Pronunciation help - Sorcha

Zingiber

I wonder if you folks could help me with a burning question, please? My name is Sorcha, which my family has always pronounced as Sur-i-kha/Sor-uh-kha, or something similar. Having spent years explaining to people here in England that it's not Sorsha or Sortcha (or ha-ha-ha, Scorcher) and yes, I am spelling it right, thanks, I've now been totally thrown by having an Irish customer in the shop I work in insisting (and telling my colleagues in my absence) that I can't pronounce my own name, and it should in fact be Sor-ka. Now, having grown up in the UK in an English step-family, I have a British accent, and no Irish learnt at school, but my Grandfather, who was fluent, seemed happy enough with our pronunciation! What are your thoughts? Do I need to have a mid-life crisis about my name, or are there two pronunciations, depending on dialect?

Aard

Your pronunciation is correct, and I would put money on your customer having learnt his/her Irish in school (and probably with a Southside accent at that). Sorry for the generalisations.

The way you pronounce it is entirely correct, as Irish has what is called an "epenthetic schwa" (basically an "uh" sound) between certain consonants to facillitate pronunciation, despite not being written. It's the same sound that appears between the "n" and "m" of "ainm" (name).

Also, yes the "ch" is the same sound as in the word "lough" (as you've written it, "kh"). It's not a hard "k" sound like your customer appears to think.

I don't know why, but it really bothers me when others correct pronunciation that is already correct! I hope this helps.

Zingiber

Thanks very much, Aard - it does help indeed. My poor Devon-raised tongue has problems with the -ch sound, I must confess, so it comes out more of a hard K sound in my mouth, but I knew that was wrong: if he'd picked me up on that, fair play!

Anyhow, thanks again, because it had me really riled, but my lack of knowledge of the language gave me no way to argue back. Guess there's a lesson there: time to dig out the Buntus Cainte I bought five years ago and actually get off my lazy behind and start learning.

Rhedyn

Your own pronunciation is correct Zingiber.
A lot of English speakers pronounce it as "Sor-ka" - that is an anglicisation of the name that is incorrect.
That shop customer is an ignorant bastard.

mathepac

Zingiber wrote: »

... time to dig out the Buntus Cainte I bought five years ago ...

Fair play to you OP. That brings back memories. It used to be on the B&W tellybox when I was a kid.

At least in Irish we only invent an occasional vowel; just imagine if you were learning Hebrew, they only have consonants.

dubhthach

There are at least two native speakers pronuncing the name on Forvo see:
http://www.forvo.com/word/sorcha/#ga (First two). That customer claiming you can't pronounce your own name is a gob****e.

Zingiber

mathepac wrote: »

Fair play to you OP. That brings back memories. It used to be on the B&W tellybox when I was a kid.

I wouldn't want to give you the false impression that I've studied it in the five years since I bought it - this is good motivation though!

Having calmed down since yesterday, I've remembered a bit more of his reasoning - and from all your helpful comments I think I've let him off lightly since I said, in my ignorance, that I thought you could pronounce it his way as well, in a different dialect - me having read that before elsewhere online.

Anyhow, he told me that "to say your name in Gaelige, it would be written Sorca with a dot over the c" (I interjected at this point that yes, I knew, and it's written now with a h), he named the dot accent (but I can't remember what he said) and then stated that was why "we would say your name Sor-ka", "we" being the Irish People In The Know presumably, which I was being excluded from.

Aard, you're right about him being from Dublin (my own birthplace too), but he said his wife told him my pronunciation was wrong, and I inferred from what he said that she's from Galway.

Dubthacht - that made me laugh: my other half said exactly the same thing! He's a proper Devon boy, but has learned some choice expressions from my Mum, gobs***e being one.

dubhthach

Zingiber wrote: »

Anyhow, he told me that "to say your name in Gaelige, it would be written Sorca with a dot over the c" (I interjected at this point that yes, I knew, and it's written now with a h), he named the dot accent (but I can't remember what he said)

That's the old "ponc séimhithe" or "ponc buailte", obviously in modern orthography it's written with a h aftewards. The two are equivalent though (just different ways of writing the same sound)

Funny enough in Old-Irish period it would have been written "ch" the overdot been only used on f and s (fh / sh). Only later that overdot became default way of expressiong lentition (séimhiú) -- In scotland I don't think overdot was ever became dominant.

Given computers and unicode it's quite easy to use them.

Zingiber

Said customer came in the shop again today, and made a point of calling me Sorcha, correctly pronounced, numerous times.

mathepac

Zingiber wrote: »

Said customer came in the shop again today, and made a point of calling me Sorcha, correctly pronounced, numerous times.

boards.ie subscriber?

Aard

mathepac wrote: »

boards.ie subscriber?

Oh god I hope so. Finally one of my posts may have made a real-life impact!

OP: Had you mentioned your pronunciation disagreement to the customer, or did they rectify their pronunciation themselves?

Zingiber

Aard wrote: »

Oh god I hope so. Finally one of my posts may have made a real-life impact!

OP: Had you mentioned your pronunciation disagreement to the customer, or did they rectify their pronunciation themselves?

Not a subscriber, to my knowledge, but I'd made a point of insisting my (correct) pronunciation was right, even though I erroneously conceded that he could have a correct alternative - apparently mild mannered me has never looked so angry, so it might have been that.
Either way, he has it right now - to my face at least!;)