He was thrown into the deep end, god bless him.
When you grow up surrounded by Aoifes, Caoimhes and Sineads, you take their pronunciation for granted. Then you turn 21, head off on J1 and realise the pronunciation of these names is an absolute mind f*ck for anyone not from Ireland. Initially you might think - what's so difficult? Clíonadh obviously has a silent DH and Caoilfhionn is just the Irish way of spelling Keelin, rendering most of the letters in the name irrelevant, everyone knows that. But for our friends across the pond it's not that easy, as you'll see in this birthday shout out from Modern Family star Eric Stonestreet.
[video width="576" height="1024" mp4="https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/pplus.images.lovin.ie/uploads/2021/11/22150225/cam-tiktok.mp4"][/video]
Video from danielk_3 on Tiktok
Here we see Eric do his absolute utmost to nail the pronunciation of Aoife and get absolutely nowhere, but look, god loves a trier. He levels with the birthday gal and says her brother asked him to do this shoutout, saying it was okay if he didn't get the name right. But I think we can all agree, an aul phonetic pronunciation thrown into the email wouldn't have gone amiss. Anyway, he gave it his all and provided us with a solid 48 seconds of entertainment so really, it all worked out.
Header image via Tiktok/danielk_3
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