Jeremy,
The BHA sent out a list for a while with a few of the more obscure ones but to be honest they were often misleading anyway.
With Gaelic it is the number of diffrenet spellings and dialects that seems to be the problem. When I was at SIS there were a few letters on the wall complaining about our awful pronunciations of Irish horses in the betting shows. One day two of us rang them to seek advice on a few tricky ones and got a whole range of suggestions.
For Cill Rialag the chap I speak to tells me Cill is Kill and means church ( stem of Killarney – church by the rowan tree). Rialaig appeared to be dialect for Reilig pronounced relig (as in religion) also meaning church/graveyard.
No one has complained yet so hopefully was not too far off.I should in the interests of balance admit I was present in the booth during the notorious Fields of Fat Henry incident at SIS many years ago though not doing the shows.
Hi Richard,
as a northern scholar of the Gaelic Tongue (Co Antrim), I can assure you that we do the purest pronunciations; the problem with taking southern and western versions is that you are taking on board the broadest aspect of the brogue as well as the word. As an example, no self-respecting Englishman should pronounce Thurles the way Matt Chapman does as it sounds like he’s taking the mickey, despite the fact that the locals say "Torr-liss". "Thur-liss" is correct for the neutral. There are many Gaelic words which have slightly different pronunciations in different parts of the country but the basics are fundamentally the same.
I’d be more than happy to offer any advice on tricky ones and would love to see the official BHA list (I believe owners are meant to provide a guide to pronunciation when registering names, so there would be a wide range of individual interpretation) to give a view.
On the subject of Auteuil and Enghien I’ve always said "Oh-Toy" and "Ong-Ee-En"