Talk:Éire

Sound file

Listening to the recorded media file (^ⓘ) I'd say the IPA code is [ɛːɾʲə] (open 'e'), not [ˈeːɾʲə]. Capmo (talk) 20:43, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

The "e" sounds close enough to me to be [e:], but the "r" is a regular English [ɹ] without any palatalization rather than the palatalized tap native speakers would use. (I'm pretty sure the speaker is not a native Irish speaker.) —Angr 21:05, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the above - the IPA is fine, but the soundfile does not match the IPA. The 'r' needs to be palatalized - maybe someone else could offer a better soundfile? [ˈɛːɹə] is what a non-Gaelic speaker from Ireland would likely say, so it's possibly worth keeping, but it shouldn't take first place over an authentic Gaelic pronunciation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.217.49.56 (talk) 12:31, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I've added an alternative Irish pronunciation. AnTreasach (talk) 14:12, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't know the IPA well enough to use the right notation, but the sound file today sounds like "Asia". Is it possible that in the years since this discussion the sound file was replaced with an incorrect version? 70.36.142.249 (talk) 22:37, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

It's saying "Asia" now, and that is definitely wrong. How has this not been changed yet? Here's the real pronunciation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USTGl1iFmZo — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.145.202.24 (talk) 16:28, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Constitutional name?

"Éire (pronounced Eire.ogg [ˈeːɾʲə] (help·info)) is the Irish name for the island of Ireland and the sovereign state of the same name."

This is INCORRECT. The Irish (Gaeilge) name for Ireland is Eireann. As a native Irish speaker I can assure you of this fact. Nor is "Éire" the name of the sovereign state in the sense of excluding the British-occupied part of Ireland. When the term "Éire" was introduced (being the ENGLISH, not Irish word for Ireland), "State" included the occupied 6 counties (since the Irish Constitution identified these as part of the State of Ireland). Somebody (who isn't English) needs to rewrite this article who understands what they are talking about. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.216.17.234 (talk • contribs) 13:03, 24 June 2009

Or maybe you just need to read the Constitution. | Airteagal 4... Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 13:09, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

This is utter nonsense. If you are claiming to be a native Irish speaker you may need to read up on your language. Éire is the Irish word for Ireland, from Old Irish 'Ériu'. 'Éireann' is the genitive of the nominitive 'Éire', and 'Éirinn' is the dative. You are probably getting mixed up with the English term 'Erin' or something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.217.49.56 (talk) 12:34, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Eire

I changed:

"Éire (pronounced [ˈeːɾʲə] (help·info)) is the Irish name for the island of Ireland and the sovereign state of the same name."

to:

"Éire (pronounced [ˈeːɾʲə] (help·info)) is the Gaelic name for Ireland and it was the official name of the Republic of Ireland from 1937 to 1949[1]. It is still used today to distinguish the Republic of Ireland from the island and from Northern Ireland[2]."

Someone undid what I wrote, and I undid what they undid.

My sources:

- The Oxford Dictionary of English
- The Oxford World Encyclopedia

Their sources: none.

According to The Oxford World Encyclopedia, Eire is "The former name (from 1937 to 1949) of the Republic of Ireland, still often used in newspapers etc. to distinguish the country from Northern Ireland and from the island as a whole." According to the MWCD, Eire is a "country occupying major portion of the island" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ireland).

(Edit:) "Eire" may have a different meaning in Irish, but this is the English version of Wikipedia.

77.205.199.190 (talk)

It is indeed the English version of Wikipedia. So calling the language "Gaelic" is therefore incorrect. It's "Irish". "Eire" means nothing. "Éire", on the other hand, is the name of the state in the Irish language, and also the name of the island in the Irish language. See Article 4 of the Constitution of Ireland: http://www.constitution.ie/reports/ConstitutionofIreland.rtf. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 00:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Eire means burden in Irish, and so Irish nationalists were most annoyed by the use of Eire in the UK from 1938. But within the decade "Eire" was sometimes being used in Éire, even by government departments.Red Hurley (talk) 11:12, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

"Eire" is definitely still used in the UK to differentiate the Republic from Northern Ireland. I have the November 2015 copy of Audience Magazine in my hand and it's right there. — Jon C.^ॐ 18:22, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Etymology

I find the current etymology section a little speculative and myth-based. A more mundane etymology I have come across is:

• thairr (west) + fónn (land), which together give iar-fhónn (sounds like Éirinn, the f is silent)

This is similar in meaning to the Norse name for Ireland, west land", which game its name to "West men" (Irishmen) and subsequently to the Icelandic island of Vestmannaeyjar.

Would there be any objections to removing the first and third paragraphs in the etymology section and replacing it with the above? The "Largely discredited etymologies" section being removed (as uncited)? And the second paragraph being expanded with detail from sources used elsewhere on wiki to discuss the same history. --RA (talk) 14:03, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd support the above being added in the place of the "Largely discredited etymologies" section. However, I think the rest should stay. ~Asarlaí 20:42, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

"eire" etymology

The meaning of burden is clear from McBain and other dictionaries. Long ago my national school teacher explained the pejorative sense. At the time it seemed like nitpicking, but he was right.Red Hurley (talk) 07:01, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure it does mean "burden". But it doesn't belong in this article. Do you really think the pre-war British gov't was aware of that meaning? JonChapple^Talk 08:46, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

No, of course they were not aware, but it was an extra annoyance to language purists - never a large %%age of the population. My view is that the UK 1938 Act mentioned the name "Eire" with good intentions, given that the "Economic War" had just ended. Just one of those things, and a little more relevant than the speculative but fascinating Īweriūs and piHwerjons.Red Hurley (talk) 12:40, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Did we ever refuse a cheque from the Eire Society of Boston because of its spelling?Red Hurley (talk) 11:38, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

But wasn't an extradition warrant refused? - Lugnad (talk) 12:04, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

The legal agreements with the US on shipping issues - such as the purchase of the SS Irish Oak (1919) was with the Irish Republic - not Eire - not RoI - and signed by Frank Aiken

imo "eire" was not that widely used in the US, although it was in the UK.

having said that, Churchill always spoke of "Southern Ireland" - Lugnad (talk) 12:10, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I think you're right - cheques with Eire on them were acceptable but not extradition warrants (lol). As for the Irish Oak, in my experience if the money is lined up for a deal nobody minds what names go on a contract.Red Hurley (talk) 10:38, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

"Proto-Goidelic"

The use of this term to designate an early form of Irish (older than Primitive Irish) should be avoided (not just in this article, but I'm making a general point here). As per the general usage in historical linguistics, "Proto-Goidelic" is strictly speaking the most recent ancestral/parent idiom (or variety, to avoid the misleading and overly ambiguous term "language" here) from which all modern Goidelic/Gaelic varieties descend, and which can be directly reconstructed (more or less) by comparing the modern varieties – not the earliest ancestral/parent idiom which isn't also the ancestor of another attested (less closely related, in this case, some other Celtic) variety, i. e., the first "uniquely Irish" variety, which is what the editor may have had in mind here. However, "Proto-Goidelic" or "Proto-Gaelic" in this sense is essentially (Late) Old Irish (or perhaps Middle Irish), before the divergence into the modern varieties started, not an unattested, prehistorical stage. There would seem to have been other regional Irish varieties – in Ireland and presumably even in Britain – contemporary with the literary Old Irish variety attested in the texts, which is very homogeneous especially in the 8th and early 9th century, but such other dialects are not attested and have left no clear traces in the modern varieties of Gaelic, which all lead no further back than Old or even Middle Irish, i. e., the dialectal variety of early medieval Irish is lost on us because the "standard" form of Old/Middle Irish has superseded them all (which explains why modern Gaelic is such a relatively close-knit genetic unit, with all varieties quite similar to each other, essentially a dialect continuum into even quite recent times). Similarly, "Proto-Romance" is considerably more recent than the earliest attested Latin, and the dialectal spectrum of Latium in the pre-Christian period has not survived and is mostly unknown save for a few traces – it is not reflected in Romance, either; and similarly, "Proto-Scandinavian" is considerably more recent than the oldest attested Germanic in Scandinavia ("Early Runic" or "Early Proto-Norse") and modern Scandinavian reflects a more recent spread (in the Viking Age) which has eliminated the spectrum of Germanic dialects existing in Scandinavia prior to the Viking Age. This distinction between the most recent common ancestor and earlier ones is very important.

Therefore, I would suggest to replace the term "Proto-Goidelic" with some more vague, non-committal term such as "Early Irish" or "Early Goidelic". It is not always clearly understood – even among linguists – that all the modern varieties of Goidelic go back to an ancestral variety that was spoken at a time when literacy in Irish had already long developped, i. e., at some point in the (Early or High) Middle Ages; but it is important to educate the reader on this point (especially in Goidelic languages). I hesitate to make this change without discussion as it is possible that the given source (EIEC) uses the term, and I cannot check this right now. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:43, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Was this article purged of facts?

Some years ago I remember reading a wikipedia article about Éire and in it it was mentioned that the Irish High/Supreme Court rejected a request by the British state for an Irishman to be extradited because they referred to the state as "Éire" rather than by its proper name in English, Ireland. The case, if I recall correctly, was for the extradition of Dessie Ellis and it was in 1989. Why would somebody be so obscurantist to remove this very relevant information from this page? 79.97.64.240 (talk) 18:29, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Spelling

In the first paragraph, dont you mean to say "Erie" is a common misspelling for Eire, instead of "Eire" is a common misspelling for Erie? (glennlane1@aol.com). 76.218.101.27 (talk) 02:46, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Links

The hatnote is excessive, most of that material belongs in the article lead. -Inowen (nlfte) 10:26, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Eire Society of Boston

Linked, what an omission. Yes the spelling is wrong, but that's how it goes.78.16.17.93 (talk) 23:18, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Irish name spelling

The edits made by ÉiReannaiġ were informative. Are they accurate? It seems appropriate they should be apart of the article.Halbared (talk) 10:31, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Jesus, no, they're POV-ridden (all the stuff about "It's one country that got split into statelets") and factually incorrect ("the captital "é" isn't used"). I would not be so quick to trust someone with two uncited edits that were reverted, and who randomises capitalisation throughout their edits. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 10:52, 31 October 2023 (UTC)