Big thanks this week goes to Roseanne Smith for Five things you may not know about the Irish Language. Roseanne is the Membership, Marketing and Communications Manager with the Irish Internet Association She also blogs about reading, writing, cooking, parenting, eating, living, liking, loving, being me over here.
Five things you may not know about the Irish Language
1. Peig is not the worst book in the Irish Language. It’s not even the worst book on the Leaving Cert Syllabus. In my opinion that honour must go to Tóraíocht Dhiarmada agus Gráinne by Nessa Ní Shé* which isn’t even written in standardised Irish. Sadly the best book on the Leaving Cert Syllabus is studied by very few and is an epic story of unfulfilled young love, adventure, humour and high jinks spread over two continents involving gambling, sailing, tattie hoking and hypothermia: a real rags to riches blockbuster. If you have the opportunity try and convince your teacher to study Caisleán Óir. It’s great craic!
2. The Irish word for English is Béarla. You probably know this but did you know it is also the Irish word for nonsense? Says a lot really doesn’t it?
3. There are many loanwords from Irish in the English language as one would expect from two countries so close to each other. Daniel Cassidy claims in his 2007 book that the Irish invented much American slang claiming for example that the word jazz came from teas, meaning heat and having specific sexual connotations. (They didn’t teach you that in school, eh?) Amongst these slang words is also the word “quid” which is slang for money said to come from “mo chuid airgid”. In fairness to him it makes logical sense but being a largely illiterate minority in the nascent United States there is little evidence to back up his claims. There are loan words (and more importantly a wealth of beautiful bardic forms) in Irish from French, of course, and Latin too. In fact there is a whole system for changing a Latin word to Irish thanks to the methodical approach of the religion that brought the words to the country. My personal favourite loan words in the English language come from a very sad source. Two quintessentially English phrases, “Smashing!” and “Bully for you!” are anglicisations of the phrases “Is maith sin!” and “Bulaigh fir!” both common phrases in Ulster Irish (You would definitely know them if you had been enjoying Caisleán Óir rather than Peig as per point 1 above). Apparently they passed from one language to the other in the trenches during the Great War. It speaks volumes about the soldiers from Donegal who managed to remain that positive during such cruel and unusual times.
4. Irish is a funny language. There is no Irish for “I love you” or “I miss you” and yet it has some of the most beautiful love poetry in Europe (see point 3 above). The Irish for “You would feel” is pronounced “Wuhohaw” but spelt “Mhothófá”. The Irish for “would not get” (Ní bhfaighfidh) is pronounced “Knee wee” in Ulster Irish. While these two pieces of information are unamusing to a monolingual Irish speaker us bilingual Irish speakers have a little giggle about it the odd time.
5. Irish and Gaelic are two seperate languages in the same branch of Celtic languages. One major feature that differentiates them from other Celtic languages is that at some point Q-Celtic speakers (us and the Scots) took a notion against the “p” sound so that Pembroke in Wales would be Ceann Broc in Ireland or Scotland or the name David Williams would be Dáithí Mac Liam in Irish or Gaelic but Dafydd ap Gwilym in Welsh. Gaelic is differentiated from Irish by the fact that is has fewer tenses, its spelling was not standardised (meaning they’ve a lot more bhs, dhs and ghs hanging about), it has many loanwords, conventions and placenames from Scandinavian languages and the Gaelic for sweets is “suiteis” which is my favourite Gaelic word.
* For the real Celtic Language nerds among you Nessa Ní Shé was Somhairle Mac Gill-Eain’s muse and the inspiration for his most famour work “Dàin do Eimhir agus Dàin Eile” which is considered a classic of modern poetry regardless of language.
Some cool points there Roseanne and you’re right I did not know about most of them. Once I got passed the first word in the first point (The word Peig gives me the cold sweats don’t ya know!) I read on happily. Tá orm piosa gaeilge beag a scriobh anois: Go raibh míle maith agat don cuid oibir, tá sé go brea. Nuair a bhíos san scoil, bhí an gaeilge go líofa agam ach anois tá sé pidgeony enough. Slán agus beannacht – Seosamh Ó Scannlain. Haha I’ve just reminded myself of speaking my name in Irish in primary school. It was more than a mouthful for a 4 year old I can assure you 
A page dedicated to people that help me with the weekly Five Things is here.
19 Responses
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10:51 am
Míle fáilte romhat, a Sheosaimh, agus maith thú ag leanúint ort thar an bhfocal sin, Peig!
Roseanne
11:35 am
Ana mhaith ar fad! Is feidir liom an teas a mothú ón píosa sin!
11:49 am
Wow i thought Seosamh O Scannlain was a mouthful. Is mise Conchubhar O Mathghamhna ? Phew!
12:32 pm
Conchubhar coinnigh smacht ort féin! I mention bardic poetry a few times and he’s getting all hot and bothered LOL
1:03 pm
I’ve just move back to Ireland and want to learn Irish properly. Any recommendations? Also, I really appreciate this post as it is full of all the types of information on language that I really appreciate. Write more please!!!
1:44 pm
thanks Joe and Roseanne,
I’d write something as gaeilge, but my irish skills are as dead as Peig herself! That doesn’t stop me watching the weather on TG4 though
8:55 pm
Excellent “five things”, one of my favourites so far, especially the alternative meaning of béarla, love it!
9:24 pm
Posta iontach. Maith an cailín, Roseanne. The Irish language is also responsible for one of the most well known Web 2.0 applications, an thuigin tú? Do you Digg?
9:26 pm
@Máire where are you living? There is an Irish speaking group in Dublin that I am aware off and there is similar group in UCC too.
1:44 pm
@BrianClayton – That wins “Comment of the month” – classic
2:09 pm
@Cormac – Yes that’s another one from How the Irish invented Slang mentioned above. Some of them are a bit tenuous but that one seems to make sense although isn’t the spanish for “speak to me” “digame”? I wonder does that have a claim to “D’you dig me?” too?
R
9:20 am
Like a lot of folks I now regret not having kept my Irish at an acceptable level, after leaving school.
However, in one aspect I have most definitely, wilfully, rebelled. It’s my name. These days, when asked, I respond “John Nolan is ainm dom”. My name’s John not Seán. And my surname’s not “Ó Nualláin”.
I’m prepared to conceed placenames, as the majority of Irish locations were obviously originally named in Irish and then transliterated. But I wasn’t!
10:37 am
@JOHN NOLAN (!) I couldn’t agree more esp. now I have gone through the process of naming children myself. It’s hard work coming up with names! When asked by the principle I said no to translating my son’s name – his surname is a Norman surname so please! Even when I was working full time through the medium of Irish I would correct people who called me Rósáine (most of them were so ignorant they usually called me Rósmáire or Róisín *rolls eyes*)
However FYI both versions of your name are legally acceptable AFAIK
It is nice to be able to speak Irish but it really would be even nicer to have the opportunity and we are responsible for maintaining that opportunity.
10:29 am
Thank you for this little bit of clarity in a world gone mad.
Great post.
3:20 am
Hi there. Just a quick point about Bearla. It comes from Old Irish Belre, the Bel mar meaning Beal/mouth. So Bealra comes from bel – mouth and the abstract termination “re”. Originally it was used to mean “tongue, language”. So you get Bealra na Feinne etc. Are you sure it means “nonsense” in modern Irish?
3:22 am
Your fourth point is absolute rubbish. There are many ways to say “I love you” in Irish, and Scottish.
10:17 am
Hi Steafan,
I will accept that you are correct in relation to my point about the word Irish. I’ve just rooted through all my dictionaries to find out where I got that idea. So apologies I was wrong about that. Of course I am now being driven mad trying to work out where I got that idea…!
Tell me how to say “I love you” in Irish or Gaelic. It’s not easy and it’s not three little words! Of course making it too easy in English has spawned some of the worst pop music so maybe us Gaeilgeoirs are better off being convoluted
Obviously something that *was* lost in translation from Modern English to Old Irish, a Steafan, was the clear light-hearted nature of this post. If there’s one thing that is sure to kill any professions of love for a language it’s pedantry. I try to avoid it myself: it just makes people yawn…
Slán!
Roseanne
10:18 am
Sorry first para meant “in relation to the word Béarla” Teip!
Continuing the Discussion