[Wikipedia-l] What variant to use for Irish, Scottish and Welsh localities?

[Cormac Lawler]

On 3/11/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/11/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 3/11/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > For purely practical considerations, I would suggest using the English
> > > name for a Romanian audience. Chances are, if they have happened to
> > > hear of these places before, they would be more familiar with the
> > > English name, and, in addition to that, English pronunciation is more
> > > intuitive when reading Romanian than that of most Celtic languages --
> > > imagine how horribly most Romanians would mangle Caerdydd, An Uaimh,
> > > or Corcaigh.
> > >
> > > Mark
> >
> >
> > To be honest, I agree - that's what I was thinking too.
> >
> > Cormac
>
>
> But the weird thing is that the Irish name will have to be listed first in
> the infobox, since it's the first official verison. In that case, won't it
> be a bit odd to use the English variant for the title, which is really the
> "secondary" variant?
>
> So far, most admins on the Romanian Wikipedia seem to favour English names.
> I do see their point of view. I've had many personal experiences where I've
> told Romanians about visiting "Caerdydd" and they correct me "Cardiff", as
> if I didn't know how to pronounce English! My point was that such ignorance
> is really unfortunate, and should be reversed in such way. I'm not saying
> that Wikipedia should become a hotbed of Gaelic revivalist rhetoric, but we
> can at least try and teach people that there's more to these regions than
> just English!
>
> Another thing - could someone please do some recordings of Irish names.
> Celtic languages are really hard to pronounce, but they are really beautiful
> and unique languages. It would really help a lot if people could just go to
> Wikipedia to find out how to pronounce key Irish (Welsh, Scottish) toponyms.
> Hopefully we'll come back in 20 years and see a great deal more use of these
> languages.
>
> Go raibh maith agaibh!
>
> Ronline
>
> PS: Another can of worms is created by Basque toponyms. For example, should
> one use San Sebastian, Donostia, or San Sebastian-Donostia for that
> respective Basque city? How about Catalan toponyms? I think most Wikipedias
> have just taken the easy way out and chosen Spanish names, but to me at
> least, that sounds awfully superficial and ignorant.


I suppose the main point for me is that English is the 'lingua franca'
of Ireland, while Irish is the official language. (It should be
pointed out here - and you probably already know - that Irish had been
in decline before it was made the official language - an attempt to
revive it from the top down.)

I really appreciate your efforts to educate the Romanian Wikipedia
(and people), Ronline. However, i still think it would be best (or
least confusing) if the names were referred to by the names people are
familiar with - If someone saw a link on the Romanian Wikipedia to
somewhere called "Baile Átha Cliath", they probably wouldn't know
where it was, which is a shame, because they *do* know where Dublin is
(I hope :-)). One way of keeping it less confusing while maintaining
your desire to educate people about Irish would be to include the
Irish name in each article, at the very beginning. Most English names
of places in Ireland come from the Irish anyway, so it would be a way
of giving people some context. For example, you could have:
"Ballymore, ("Baile Mór" in [[Irish]], meaning "big town) is a town in
[[County Kildare]], [[Ireland]].."; and "Kildare ("Cill Dara" in
[[Irish]], meaning "oak forest") is a [[county]] in [[Ireland]]..."
Ok, so you've never heard of that place, but you get the picture?

Likewise for the Basque names, how many people are going to have heard
of "Donostia"? But they might well have heard about San Sebastian,
and, when they go to that article, they can find out about the Basque
region, language, food etc.

Mmm, Basque food..

And also, in case you're wondering, that place is actually called
Ballymore Eustace, and it's where i'm from :-)

Is mise, le meas,

Cormac



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