2 1/2 hours to get to San Francisco (and that's only if I happen to run into rush-hour traffic coming over the hill on 92 into Half Moon Bay...and then stop for coffee along the way)...usually it's closer to two hours on the coast road or 1 1/2 hours on the freeway.

At first when I saw it I was thinkin that maybe its a different Ardara, because you might have 2 or 3 towns with the same name. But then you showed the pronounciation guide and I said to myself that it must have been proof read outside of Ireland because everybody knows Éire is Air-a and not Air, no matter how bad their Irish is and Baile is no where near Bal-ee, its the capital of Ireland Baile Átha Cliath for God sake and its hard to drive in Ireland without seeing Baile on a road sign. I would think the author has been to Ireland and when she was driving around she was lookin at the road signs. Because if you look at the anglicised forms of towns with Baile they are often written as Bally or in the case of Dún anglicised to Dun, but pronounced "done" and she must have presumed the Irish pronounciation was synonimous with the anglicised version- that would be my theory to the pronounciation problem!

When someone writes about Ireland, he can get away with the most atrocious drivel. If the book is edited or proofread, chances are the editor is as ignorant on the topic as the author

More like air-eh

"a" as in the way we pronounce it in Ireland- "ah/ eh" . Not like you would when pronounce "a" when saying the abc's....

If you ever ask an Irish person to spell a word with "a" they will rarely say "a", esecially older people. They'll pronounce it like "ahh".

Would it be fair to call it a schwa? or am I misusing the word?

Whats a schwa???

Just to add: Her Irish was pretty shaky too. She gave the Irish name for Ireland as "Éireann" and claimed it was made up of "Éire" and the Viking word for "land" (I think she had it confused with "Ireland").

More like air-eh

Would it be fair to call it a schwa? or am I misusing the word?