"How do you pronounce "sidhe"?" Topic

I am guessing that it is pronounced SHEE.
As in "banshee" being a cleaned up spelling of some awfully spelled gaelic word.

The changlining RPG gave SHEE as the pronunciantion

As in "banshee" being a cleaned up spelling of some awfully spelled gaelic word.

bean sidhe: 'fairy woman' actually old chap

'She' (who Must be Obeyed) plays
Sidhe by the
Shee-Shore…

..and she Woops my Gales everytime!!

(playing 'Celtos')…
anyway…

"She" or "Shee" is what I have always heard/said.

I thought I read somewhere that it was pronounced "she" as well. Maybe in one of the old AD&D Monster Manuals or something.

"she". In gaelic, the letter "s" next to the letter "i" has an "sh" sound, and the "dh" becomes aspirated. And Ban Sidhe is not awfully spelled, I kinda like it :)

The first time I ever ran across the word was in a Poul Anderson fantasy, "The Broken Sword", which is by the way, a truly great fantasy novel. My paperback is almost worn out. I pronounced it "SEE the", as in "See the fairies!"

THEN, I ran across the banshee/"bean sidhe", and so I ASSUMED differently.

According to Jim Butcher, Chicago is infested with sidhe.

What does 'Ban' mean in Gaelic ?

Bad, or Forbidden I'm guessing…?

What does 'Ban' mean in Gaelic ?

'bean' simply means a woman, a female

Bad, or Forbidden I'm guessing…?

well…I couldn't possibly comment :0)

In Scots Gaelic (if I remember from my paltry few lessons of decades past) 'ban' means 'light' or 'fair haired'. I think 'mor' was dark.

But it was a LOOOOOONG time ago… and Irish Gaelic may not be exactly the same…

In Scots Gaelic (if I remember from my paltry few lessons of decades past) 'ban' means 'light' or 'fair haired'.

'bain' means white or fair , but it's not a root word of bean sidhe – I gave its meaning above :0)

"Sidhe" is correctly pronounced "Throat-Warbler Mangrove" of course. (Geez, 11 posts and that hadn't come up yet?)

To highjack the thread The Broken Sword and Three Hearts and Three Lions are two of the best fantasy books ever written. Much better than Poul Anderson's SF work. If you can find them they are quite excellent. In fact, I think I might re-read them.

StrontyGirl has it right. "Ban" is "light" or "fair". Used a lot in Scots gaelic to refer to blond hair. "Bean" is wife or woman. I misspelled Bean Sidhe the first time, sue me :)

And The Broken Sword actually predates teh first volume of LOTR by a few months, for what it's worth.

There is some great poetry in there, that has etched itself into my mind until this day.

Wind I call you, old unresting,
from the deepsof sea and sky,
blow me outwards on my questing,
answer me with eager cry.

From the top of my head, I sold my copy (British one with a truly idiotic SciFi cover?!?!) ages ago.

Sumo Boy took the words right outta my mouth, finally.

Stronty Girl: I think 'mor' was dark.

Actually, 'dubh' (doo) is dark (as in sgain dubh, the little black knife that Scotsmen carry in their socks). 'mor' is big, as in Claymore (claidheamh mor, or big sword). Strangely enough, 'beag' (big) is small!

ttauri, no need to apologize for hijacking, since I was answered in the first reply!
Besides, I agree with you, and would include Anderson's "Hrolf Kraki's Saga", also.

In any event, I am not the one to complain when others hijack MY topics.

Dublin is black pool if memory serves as well…

ok… so how do you pronouce Bean in this context – is it the same as the baked variety?

I think the Irish attitude towards spelling may be "We'll use your letters, but damned if we will pronounce them the same way!"

Or, maybe they (we) just stole the letters from the English. I am sure there must be a myth about it.

In Songs Of Earth And Power, Greg Bear reckons it's "a cross between 'Shee' and 'Sthee'. I tried that, and got my tongue trapped, so I just say 'Shee' now. Or possibly 'Elves' :)

No doubt it was a simple means to confuse the annual influx of invading hordes. No matter what language THEY spoke, they couldn't figure out the road signs. If you can't beat 'em, confuse the bleep out of them :o).

JtOFM wrote:
<<<I think the Irish attitude towards spelling may be "We'll use your letters, but damned if we will pronounce them the same way!"

Or, maybe they (we) just stole the letters from the English. I am sure there must be a myth about it.>>>

I always figured that the English purposefully transliterated the other languages of the British Isles as confusingly as possible, to aid in stamping them out. there are certainly few other transliterations as impenetrable.
-Kle.

"We're going to use Roman letters, but not have them represent the same sounds!"

What was the reasoning behind that?

"We're going to use Roman letters, but not have them represent the same sounds!"

What was the reasoning behind that?

Perhaps they'd been drinking and it seemed like a good idea at the time? he said, perpetuating a nasty ethnic stereotype. :)

Either that, or Sts. Patrick and Brendan had them speeking in tongues.

Well, you've already been answered but it's definately shee. I pronounced it wrong during a 7th Sea RPG and got berated by an Irish player (Irish women with red hair, never trust them), there really are a lot of Irish words in that game, I got most of them wrong.

Are you guys honestly picking on the Irish or English in terms of spelling/pronounciation without even mentioning the Welsh--or should I say Cymru?

The Welsh are in a league all to themselves when it come to spelling and pronounciation! 8>)

The litte bit about Gaelic that I learned doing heraldry in the SCA was that an H in a Gaelic word tells you not to pronounce the prior letter. So "sidhe" would be "sie", & since S is SH (like Sean), the final pronouncaiton is "shie".

Works on a more familiar words like "knight" (no idea why it's not k-nite though. [Hey, there's another one, "though"])

Unfortunately that little rule doesn't really work, BC. The H lenites the preceding consonant; this is popularly misdefined as aspiration which, phonetically speaking, is something completely different. Anyhoo, lenition changes the sound of the consonant rather than mutes it. In the case of D in contact with a front vowel (I or E) , the DH is akin to Y. The exceptions are S and T, SH usually being pronounced like H and TH being either silent or pronunced as H.

"Knight", besides not being Gaelic, is spelled that way because once upon a time every letter was pronounced, including the K. The GH was a voiced fricative.

since we're on this topic, how does one pronounce the following?

Gryf ap Llandrysgryf

Llewllyn

both Welsh, I guess?!

Welsh spelling is actually VERY straightforward – you only pronounce things one way, unlike english. I bought my daughters a welsh Bingo set last time we were in betws-y-coed and gave an offer of a prize to the first kid to pronounce it properly.

Griv ap hlandrisgriv

and

Hlewellin

(in the case of the F pronounced more as a V I am not 100% but I am fairly sure that's right.)

Am I Right welshies?

Pat

nvdoyle said ["We're going to use Roman letters, but not have them represent the same sounds!"

What was the reasoning behind that?]

The reasoning was that the Roman letters didn't have all the necessary sounds represented by the paltry 26 letters, so you have to do letter combinations to make them.

So, for instance, the Scottish "ch" sound (as in loch, broch, Auchtermuchtie, etc) has no letter in the Latin alphabet. There were 3 competing letter combinations to represent it:

1. TX – so that would be the Lotx Ness Monster. This spelling bit the dust long ago.

2. QUH or QH – so that would be the Loquh Ness Monster. It can be seen in place names on maps a few hundred years old (e.g. Buquhan before it became Buchan). This spelling only survives today in surnames like Urqhart and Farquhar.

3. CH – the one that outcompeted the rest.

I believe that Ye (as in Ye Olde Wargames Shoppe) has the same origin – Y was being used for the TH sound, until that came to dominate.

You asked how I pronounced it, not how it should be pronounced. Given the similarity in sound between a "D" and a "T" it could be pronounced (by those who don't know Gaelic) as an approximation of "SITH" as in what Vader was the dark lord of.

As for stupid pronunciations, I'm sure some of you have seen this, but what does the word:

GHOTIK

sound like (in English)?

"Fish"

GH as in laugh
O as in women
TI as in nation
and K as in knife…

Hi guys.

The correct pronunciation of "Bean Sidhe" is "Ban Shee".

"Bean", pronounced "ban" (as in "there's a ban on this product") is the Irish word for woman. "Sidhe" is one of a number of words for "fairy", "sprite" or "spirit".

"Bán", pronounced "bawn" is the word for white.

"How do you pronounce "sidhe"?"

I don't.

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