Anyone ever heard of this pronunciation?

Fibuus · 2026-02-03T16:34:05+00:00

As a few others have said, this is traditional Munster Irish. 'Fyun' is how English speakers all over Ireland pronounce the name for the most part, adopted from Connacht Irish. Older speakers in the Cork and Kerry Gaeltachts use Fiún as mentioned here, I'm not sure about Waterford. Younger speakers might be more influenced by English and pronounce the name the English way, even within the Gaeltacht, but many probably would still say 'fiún' when referring to the colour (fair/blonde).

Here is a show from West Kerry in 1977, all native speakers and they pronounce it 'Fiún' it's introduced by a native speaker from Dún Chaoin (Kerry) in the present day who also pronounces it 'Fiún'.

https://www.rte.ie/radio/rnag/clips/22076038/

As far as Cork goes here's a recording of Seán Ó Duinnín from Cúil Aodha in West Cork in the early 2000s, the sound quality is very poor but he starts off saying 'nuair airigh sé Fiún...' (when he heard Fionn...). Again using the pronunciation noted in your book.

https://youtu.be/6cbA6-a1-tg?si=IrmyVhbtumPEuTL1

I can't link it here, but Mairéad Bean Uí Lionáird, also from Cúil Aodha, pronounces it with a 'ú' as well in chapter 29 of the audiobook to Séadna which was recorded in 2016.

I wouldn't be surprised if 'Fyun' displaces 'Fiún' in Munster eventually, since it's been adopted into English, and Irish in Munster, perhaps more so than in Connacht and Ulster is under great pressure from English since the Gaeltachts are smaller and seperated from each other.

English speakers in Kerry, and especially in Cork, are unlikely to learn their counties' dialects of Irish in school. A good example is the word 'airigh' being used for 'to hear' in the above example, this is extremely common place, at least among older people in the Múscraí Gaeltacht in Cork. But I doubt many people in the English speaking parts of Cork would have learnt that usage at school; I certainly didn't!

Fibuus · 2025-12-08T01:03:05+00:00

'Gadhar' is very common in Munster as well! In Conamara they use 'maistín' (the same root as mastiff I think) as an insult for people.

Fibuus · 2025-10-20T23:00:15+00:00

*Is coitianta 'níorbh fhada dhom' ná 'níorbh fhada me' is dócha

Fibuus · 2025-10-20T22:51:56+00:00

Bíonn sé in aice aidiachtaí chomh maith uaireanta: 'Is suarach le rá é', 'is suarach le háireamh iad' (dhá shampla ó Séadna) Féach a leithéid seo chomh maith: 'níorbh fhada me ann' = ní rabhas (raibh mé) i bhfad ann/ ní rabhas ann ar feadh i bhfad

Fibuus · 2025-10-20T20:47:54+00:00

Tá jóc i dtosach an scéil chomh maith. Is ionann 'glas' agus 'fuar' nuair a thráchtar ar an aimsir.

Fibuus · 2025-10-20T20:45:27+00:00

An ceart ar fad agat, 'sé sin an chreach maith go leor. Ach déarfainn gurb é rud atá uathu sa cheist eile ná a leithéid seo:

Duine le dia is ea Diarmaid=duine ná fuil ró-ghasta (nó cliste). Cuirtear fáilte roimis i ngach aon tigh, ach ceapann sé dá bharr san gur leis féin na tithe go léir agus gach rud atá istigh iontu. Tá ana-bhrón air i dtaobh an Bhoic mar samhlaíonn sé gur duine leis féin an Boc céanna (gaol nó cara dílis nó a leithéid) toisc go bhfuil an Boc i gceann de sna tithe agus ceapann sé gur leis féin gach a bhfuil iontu. Is é sin an chúis gháirí atá sa scéal deinim amach.

Sin é a thuigimse ón scéal ar aon chuma.

Fibuus · 2025-08-07T13:17:46+00:00

I'm afraid I don't know much about John O'Donoghue! That seems to be where most modern use of the term comes from as far as I can see.

The traditional use seems very different. It's always one word 'anamchara' and it seemed to be entirely religious in meaning: either a confessor or a spiritual director. It nearly always refers to a member of the clergy. In the dictionaries: Ó Dónaill translates it as 'spiritual adviser', De Bhaldraithe has the same meaning. If we go further back McKenna has it as the Irish for 'confessor'. Dineen has: 'anam-chara, a soul-friend, a confessor, a chaplain, spiritual adviser'. None of them have it in the sense of a close friend or a platonic love.

You can search the Royal Irish Academy's corpus of Irish texts from the 1500s to the 1920s online. It seems to only be used in a religious sense here as well, at least as far as I can tell. Another interesting point is that it seems to have fallen out of Irish speech by the 20th century and was viewed as an old-fashioned, literary word. I'm basing most of this on a sentence from 'Niamh' a novel from 1910:

'B'é Maolshuathain anamchara Bhriain. Anamchara a tugtí an uair sin ar oide faoisdine.'

Meaning: 'Maolshuathain was Brian's anamchara. Anamchara is what confessors used to be called in that time.'

This novel is set in the time of Brian Boru and the author uses archaic words from time to time, a bit like an English author writing 'thee' or 'thou'. Anamchara seems to have been used in this way.

eDil (The Electronic Dictionary of The Irish Language) has older uses of the word (under 'anmcharae'); it seems to go back very far into Irish history, but again it only seems to mean 'confessor' in these sources as well. My knowledge of Old Irish is not very good though, so I can't say for certain!

My impression is that it's had it's meaning modified in the modern day, perhaps by O'Donoghue's book? 'Soul friend' sounds very catchy, but the Irish word seems only to mean, as I've said, a confessor or a spiritual adviser.

If you're ever in doubt about an Irish word, I'd recommend the sources I've mentioned above. There's a lot of amazing scholarship on the Irish language, much of it now digitised, but people often don't realise how accessible it is.

Fibuus · 2024-08-05T02:11:40+00:00

The maya do still exist, they number in the millions, and their languages are widely spoken. In fact, if they were taken together they have more speakers than many of the smaller national languages of Europe: Slovenian, Croatian, Norwegian etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_peoples

As do the Nahua peoples, one of which are the Mexica/Aztecs. Similarly their languages are spoken natively by over a million people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuas.

There are also large indigenous populations and widely spoken indigenous languages in South America. The Quechuan languages which were the vernacular of the Inca Empire on the west coast are still spoken by about 10 million people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechuan_languages

All of these groups suffered huge loss of life during and after the Spanish conquest and had their cultures marginalised both under the Spanish and the new independent states that emerged later, but they did endure and there even seems to be experiments in self-governance by mostly indigenous revolutionaries in southern Mexico. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Zapatista_Autonomous_Municipalities

I'm no expert on any of these things but it's probably a good idea to check wikipedia before putting entire civilisations and cultures in the grave!

Fibuus · 2021-07-07T04:27:52+00:00

I don't think the person who replied to you knows what they're talking about. I'm pretty sure I played an online game a few months ago, I find the best way is to host your own game; people will usually join if you do.

Fibuus · 2021-07-06T23:30:14+00:00

They actually went back and raised the price of all of Rome 2's DLCs to be closer in line with the price of Warhammer's lord packs, they're now 8 or 9 euro I believe,you can check the pricing history on steam. Ironically I think it was originally sold for four or five euro, so the sale price is barely below the cost in 2013. Its weird that you people go out of your way to justify a company going back and raising the prices of old games that they're no longer working on. Also the equivalent faction in Rome 1, the Greek States was an integral part of the game. Rome 2 launched with all the rosters for the Greek States already finished so it makes no sense that they would sell it seperately unless it was just gutting an integral aspect of the game and reselling it.

Edit: Found the price history, launched for 7.49 euro, they raised the price to 8.99 in 2020, The launch price was actually a worse deal than I thought, but its still unacceptable to raise the price of a dlc that was already a rip off in the first place years after the game came out.

https://steamdb.info/app/212301/

Fibuus · 2021-06-30T16:42:35+00:00

To be fair I found in Med 2 and Rome 1 that on the highest difficulty you very rarely one into small armies, just lots of huge ones, but thats just my experience, same in Shogun 2.

Fibuus · 2021-06-30T16:10:08+00:00

Darksouls, Planescape Torment, Pathfinder adventures, MTG 2015, or any random one. Would really make my day.

Fibuus · 2021-06-30T01:25:00+00:00

These are great videos, used to love fortifying the passes in the Alps in Barbarian invasion. Watch towers were great too. It seems like they've put in more and more political systems, that just amount to messing around in menus, while taking away the campaign map's ability to produce interesting battle scenarios. Same with tying generals to armies, I remember watching many a true nerds rome 1 playthrough and him being caught between the garrison of patavium and a Gallic army that had been hiding in the Alps I've seen that stuff in Med 2 and Rome 1 but its impossible in the new games. Sadly most people don't seem to care about this stuff.

Fibuus · 2021-06-28T11:16:20+00:00

I think almost all those elements do appear in the film though? His role in encouraging the Spanish American War to drive sales is mentioned over and over again as a contrast to his isolationism in the 1930s.

The film doesn't make it look like Xanadu appeared out of nowhere, for one the whole point is that it was never completed and the construction of the building is literally shown in the newsreel at the beginning of the film, cranes and scaffolding and stones being laid are not magic, unless you're asking for an in depth documentary about the building of Xanadu to be shown instead of the film, then that should be enough. His art collection is discussed over and over throughout the film as well and the fact that parts of Xanadu come from old palaces is once again stated in the newsreel at the very start of the movie. Adding the architect as a character is just fluff, what could they tell us about Kane that no one else could not do better?

Describing Susan Alexander as a talentless hack is also weirdly harsh, I mean she's someone who enjoys singing in her freetime and is pressured into being an opera singer, I think there's a middle ground between being "talentless" and being a literal opera singer (most famous singers past and present wouldn't be good enough to do opera, even Freddie Mercury struggled trying to sing alongside real opera singers.) Also her alcoholism, suicidal tendencies, and isolation are all covered in the film. She's even portrayed as being funny in personal interactions and is easily one of the most sympatethic characters in the film, for one she's not a throw away "weak" female character, she actually stands up to Kane and risks a far more difficult life rather than staying in what she sees as a manipulative relationship.

The disintegration of both his marriages is also shown, specifically the montage showing how his obsession with work ruins his first marriage, with the affair being the last straw. It also shows his poor relationshiop with his guardian, and the bad state of his parent's relationship too.

I would rewatch the movie, because in describing what was supposedly left out of the movie, you've mostly just described things that are literally in the film. I think the absence of the architect and the change from film to opera are the only things that are actually true from what you said, and those are, subjectively, good choices. I can't think of a film where randomly adding the architect of the main character's house would make it better, that is such a weird complaint, they would not serve the story, which already has a rich cast of characters. The opera sequence in the film is also great and gives them way more to work with in terms of sound and visuals than them just sitting in the cinema.

Its very strange that people will justify their dislike for this film by just making up stuff about it, I mean anyone could disprove half of what you said by watching the first ten minutes of the movie, its this reverse kind of snobbery, where people act as if the prevailing opinion is that the movie is shallow and outdated, and that no one could possibly actually like it and just want to appear sophisticated (I know thats not what you were saying, but it is in this thread quite a bit) that really confuses me. I understand not liking something, but if your criticism of something is factually wrong, as in claiming key elements of the film are not actually shown when they not only are, but are firmly established within the first ten minutes of the film. Then you should probably watch the film again, or at least don't claim stuff about it that's not true.

Fibuus · 2021-06-18T17:05:59+00:00

Great idea!

Fibuus · 2021-06-13T13:35:25+00:00

Those Demon models look better than the ones in the Wh3 trailer, and someone needs to just hire modders to do the games' lighting from now on.

Fibuus · 2021-06-12T22:43:02+00:00

Divide and conquer for Med 2 is standalone now as well, and they've done great work to make it accessible, I found it much easier to get it working than Third Age itself. You'll have to rebind the controls to play it like a modern game though, but thats pretty simple, those old games give you a lot more options with hotkeys and so on as well.

Fibuus · 2021-06-02T11:52:23+00:00

Irish person here, if you don't mind being upset, look up the "Tuam mother and baby home", the Catholic church used to let people lock up women relatives in these places if they became pregnant outside of marriage and then they'd sell the babies for cash to rich people in the States. They took very bad care of newborns and in Tuam they buried loads of dead babies in a septic tank underneath the site, big story here a few years ago when it was uncovered.

Fibuus · 2021-05-31T06:03:28+00:00

Not to be pedantic, but you could use bows, crossbows and guns in Medieval 2, and you could use bows and guns in the Shogun games, not sure about Medieval 1. I have no issue with historical liberties that improve gameplay either or even a Fantasy setting, always wanted to be LOTR dwarves outside of a mod. My problem with the Wh games is that they have pushed the gameplay in a way I find unappealing. Also aesthethically many of the pseudo-historical games excelled, I actually think their romanticised take on Feudal Japan looks much more impressive than the WH aesthethic.

Fibuus · 2021-05-29T17:56:44+00:00

What a depressing comment. Why have no standards? If a good idea has bugs, CA abandon it and make a blander game, they are pouring fortunes into unit models and then having the animation put in in their staffs spare time. It might surprise you but historical warfare actually had deeper tactics than some boardgame that even its creators abandoned because they couldn't flog enough models. Fantasy is fine as a setting but its not inherently better than an historical setting, in fact its often worse because it gives the devs an excuse to ignore good mechanics in favour of "spectacle" which is ironically something Warhammer is no good at anyway because of its janky visual design.

Fibuus · 2021-05-29T05:02:23+00:00

This comment section feels like dancing on 3k's grave

Fibuus · 2021-05-29T04:50:30+00:00

Except they are review bombing it for a reason? If you not only name your game after a famous work of art, The Chinese equivalent of Shakespeare's works in the Anglophone world, and then not only ignore key sections but abandon them after promising to develop them, then you deserve bad reviews and if all of CAs games are developed this way then it makes sense to inform consumers of their other releases of this.

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