[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by MaRuDolph

And yet we all can seem to spell alcohol correctly each time despite our differing nationalities and dialects...



Even changing the spelling of last names in America still doesn't fix the pronounciation problem. My last name is spelled differently than the original German, sure, but then the pronounciation is even different than how it is spelled out in both US English and German... I remember someone saying English is harder to learn because so much of our spelling and pronounciation often needs to be memorized and doesn't follow a convention... and that's certainly true for American English, especially names.

OK but we're talking about the Irish holiday St. Patrick's Day, there's really no confusion. St Patty's Day is very very annoying to any Irish person.