Talk:Conchobar

"Dubious" pronunciation

What's wrong with /ˈkɒn(ə)xuːr/ as a pronunciation of the form Conchúr? Seems perfectly straightforward to me. --Nicknack009 (talk) 17:57, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

If you have a problem with the pronunciations given, discuss it. "Dubious" tags and snide comments like "is this supposed to be English" achieve nothing. How do you think it's supposed to be pronounced? --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:44, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, but what we have would appear to be neither English nor Gaelic. Check the IPA keys or the phonology articles: AFAIK Gaelic doesn't have /ɒ/, for example.

Actually, they accomplish quite a bit: they get people to fix misinformation. Comments on the talk page often sit for months with no action. And with thousands of IPA links, I really can't put them all on my talk page and wait for someone to eventually come along. kwami (talk) 19:50, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Don't remove warning tags. If you don't know how to fix it, leave it for someone who does. kwami (talk) 19:50, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

The pronunciations, according to my knowledge of Old Irish and Modern (Donegal) Irish, are accurate. Your warning tags are made out of ignorance. --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

And your pronunciations, besides the typographic errors, are undefined by the supporting links. Which vowel is [ɒ] supposed to be? Why are the consonants neither broad nor narrow? does Donegal no longer make such distinctions? When I came here, I could literally not tell whether the IPA was supposed to be English or Gaelic, which is why I formatted for one and tagged for the other. Surely you can do better than just blindly reverting. kwami (talk) 19:55, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Conchobar is an Old Irish name which is not used in English, so doesn't have an English pronunciation. The consonants are all broad, according to the convention that marks slender ones but not broad ones that I was under the impression was valid but I see is not to be used. I have separated the Old and Modern Irish pronunciations according to the phonology part of the Old Irish article, and IPA for Irish, with the exception of the first o, which I have now rendered ʌ, which is also not on the IPA for Irish or Irish phonology pages, but the Irish word ola is used to illustrate it. I think it's somewhere between an English short o and short u, which would be about right.

Actual Irish pronunciation is more complex and varied than the artificial dialect used in schools, and using Wikipedia's IPA chart prescriptively rather than descriptively is not going to lead to accurate pronunciations. Also, in a publication for a general, non-specialist English-speaking reader, being absolutely accurate with the IPA for a language like Irish makes the article less, rather than more, informative, but that's probably a lost argument, with a lot of articles on linguistic subjects being increasingly written as if for a specialist audience. --Nicknack009 (talk) 20:56, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Much better.

I agree that writing velarization overtly is distracting. If you want to bring it up on the talk page for the IPA-ga key, we might get consensus to change it. (I've had basically zero input with Irish.) With all the transcriptions linked to one key, it would be quite easy to change them all with AWB.

Also, if you feel it would be informative to have local pronunciations, by all means add them. We do that with English names all the time. They should just be clearly labeled as local, as the Old Irish is now clearly labeled, so that our readers know what they're reading. Personally, I think it's more accessible to have a standard transcription unless there is some reason to diverge from it, as opposed to each editor using their own favorite and often conflicting systems, but that doesn't mean that every article has to conform to the same convention. kwami (talk) 21:21, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure there's no vowel missing in the modern pronunciation? I can see how you can get [kɾˠəˈxuːɾˠ] by shifting stress to the second syllable and loosing the first vowel, which creates the cn cluster which turns into /kr/ but you said it's Donegal - I thought only Munster has forward stress shift and Donegal mostly has first syllable stress with reduction of long unstressed vowels to short ones. Akerbeltz (talk) 17:37, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I only have sources for the pronunciation of Conchubhar in the Cork, Galway and Mayo Gaeltachts. If you have a source for the Donegal pronunciation, please post it. Yes, the stress is different in Munster, but the sources I mentioned still show the word has become Crochúr in Galway and Mayo too. You cannot derive the pronunciation of every single word from a list of phonological rules. If you go to Ciarán Ó Duibhín's excellent site on Ulster Irish at http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/~oduibhin/ainmneacha_ultacha.htm, you can see evidence that the Donegal pronunciation is "Croohur", together with some pronunciations from Monaghan and Derry (no longer part of the Gaeltacht) that are discussed (eg Konfer). Djwebb1969 (talk) 15:35, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Please cite your sources if you change this

Firstly, the spellings Conchubhar and Conchúr are not pronounced differently. Secondly the IPA pronunciations previously indicated showed a pronunciation that was directly regular from the spelling (ie con-a-chu-var), but no sources for this were given. In Co. Cork at least, the pronunciation of the name, however spelt, is Crochúr. I have cited a source: the Irish of West Muskerry, 1943, by Briain Ó Cuív p128. Note the pronunciation Crochúr is also given for Galway in the book The Irish of Cois Fhairrge, and it is given for Mayo in the book The Irish of Erris, Co. Mayo. I would take a LOT of convincing that it was anything else in Donegal Irish either. The pronunciation of cr for cn is normal in Donegal Irish anyway. This name is NOT pronounced con-a-chu-var - not by native speakers of Irish anyway. The northern dialects (Galway, Mayo and Donegal) probably swing the accent to the front of the word: /'krohu:r/. I have indicated /krə'hu:r/ for Cork, but I am not sure whether it should be /kro'hu:r/ with o instead of ə. Please edit if you know (know, not think). Djwebb1969 (talk) 06:14, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Whoa, slow down. My last comment was merely a long question, not an accusation. However, having read your answer, it raises the question of whether these dialect pronunciations are appropriate for a proncunciation guide on Wikipedia. Most pronunciation guides aim for what whicheve language considers a mid-ground/standard (whatever you want to call it) pronunciation. For Irish that would be, love it or hate it, the Lárchanúint - which works off the spelling more than it doesn't. This does not imply the dialect pronunciations don't have their place on the page but I am doubtful about elevating any dialect, be it Ulster Munster or Connacht to that of a standard pronunciation. Akerbeltz (talk) 16:17, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Akerbeltz, Irish is spoken as a native language by the inhabitants of the Gaeltacht. The Lárchanúint has precizely 0 (zero, nada, zilch, zip) native speakers. It was an artificial thing created by a government committee. Including recommending pronouncing anois ("now") as /ə'noʃ/. Of course, "oi" can be pronounced e, i or o in Irish, but the committee decided to "simplify" and make it always o in the Lárchanúint. Allow me to institute a "Central Dialect" of English, which you may like to employ on Wikipedia: gh has many pronounciations, so my "rule" is always pronounce it "f". Through, though, bough - must always be "f". Do you get the "methodology"? There is no standard pronunciation of Irish - and the Lárchanúint is not a standard pronunciation of Irish. I just pointed out - get an IQ test before you read my comment above - that in every dialect that I could find evidence for, the pronunciation of Conchubhar is as Crochúr. In some dialects the stress on Crochúr would be on the first and in other dialects on the second syllable. But as far as I know, there are zero native speakers who pronounce this word Conchubhar. You say "I am doubtful about elevating any dialect, be it Ulster Munster or Connacht to that of a standard pronunciation." That is a deceitful comment. Rather, you want to elevate a pronunciation not use in Ulster, Munster or Connaught to the status of a standard, overriding the pronunciations used by every single native speaker of Irish. Djwebb1969 (talk) 05:40, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

The regularity of the Goidelic spelling systems (minus Manx) cannot be compared to that of English so I'll ignore that comparison with "gh". Except to point out that English pronunciation on Wikipedia DOES follow a central-ish pronunciation. None of the pages on the American Southwest for example elevate South-Western US English to that of being standard pronunciation indicated. What Wikipedia doesn't do is establish text to phoneme rules but then, the pronunciation of English is well documented.

Can I also point out to you that virtually ANY language standard on this planet is "artificial"? Standard German was not a "natural language", Standard Basque wasn't either, French is based on Parisian French but it is not totally equivalant to. So the argument that the Lárchanúint was never a naturally spoken variant is irrelevant. The question is whether Lárchanúint is in any shape or form an officially sanctioned pronunciation for the language. Whether you love it or hate it is, fortunately, beside the point too. People didn't love Batua at first either.

Thirdly, there's no need to stoop to insulting people. I made a neutral enquiry so how about you calm down a bit? Akerbeltz (talk) 12:25, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

PS "Croohur" is hardly a precise transcription but I'll ask Ciarán... Akerbeltz (talk) 12:28, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

You turn this into a constant talking around the subject. The Lárchanúint was a stillborn attempt to create a standard pronunciation that fell flat on its face due to its absurd approach. As I have pointed out, some of the pronunciations in Foclóir Póca are not used by a single native speaker of Irish, eg that of "anois". The Irish state does not have the authority to "sanction" a pronunciation for Irish. Irish pronunciation is just what it is. Maybe standard pronunciations are not necessarily fully descriptive, being partly prescriptive, but if the standards verge too far away from any real pronunciation, they lose their ability to function as standards. I don't think there is any pronunciation in standard French that could be described as not used by a single French speaker, as I explained with "anois". One could compare Standard Mandarin - and it is not my function to provide you with a free of charge education - but let me fill you in on the details. Standard putonghua is not exactly the same as Peking dialect, although there are some areas said to be much closer to the prescribed standard than Peking itself. Changchun is one - maybe reflecting the settlement of the north-east quite late in Chinese history. Chengde is also often mentioned as a place with a pronunciation closer to the prescribed standard than Peking. Shenzhen is another example, owing to its settlement in recent decades by people from all over the country. Be that as it may, the putonghua pronunciation is not entirely artificial. Before 1924, a "state sanctioned" standard pronunciation of Chinese that was entirely artificial was created, including reviving the "entering tone" no longer used in Mandarin. It contained elements from various dialects, but was entirely the creation of a linguist, who produced LP records of this pronunciation and was the only person in China capable of producing it! Finally, after 1924, the attempt to create an artificial standard was abandoned, and the standard was created much close to Peking dialect, although not 100% the same either. The Lárchanúint is the equivalent of the pre-1924 attempt to make an artificial standard not spoken by anyone and not based on real speech. Djwebb1969 (talk) 06:39, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I have a totally different suggestion. I did a bit of reading and it would appear that there are spellings (perhaps not as mainstream) that reflect the modern pronunciation better. O' Rahilly in Irish Dialects Past and Present states "The change of n to r is undoubtedly a relatively late one. [...] 'Knochor' (Tyrone and Down, 1602), otherwise 'Connchor' (Armagh, 1602), for Cnochúr, Conchúr, earlier Conchobhar." There's also Stair na Gaeilge which says in the Munster section "Déantar cr de cn (<con) san ainm Conchubhar sa chuid is mó den Mhumhan, lasmuigh de Chorca Dhuibhne, áit a ndeirtear Cnohúr leis." A Google search returns 179 for Cnochúr, many mentioning it as a modern variant of Conchubhar. So perhaps the best way of dealing with this issue is to state that Conchubhar/Connchur reflect older pronunciations and that the modern spelling Cnochúr /IPA/ best reflects modern pronunciation across dialects? It would also suggest that the Lárchannúint isn't at fault here but perhaps the Coiste for not having updated the spelling. Akerbeltz (talk) 14:23, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Haha! That is SO funny! Your reading on the subject leads you to the view that modern pronunciation of Conchubhar is Cnochúr/Crochúr. So you were wrong. Eat humble pie! I notice most of your contributions on Talk pages in Wikipedia amount to an attempt to spread ignorance! Djwebb1969 (talk) 06:47, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

A little civility wouldn't go amiss mate. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:21, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

And that aside, my comments on the Lárchanúint and its uses still stand. What did come out was that in the case of this name, the Conchubhar spelling is outdated. You know, this really isn't about point scoring between editors. It's about writing good articles for the benefit of the reader. Akerbeltz (talk) 13:06, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

No, your comments on the Lárchanúint do not stand. Your typical modus operandi on Wikipedia talk pages is just to ignore other people's arguments and go round and round in circles. I notice on the Angr talk page, you were accused of going round and round in circles. Unless you address people's arguments, you are not dealing with objections to your asserted (asserted but not adequately argued) views. I know you will ignore this too and go back to making assertions, but then I don't expect any more of you. How is "anois" pronounced in Irish? If you can't answer that, you don't have a point. Yes... I know... I will get a non sequitur in reply.Djwebb1969 (talk) 13:26, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Highlander

Is it possible the name Connor became popular in the U.S. and Britain when the movie Highlander was released in 1986? Conor comes from Conor Pass on the Dingle Peninsula of Ireland.

I would say the relationship with the Conor Pass goes the other way.Notjim 10:12, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I have moved this:

"The variant Connor has also become popular as a girl's name in recent years as well."

from the page because there doesn't seem to be any evidence for it; if someone has a reference, move it back!Notjim 10:12, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Latin meaning

I believe the actual Latin meaning of the name is "I try". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.245.193.10 (talk) 20:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I removed the statement "Conor" is literally also the first person deponent Latin verb meaning "the best". There's no source for this statement. After doing searches on several Latin-English dictionaries, it seems the Latin meaning is v. dep., to undertake, endeavor, attempt, try, venture, presume, etc (from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/resolveform?lookup=conor&type=exact&lang=la&searchText=&options=Sort+Results+Alphabetically&.submit=Submit+Query&formentry=1&lang=la) or v. dep., attempt/try/endeavor, make an effort; exert oneself; try to go/rise/speak (from http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wordz.pl?keyword=conor). -- Christopher C. Parker ^{t c} 16:36, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Non-Irish people called Conor

I removed the line 'sometimes non-Irish people can be called Conor.' This is a needless sentence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.23.15.178 (talk) 21:58, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Kent

Corrected "Connor" Kent, Superboy, and moved him to the appropriate "Conner" Kent section. DC had always used the "er" spelling for this character. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.93.65.251 (talk) 13:49, 27 March 2012 (UTC)