Éire and Eire

[smmg]

Instagram's been showing me Celtic-knot-inspired art recently, and there's some very intricate designs but unfortunately most of them spell Éire without the accent which means "burden" which is really funny to me. All this carefully done complex art, just to frame a massive word that says "burden". I think it's safe to say these were not made by Irish-speakers. My Irish is not great, but some on!

I don't know if these artists are English monolinguals, but English monolinguals don't seem to be able to cope with languages with accents. They seem to think that the accents don't do anything, and can just be left out if it's more convenient.

Comments

[heleninwales]

Accents are very important. There is a lot of difference between "tatws" and tatŵs". :-)

[smmg]

Yes exactly!!