help with pronunciation please!
the...@cmatter.indiana.edu
an Irish-English Dictionary. I am going to be giving a talk next week
where I talk about the Inghinidhe na hEireann and the Cumann na mBan,
and I haven't the foggiest idea of how to pronounce at least the
first organization (the Cumann na mBann is pronounced, I think, something
like "come-n na mawn", if the book was correct). It would be a great
service if someone could supply me with approximate pronunciations
for these, and translations too, if possible.
For those who are interested, both were groups of women during the
revolutionary period which had explicity nationalist and feminist agendas.
The Inghinide na hEireann was the antecedent to the Cumann na mBan. Most
well known members of each were Maud Gonne and Countess Markievicz, although
Fanny Parnell did have some involvement with Inghinide. Cumann na mBan
united (eventually) the Suffrigists with the more explicitely nationalistic
women who had been involved in the Inghinide. Fascinating stuff. I would
recommend the book _Unmaneagable Revolutionaries_ by Margaret Ward for
further reading if anyone is interested in the role that women played in
the revolution.
Thanks in advance for your help. E-mail or post, whichever is most
convenient. My address:
the...@cmatter.physics.indiana.edu
(I'm not in physics though, but rather anthropology and folklore-
not everyone on here is a scientist or engineer of some kind! :-) )
Eamonn McManus
> Hate to do this, but I have been unable to get my hands on a copy of
>an Irish-English Dictionary. I am going to be giving a talk next week
>where I talk about the Inghinidhe na hEireann and the Cumann na mBan,
>and I haven't the foggiest idea of how to pronounce at least the
>first organization (the Cumann na mBann is pronounced, I think, something
>like "come-n na mawn", if the book was correct). It would be a great
>service if someone could supply me with approximate pronunciations
>for these, and translations too, if possible.
Well now. Some of this is easy, and some of it is not so easy. "Cumann
na mBan" means "The Women's Association" and is pronounced as you say
except the last word should be "mon" (to rhyme with Bonn) rather than
"mawn". Otherwise you are saying "Cumann na mBa/n", which means "The
White Colours' Association", which, while undoubtedly interesting as a
hypothetical organisation, does not have much grounding in reality. If
your dialect of English does not distinguish between, e.g., Don and
Dawn, you might find this tricky.
(I'm following the gaelic-l convention of writing / after a vowel to
indicate an acute accent on that vowel.)
The other organisation presents more problems, on account of its rather
overwhelming first word. The second part, "na hE/ireann", is easy: it
means "of Ireland" and is pronounced roughly "na HAIR-un". "Inghinidhe"
is considerably trickier. One reason is that the spelling of Irish was
simplified in the 1950s, so old spellings like this are unfamiliar to
people like me (and presumably the majority of other Irish people here)
who learnt Irish since then. For one thing, "idhe" is always replaced
by "i/" in the modern spelling. (A more dramatic example is the word
"ordughadh", which became "ordu/" after the reform.) My present guess
is that this is some variant on the word "ini/on" (formerly "inighean"),
which means "daughter". According to this guess, the organisation would
be "Daughters of Ireland", which seems plausible. However, the normal
plural of "ini/on" is "ini/onacha", not "ini/ni/". Even ignoring this
fact, I think the word would have to be "Inighinidhe" (with an i between
the n and the gh). (I'm lost; maybe I need a better dictionary.)
To stop rambling for a moment, the best pronunciation I can venture for
"Inghinidhe" as written is "in-ghin-ee", where the gh is a voiced
guttural consonant (like blowing through a g); if it were "Inighinidhe"
it would be "in-YEEN-yee".
,
Eamonn