakers of the language to change the language’s entire grammatical structure. E.g., using vicipéid allows the speaker to create a definite genitive in “na vicipéide”, an indefinite genitive in “vicipéide” as well as forming plurals “vicipéidí”. Using wikipedia unaltered means you can’t create any genitive or plural form. It also means the word suddenly no longer fits into the masculine-feminine categorisation that exists in Irish. This is the same with other words such as those you mentioned.

So you want the language to go into stasis? That’s impractical. What do we then do about new words – what is your solution to the whole thrust of this article?

Rather than worry about a few foreign words here and there (and again Irish is far from unique in this. Kompentz und Know-how says the Deutsche Bank advertisement) or frett over the intrusion of the killer “v” the only real way to preserve the langauge is by actually making even a tiny effort to learn/use it. Leaving the language alone is not an option.

Just use the English words.

But the English words contain letters that don’t exist in the Irish alphabet. And what if the words are not from English? What if they’re from Russian, or Greek, or Japanese or any language that doesn’t use the Latin alphabet? If you propose to use the English translations of those words then you’re polluting the Irish language further and thereby negating your own argument.

Here we go…..

the typical anti-Irish non-argument poorly disguised as an economic or social justice argument

there’s enough money for carers, police and the Irish language once we stop paying German, French and British bondholders

convenient people like you never mention that

They are called Garda not Police. :)

Kerron ná tabhairt aire don trolláil. Which is also another piece of god awful bearlish! Surely there is a brilliant old irish word for (or equivalent of) troll?! Why can’t we use that?! Why are we subbing in phonetically “irishised” words instead of trawling around trying to come up with something decent based on words and language we already have! Have you ever heard worse garbage that tvúit or vickipéid?

For “troll” I think “gabhal” might do the job. At least here in Luimneach.

How very non-sequitur of you, Mark! Wait … what’s the Irish for ‘non-sequitur?’