Irish Examiner view: Sins of the fada start a storm of controversy

Before we start chuckling at the way other people mangle Irish pronunciation, let's mind our own language

Fri, 02 Sep, 2022 - 02:30

Almost every strand of modern life now seems to lead back to climate change, as noted elsewhere on this site in relation to Pakistan.

The increased frequency and ferocity of winter storms in Ireland is yet another sign of the great challenge of our time.

Those storms are named when they have the potential to become severe enough to cause an amber or red warning, and the meteorological services feel names help the public to identify particular storms as a significant threat, with the result that people modify their behaviour accordingly.

New names in place for the coming winter have been nominated by members of the public in Ireland, Britain, and the Netherlands, the latter country selecting names which sound typically Dutch, such as Antoni, Hendrika, Johanna, and Loes.

The names put forward by Met Éireann include Cillian, Nelly, Íde, and Ruadhán.

I hope Storm Ruadhán isn’t a big one, non Irish broadcasters are really gonna struggle with that name https://t.co/oPTcXX5XUt
— Joe Lynam (@JoeBLynam) September 1, 2022

Good-natured speculation soon centred on BBC forecasters struggling with those Irish names.

However, it missed a significant point.

Some Irish media outlets yesterday published the names Íde and Ruadhán without fadas — incorrectly, in other words (this particular malaise seems to be catching, Glanbia rebranding itself this week as "Tirlán", with a fada missing from the i).

Before chuckling at how others mangle pronunciations, we need to take care to use those terms correctly ourselves.

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