TOPIC:

[quote:2a03aeii]UpsidedownA wrote:
(unless there was a little island of Irish in an otherwise English sentence fragment)
That's exactly it. Éire is an Irish word -- it doesn't exist in English[/quote:2a03aeii]

That would mean monolingual English ignoramuses speak a little bit of Japanese everytime they say 'Tokyo'. It would be news to many.

You can't define words in the Constitution except for very limited purposes because speakers will carry on regardless. English is a global language. You're not going to hold all those millions to the dictates of parliaments in different countries. What if different countries defined the same word in opposite ways?

[quote:2a03aeii]
I myself have never being one to get upset at spoken words as language is a living growing thing,grammer is for school teachers to get excited about,when I had a debate about correct speaking with a priest once I refered him to the writings of roddy doyle.As /george w bush once said when speaking of the french "how could the french know anything about business they dont even have a word for entrepreneur"[/quote:2a03aeii]

Spot on!

"UpsidedownA":zjkcvh5q wrote: That would mean monolingual English ignoramuses speak a little bit of Japanese everytime they say 'Tokyo'. It would be news to many.[/quote:zjkcvh5q]No: the English word for Tokyo is Tokyo. The English word for Ireland is Ireland. The English word for Ireland is not Éire and certainly isn't "Eire".

Is this news?

And are you suggesting that "Ireland" and "Eire" are synonymous English words?

I wouldn't go so far as to say they were synonyms, but they are English words for the same thing. Maybe synonyms have the same associations as well as the same referents. I'd say we're talking two words for the same thing like Superman and Clark Kent or Water and H2O are pairs of words for the same things.

"UpsidedownA":2bnkbcbk wrote: like Superman and Clark Kent or Water and H2O are pairs of words for the same things.[/quote:2bnkbcbk]But they're not. You and I both know the difference between Superman and Clark Kent. There are very distinct situations when saying "H2O" rather than "water" would sound jarringly odd. Why have two words in English for Ireland? My thesis is that we don't: we have one word in English for Ireland, "Ireland".

Apparently ( from Wiki ) this happened to be a bone of contention for a good long while .

The government of England specifically chose to refer to Ireland as "Eire" in order to undermine the claim of the 26 counties to the 6 ( the whole Island being Ireland )

While Dev had wanted the country to be Éire ( 1937 - 1948 ), most people at the time recognised the international brand of Ireland was a better bet.

While these issues have been resolved with the good Friday agreement, a lot of the English press still have guidelines which specify that they call Ireland , " Southern Ireland , or Eire , or the Republic of Ireland "



Moot point , there's the Peoples Republic of Cork, and the rest of Ireland , The united Kingdoms feelings on the matter don't count in the end .

I had a English friend who referred to Ireland as "Roy" presumably from seeing it abbreviated as "ROI" once too often.

He also told people that his homeland was "England-upon-Sea" so obviously wasn't as fussed about country nomenclature as most.