Slough Feg

[Magnetica]

Ok I been doing a bit of a Slaine re-read.

One thing that I have never been quite sure of is...how do you pronounce "Slough" as in "Slough Feg" or "Slough Trott"?

Is as per the town Slough between London and Reading or is it "sloff" as in rhymes with cough?

Or something else. Any views? Has Pat Mills said anything about it?

[Dark Jimbo]

Is as per the town Slough between London and Reading or is it "sloff" as in rhymes with cough?

Presumably the former, given that they earn this name by 'sloughing' off their skins.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Well, you pronounce it with the same accent as "Slaine".

[Jim_Campbell]

"Slow-ugg-yeh."

Feg is pronounced "Fa-tcha".

Tricky, the Celtic languages are...

Cheers

Jim

[JayzusB.Christ]

Is as per the town Slough between London and Reading or is it "sloff" as in rhymes with cough?

Presumably the former, given that they earn this name by 'sloughing' off their skins.

Well, I never knew that. 
Also, sorry Jim, but me and my brother as kids used to pronounce the 'Feg' as 'Fayg', giving it an Irish language twist it really, really doesn't have. And I still can't help pronouncing it like that in my mind.  I wouldn't mind, but the man's French, for feck's sake.

[JOE SOAP]

Presumably the former, given that they earn this name by 'sloughing' off their skins.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Cheers, Joe!
Is there any basis in history or myth for being a Slough?

[Call-Me-Kenneth]

It's pronounced 'slow', as in slow feg...I'm Irish.

[JayzusB.Christ]

It's pronounced 'slow', as in slow feg...I'm Irish.

BUT Y'SEE IT'S NOT, KENNY! (to paraphrase Brian Potter.)

[TordelBack]

I'd always gone gone for a rhyme with Plough. because it sounds right, but Jim and Sauchie's observations of its origins are entirely correct: it should be Sluff.  But as that sounds utterly crap, I ain't changing.

Other options are Slock or Slaw.  I suppose I could live with the latter.

Appeals to Irish pronuncitaion are pointless anyway, as Feg is 30,000 years old and as Jayzus notes lives in Ariege valley in the foothills of the Pyranees, and his powerbase is now somewhere beneath the Bay of Biscay.

[JayzusB.Christ]

A fun fact from my English teaching days: the ending '-ough' has no less than 8 different pronunciations.

1.  Through (rhyming with shoe)
2. Tough (stuff)
3. Though (go)
4. plough (now)
5. Cough (off)
6. Thorough (pronounced like the 'a' in 'above')
7. Lough (the anglicized Irish word for 'lake', pronounced like the Scottish 'loch')
8.  Hiccough (another spelling for the word 'hiccup' and pronounced as such, apparently)

If you place it in the middle of a word, it can have a ninth one - 'Thought' or 'ought' for example.

But 'Slough' is most definitely the fourth one.

[TordelBack]

In west Sligo, 'Lough' can be pronounced 'Law', particularly in front of a vowel, so that 'Lough Easkey' becomes 'Laweasky'.  A bit like your 9th pronunciation there Jayzus, since it functions as the middle of a compound word.

And apologies to Joe Soap, I wrongly credited worthless layabout Sauchie with posting that heart-lifting snippet of McMahon.

[Frank]

apologies to Joe Soap, I wrongly credited worthless layabout Sauchie with posting that heart-lifting snippet of McMahon

It keeps happening since we started doing our hair the same way. I was fascinated by the information concerning the correct pronunciation of Sáine's name when Mills featured that phonetic guide (as part of Spoils of Anwyn?), but went right on using the Anglicised versions everyone else always uses, and the incredibly right-on and Irish-identifying Mills defaults to the English versions when speaking about the characters on his ECBT2000ad interviews.

We hold countless dual notions concerning pronunciation of proper nouns in our heads, and switch effortlessly between them depending on context. None of us intend any more slight to the Francophone world when telling our pals we're off to Paris for a dirty weekend (rather than Par-ee) than the French offer when speaking of Londres. When you're speaking French to a French speaker, you would default to the native pronunciation, and the same works in reverse. If I had the Gaelic, and was talking to a fellow speaker, I suppose I'd default to the Celtic phonemes.

Anglophones sound silly dropping Par-ee into everyday conversation, and the pause necessary to interrupt a free flowing French sentence with Lon-don is just as awkward. The Irish sound version of Sláine character names cause the same awkward stumble in English, and the reason Mills chose the title Sláine was because it sounds cool and hard in English. The purpose of a character's name is to convey, through their sound and feel, something of their nature, and Slough Feg does that perfectly and effortlessly in English.

[Magnetica]

Is as per the town Slough between London and Reading or is it "sloff" as in rhymes with cough?

Presumably the former, given that they earn this name by 'sloughing' off their skins.

This just shows the difficulty in having written conversations about pronunication. When you say it is like the town Slough - how do you pronounce that? I meant like Plough but I think you meant "sluff" - certainly if you shed your skin it is "sluff".

Well, you pronounce it with the same accent as "Slaine".

Well this opens up another can of worms...so how do you pronounce Slaine? Do you mean "Slaunyeh". Personally I suspect that is right but prefer to stick to good old "slain".....I see Sauchie has addressed this just as I was typing this.

[TordelBack]

Well this opens up another can of worms...

This can has been open for so long I'm starting to doubt that there ever was a can.  Just worms.  Lots and lots of worms.

Or, if you prefer, wyrms.