Category: Irish (Gaeilge)

Polyglottery

By Simon

Novi Sad Catholic Cathedral

Yesterday morning I met up with other conference participants and after a bit of a wander around the city, we had lunch then went to the opening ceremony a reception. In the after we had a little guided tour of Novi Sad seeing some interesting buildings, including the Catholic or Orthodox Cathedrals, and the fortress. There are some rather attractive buildings here, wide, pedestrianised café-lined streets, some nice parks and generally a relaxed kind of atmosphere.

In the evening we all went to a restaurant about 4 or 5km from the city centre for dinner. I walked there with a few others, and the rest went by bus or taxi. We had a nice dinner with lots of polyglot chat, then some people started dancing, and others carried on chatting.

Novi Sad town hall

Today there were lectures and talks on a variety of topics including sound symbolism, the magic of metaphors, language coaching, and acting and humour in a foreign language.

So far I’ve had conversations in about 10 languages and spoken bits and pieces of maybe 10 others. In some cases this was only a few words (all I know), in others it was a bit more. There are even two guys here who are learning Scottish Gaelic, one of whom also speaks a bit of Manx, and another who is learning Irish.

Da mad math

By Simon

In Welsh and Cornish the usual word for good is da [daː], while in the other Celtic languages words for good are: Breton – mat [maːt˺], Irish – maith [mˠa(ɪ)(h)], Manx – mie [maɪ], and Scottish Gaelic – math [ma]. I’ve wondered for a while whether there were cognates in Welsh and Cornish for these words.

Last week I found that there are: mad in Welsh and mas in Cornish. The Welsh word, which means good, seemly, lucky, appears in the phrase: a wnêl mad, mad a ddyly (one good turn deserves another), but isn’t otherwise used, as far as I can discover. The Cornish word doesn’t appear in the Cornish dictionaries I’ve checked so I think it is probably not used any more.

These words all come from the Proto-Celtic *matis (measure), possibly from the Indo-European mē (measure, consider) [source], which is also the root of the Irish word meas (judgement, opinion, respect) [source], and possibly of the Welsh meddwl (to think), and the English mete (measure).

Grammatical correctness and standard languages

By Simon

I got thinking standard languages and grammars today after reading an old post on Michal Boleslav Měchura’s blog Young, Single, Multilingual in which differences between standard and non-standard Irish language and grammar are discussed.

One example is the use of the tag question ní tá instead of the standard nach bhfuil – the equivalent of isn’t it?, aren’t you?, etc. This is used mainly in and around Cloch Chionnaola in the north west of Ireland. According to Michal, “from the Standard-Irish point of view, it breaks all the rules, combining the wrong words in ungrammatical ways. But it is reportedly very common among native speakers in the area …”

A standard language is one particular form of a language that is chosen, from among many, for linguistic, political and social reasons, to be the main language used in education, media and in formal contexts. When this happens other forms of that language may start to be viewed as non-standard, substandard, or plain wrong, and such judgements are often applied to speakers of those forms as well, though that’s a separate issue. Standards are maintained by official bodies, schools, publishers and so on, or at least they try to do so.

A grammar can be a description of the standard form of a language which is seen as the model speakers and writers should adhere to, or aim for. Alternatively a grammar might try to describe how people actually use a language and may include non-standard and informal usage, which would be judged wrong by a prescriptive grammar.

In the real world of everyday language few people speak exactly like the standard form of the language. We stumble over words, get words mixed up, make grammatical ‘mistakes’ and so on. At least this is the case for English and Irish. What about for other languages? How big is the difference between the standard language, if one exists, and colloquial language(s)? Do people complain about grammatical ‘mistakes’ made by others?

Byd bach (Small world)

By Simon

Yesterday I met some Russians who are in Bangor for Celtic-Slavic language conference. They both speak Welsh and one of them teaches Welsh in Moscow. We got chatting, mainly in Welsh, and it turned out that they know friends of mine who are studying or doing research in Aberystwyth, and they also know Russians I met while studying Irish in Donegal in Ireland. The world of Celtic studies is quite small, and the world of Slavo-Celtic studies is even smaller, so these connections weren’t a great surprise.

One advantage of learning lesser-studied languages like Welsh and Irish is that you can become part of relatively small communities of learners, and can possibly become part of small native speaker communities as well. People who learn such languages come from many different countries, so while the languages themselves may only be spoken in particular parts of particular countries, by learning them you can become part of a world-wide community of learners. So if you meet other learners or native speakers on your travels, it’s quite likely that they will know some of the same people you know. At the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin, for example, I met a Swedish guy who has studied Irish in Donegal, and found we had friends and acquaintances in common.

There are also links between different minority and endangered language communities. For example, Manx-speaking musicians, singers and dancers regularly take part in inter-Celtic festivals, such as the annual one in Lorient in Brittany, and have contacts with Sámi-speaking communities in Norway, and with Jèrriais speakers in Jersey.

Churches and Cells

By Simon

Today I discovered that the Welsh word llan (church, parish), which is used mainly in place names, such as Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, has cognates in the other Celtic languages: lann in Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish and Manx, and lan in Breton. These words all come from the Proto-Indo-European root *lendʰ- (land, heath) [source].

Another word church-related word that is used mainly in Irish and Scottish place names is kil(l), as in Kildare (Cill Dara), Kilkenny (Cill Chainnigh) and Kilmarnock (Cill Mheàrnaig). It means church or graveyard and comes from the Irish cill (cell (of a hermit), church, burial place), from the Old Irish cell (church), from the Latin cella [source] (a small room, a hut, barn, granary; altar, sanctuary, shrine, pantry), which comes from the Proto-Indo-European *ḱelnā, which is made up of *ḱel- (to cover) and a suffix -nā.

The Welsh word cell (cell); the Scottish Gaelic cill (chapel, church yard, hermit’s cell); the Manx keeill (church, cell); and the Breton kell (cell) all come from the same root.

The more commonly-used words for church in the Celtic languages are: eglwys (Welsh), eaglais (Irish and Scottish Gaelic), eglos (Cornish), iliz (Breton) and agglish (Manx). These all come from the Latin ecclēsia (church), from the Ancient Greek ἐκκλησία (ekklēsía – church).

High Stones

By Simon

A photo of Harlech castle and town

I spent yesterday in Harlech [ˈharlɛx] with a friend looking round the castle, exploring the village and wandering along the beach. We wondered where the name Harlech comes from, so I thought I’d find out. According to Wikipedia, there are two possible sources: from the Welsh ardd (high; hill) llech (stone) or from hardd (beautiful) llech (stone). Apparently it was referred to as ‘Harddlech’ up until the 19th century in some texts, so the second derivation might be more likely.

The word ardd is not used in modern Welsh – high is usually uchel and hill is bryn. There are cognates in the other Celtic languages: arth (hill) in Cornish; arz (high) in Breton; ard (head; ascent; incline; high; height; senior; advanced) in Irish; àrd (high, lofty, tall; great; loud; chief, eminent, superior, supreme) in Scottish Gaelic; and ard (high, towering, tall, big, loud, height, high place, fell, incline) in Manx.

These all come from from the Proto-Celtic *ardwos (high), from the Proto-Indo-European *h₁rh₃dh-wo- (high, steep), which is also the root of the Latin words arduus (lofty, high, steep, tall, elevated) and arbor (tree, mast, javelin), the Ancient Greek word ὀρθός (orthós – straight), the English word arduous, [source].

Brushing up languages

By Simon

Last week in Scotland I tried to speak Scottish Gaelic as much as possible, and had a number of good conversations. At first though, I was adding quite a lot of Irish Gaelic into the mix, which works sometimes as the two languages are close, but not always. Last year I had a month between my visits to Ireland and Scotland, so had time to get my brain in Scottish Gaelic mode before going to Scotland. This year I only had a week, which wasn’t really enough. By the end of the week in Scotland my Scottish Gaelic was coming back.

Sometimes words that are spelt the same but pronounced differently in the two languages trip me up: for example man is fear, which is [fəuɾˠ] in Irish, and [fɛr] in Scottish Gaelic, which sounds like the Irish word for hay/grass, féar [feːɾˠ], which is feur [fiər/fjɔːrʲ] in Scottish Gaelic – not to be confused with fior (true, genuine, real) [fiər].

Do you need a while to brush up languages you don’t use very often? How do you go about it?

I generally listen and read a lot, and practise speaking to myself. Last year I also wrote something on my other blog every day in the language I was focusing on.

Cigire or Cigydd? Cross-language confusion

By Simon

Last week in Ireland on the last night of the course each class played some tunes, did a sketch, sang songs, and/or did some other party piece. One of the Irish language classes did a sketch about a bunch of unruly school kids whose class was being visited by an inspector, played by Paul Kavanagh, Irish Ambassador to China. When the inspector turned up and he introduced himself as a “cigire scoile” (school inspector), and I processed the word cig in cigire as the Welsh word for meat. So at first I thought he was the school butcher, which would be cigydd ysgol in Welsh, though that made no sense in the context. I soon realised that he was an inspector, but it took a while for my mind to accept that word cigire had nothing to do with meat.

Incidentally, the Irish word for butcher is búistéir or feolaire, and feoil is meat.

Do you ever suffer from cross-language confusion?

Cruite, cláirseacha a chrythau

By Simon

Cláirseach / Clàrsach / Claasagh / Telyn / Telenn, & Crwth

I discovered last week in Ireland that one word for the harp in Irish is cruit [krutʲ], which sounds similar to the Welsh word crwth [kruːθ], a type of bowed lyre that was once popular in Wales and in other parts of Europe, but which was largely displayed by the fiddle during the 18th century.

The word crwth from a Proto-Celtic word *krotto- (round object) and refers to a swelling or bulging out, of pregnant appearance, or a protuberance. The Irish word cruit comes from the same root and refers to small harps or lyres. The equivalent English word, which was borrowed from Welsh is crowd, which is also written crwd, crout or crouth, and in Medieval Latin such an instrument was called a chorus or crotta. The English surnames Crowder and Crowther, which mean a crowd player, and the Scottish names MacWhirter and MacWhorter also come from the same root [source].

The more common word for harp in Irish is cláirseach. In Scottish Gaelic the words cruit and clàrsach are used, with the latter being the most common, and in Manx we have claasagh and cruitçh. The Welsh word for harp is telyn, which has an equivalent in Manx – tellyn (Welsh harp). The Cornish word for harp is the same as the Welsh, and the Breton word is telenn.

Oideas Gael

By Simon

I’m having a wonderful time in Gleann Cholm Cille learning to play the harp and speaking plenty of Irish. The course is going really well – we started with basic techniques, and have learnt a number of tunes, including some from the Bóroimhe / Brian Boru suite by Michael Rooney.

I’ve videoed our teacher, Oisín Morrison, playing all the pieces we’ve learnt so far, and he’s going to give us some more pieces to learn at home.

People come here from all over the world on holiday and to do courses at Oideas Gael – this week you can do Irish language classes, harp playing, or hill walking – so there are opportunities to speak quite a few languages, including French, German, Swedish, Mandarin, Dutch and Scottish Gaelic. I’ve even learnt a bit of Serbian from a Bosnian woman who is studying Irish here.