Italicizing pronunciation of foreign words

Try this:

Blake smiled at Charlotte. "Yes, mo ghrá, I forgive you."
Charlotte sighed with relief. "Good. Um, what does 'muh hraw' mean?"
Blake leaned in for a kiss. "Mo ghrá. My love."

untechioux said:

Blake smiled at Charlotte. "Yes, mo ghrá, I forgive you."
Charlotte sighed with relief. "Good. Um, what does muh hraw mean?"
Blake leaned in for a kiss. "Mo ghrá. My love."
​

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I think you have it right. You would not italicize the mispronounced words because they are not actual words. Nor would I put them in single quotation marks because they are not actual quotes.

Hi,
On part B of your question, I would like to ask what kind of background this person comes from? Is he a native speaker more used to speaking Irish than English? Most Irish people know what mo ghra (can't find accent) means, but I don't know many who would drop it into English conversation. I certainly wouldn't, especially if I was talking to someone who is not Irish.

guttersquid said:

Nor would I put them in single quotation marks because they are not actual quotes.

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She is attempting to quote him. She's not getting it quite right, but the quotation marks still serve as useful signposts in the sentence, setting the words off and signalling that they are not to be parsed as part of the grammar of the sentence.

The signal is less important in this particular case, because the words aren't English words and therefore can't be read as part of the sentence, but as a matter of consistency, it's best to use the same style you would use if you did need the extra signpost. "Um, what does 'to be or not to be' mean?" is harder to parse without the single quotation marks. For the same reason, you would retain the quotes even if the person is misquoting the source: "Um, what does 'to beer not to be' mean?"

pernickety said:

Most Irish people know what mo ghra (can't find accent) means, but I don't know many who would drop it into English conversation. I certainly wouldn't, especially if I was talking to someone who is not Irish.

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You very well might if you were trying to sound romantic. You might if you wanted to call someone "my love," but were not quite comfortable saying it directly, so you wanted to force yourself to say it by presenting it in words you know you will be required to translate. Blake might not drop the phrase into casual conversation, but as a prelude to a first kiss, this seems absolutely appropriate. (I don't know that that's actually the context, so this observation may or may not be relevant.)

I had this problem too; one of the characters sometimes would use the occasional Afrikaans word, more when he was stressed - more out of habit (as it's their first language) than trying to sound smart or cryptic. After scratching my head on how to handle it, I finally plumped on firstly making fairly clear the meaning of the word (in the usage in sentence) while spelling it phonetically. (As it's a 1st-person POV, the MC doesn't know any better). However, if it's a foreign word she does know, it's italiced and spelt correctly.

Hi

(A) I agree with the suggestions to italicise the Irish phrase and put the girl’s phonetic rendering in quotation marks.

(B) My Irish is so rusty that, though I knew the words would translate literally as “My love”, I had to look things up on t’internet to see if this is an actual phrase in the language, used as a term of endearment. It seems it is (http://www.irishgaelictranslator.com/articles/vocabulary/love-terms-of-endearment/
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/entertainment/my-heart-my-treasure-my-love-the-top-ten-irish-terms-of-affection-209633741-237593411.html)
– though the variant “A ghrá” (short “ah” sound for “A”) might be more suitable (?; the difference is a subtle thing for which I don’t claim to have a good feel!).

Finally, for what it’s worth, unless the guy has been brought up immersed in the language in an Irish-speaking family and/or specialist school, I think he is probably being a little cheesy in breaking out his likely otherwise-rarely-uttered second language in an attempt to impress the girl...not that there’s anything wrong with that, though - I'm sure it happens all the time