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This seems like an incredibly basic question to me, but I have to ask anyways.
I suspect that it’s because it’s one of the Irish words most likely to be spoken by non-Irish speakers, but I seem to hear, especially in song, the word pronounced differently (i.e. what I think is incorrectly) quite often.
My question is: is there any dialect or way in which you should say éire or éirinn with a short e (i.e. the vowel sound in the first syllable of “ferry”)?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV7lGmgFovM
Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about. Overall his pronunciation isn’t the most terrible I’ve ever heard (I have a hard time telling if he doesn’t know Irish or if he is Scottish or something, because it doesn’t sound like any Irish I’ve ever heard, but at the same time not completely ignorant). But he clearly says “Errin”. And I’m sure most of us have heard someone say “Errin go braw” before. Is there ANY validity to this at all?
A Héilics, a chara,
I have no answer for your question on “Eire”, but as regards that singer’s pronuciation in general, I would say it’s just influenced by English. He also mispronounces several other words, e.g. he makes “feasta” sound like “fosta” and says AH-RAHN, instead of AW-RAHN (“amhrán”), which I don’t think is acceptable in any dialect. He also adds a few words in English at the end of the song, can’t make out the accent, but doesn’t sound Scottish or Northern Irish to my non-expert ear… Dublin?lol
So it looks like there are no dialects where it would be pronounced “Erre” or “Errin”.
You hear something wrong often enough and you start to question yourself….
The Singer is Gary Óg, he was the front man for Éire Óg. I am reasonably sure he is from Glasgow. Slán, RdeM.
http://www.forvo.com/word/èirinn/#gd
Edited – the word is actually there. But it looks like you have to go direct to the website and do a search there.
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