Quote:
Hello,
I'm opening a shoe shop in England! I was brought up in Scotland and my grandfather had a shop in Perth for decades.
The shop is going to be a little different so I wanted an original name plus I'm going to be selling some Scottish wares ... so the name will be as above Mo Bróg ... we didn't get any Gaelic at school and I've no idea how to pronounce it as there is an accent over the 'o' in brog ( I thought it was bottom left to top right but I see above it's the other way).
Can anyone tell me is it like frog or like brogue .... or maybe something else!
Thanks very much your input will be appreciated.
The word
bròg is pronounced like the Anglo-Celtic word "brogue", as you guessed might be the case (actually, the two words are related, etymologically). However, when you put the word
mo ("my") in front of it, it changes to
Mo Bhròg ("My Shoe"), as also happens in Irish Gaelic. That would be pronounced more or less as "muh vrogue", because the added "h" causes the "b" in
bròg to change to a "v" sound (these kinds of changes in consonant sounds are characteristic of the Celtic languages).
By the way, if what you meant for the shop name was "My Shoes" (i.e., the plural form), that would be
Mo Bhrògan, pronounced more or less as "muh vrogun", with the accented "o" keeping the same sound as in the singular form, and the "
an" ending having a very brief "uh" vowel sound.
Since the "bh" combination is probably going to be very confusing for non-Gaelic speakers, you could consider just
Brògan ("Shoes"), pronounced more or less as "brogun", with the same vowel sounds as above.