The last time that a lot of people were learning Irish was the Gaelic Revival of about 1890 to 1920 and that happened because it was noticed that a whole rich fascinating world existed in Ireland, a world that the mainstream culture of money, respectability and Empire did not recognize. This other world spoke of the reality of Ireland, and reality of life together, in a gripping, stirring, mind-altering way, in ways that the mainstream did not. It offered insights, pleasures and meanings that the mainstream culture did not. The Revival was an attempt to learn a new world, and to help that world carry on into the 20th century.
People learned Irish in order to explore that other world, and in order to become better and more intensely alive people. Each issue of the Gaelic Journal, each new book of folktales or of ancient texts, carried a cargo of treasures—jewels possessing the power to help these explorers in their journey of social, cultural and self-discovery. It was a quiet revolution, and it must have been an exciting time, for some, to be alive.
Yes, the revival failed and the faded pamphlets are today embarrassing or merely quaint. The new Anglo-Irish mercantile society was more firmly entrenched in most communities in Ireland than Revivalists understood, and when some despairing Revivalists joined with left-over physical force men and staged the Easter Rebellion, the whole thing turned into a struggle for political power. Plus ca change….
The Irish language still today offers to us what it did then to those other people.
In 1911, most people above middle age in the south and west of Ireland knew Irish and possessed memories of a rich culture and oral literature. Today, as regards places where Irish is an ordinary community language and where most children speak it as their first language, there’s probably only Magheroatry/Glasserchu/Meenacladdy/Tory Island, and Rannafast (maybe....) in Donegal; and Inisheer island and Ros a Mhil and Leitir Mucu, Carraroe and maybe Rosmuc in Conamara; plus maybe ten houses at the farthest tips of the Dingle peninsula. Time draws to an end, it seems. But for a while, Irish is still here.
In 1911, most people above middle age in the south and west of Ireland knew Irish and possessed memories of a rich culture and oral literature. Today, as regards places where Irish is an ordinary community language and where most children speak it as their first language, there’s probably only Magheroatry/Glasserchu/Meenacladdy/Tory Island, and Rannafast (maybe....) in Donegal; and Inisheer island and Ros a Mhil and Leitir Mucu, Carraroe and maybe Rosmuc in Conamara; plus maybe ten houses at the farthest tips of the Dingle peninsula. Time draws to an end, it seems. But for a while, Irish is still here.
So learning Irish is pretty straightforward, right? You buy a course.
The problem is that most courses are trying to combat the image of Irish as a poor old-fashioned peasant language, and so they determinedly deal mainly with standard modern things. Many readily-available language courses are pretty much of a pattern, anyway, whether we’re talking Irish or Catalan. So we tend to get Irish reduced to common Euro-talk, and then reconstructed with a bit of cream, butter and potato. (Not all texts are like this, of course.) Plus there’s only so much that can be fit into a course book.
(Break from the lecture: Breda Keville and East Galway fiddle; best there is, dar liom! Warning; camera man was drunk or artsy though.)
Web-sites and a good bit of TG4 and print material today offer the same kind of limited Irish.
(Break from the lecture: Breda Keville and East Galway fiddle; best there is, dar liom! Warning; camera man was drunk or artsy though.)
Web-sites and a good bit of TG4 and print material today offer the same kind of limited Irish.
Take the word “aistriu”, for example. It means “translate”, right? Or maybe also “move house,” as in the proverb “Aistriu na hAoine….” So all we need to do is to memorize the word, then use it as we would use the word “translate” in English. We build sentences by substituting Irish words for English ones in the English sentences in our mind.
Aside from the fact that every language approaches things from a different angle, so that we can’t just translate from one language to another by word substitution, “aistriu” has a range of meanings that “translate” doesn’t: “To move from one place to another” (example: “Bionn coinini ag aistriu gach aon ait rompu, feachaint ca bhfaighidis glasra.”); “Take away” (example: Siol, agus na preachain a dh’aistriu.”); “To change” (example: Tha an saol aistrithe ar fad.” “Dhineas e a dh’aistriu.”); “To change” (example: Spailpini, nilid ann anois, is mor an t-aistriu ar an saol.” “Nach mo aistriu a chuireann an saol de?”)
('Tha' Deisi form of 'Ta';
Dhineas - I did.
dh'aistriu - Deisi has a practice of putting a lenited D in front of verbal nouns preceded by a possessive pronouns, all of which expresses an object. What the hell does that mean? "Dhineas e a dh'aistriu'' translates as "I did its moving; ie I moved it.")
('Tha' Deisi form of 'Ta';
Dhineas - I did.
dh'aistriu - Deisi has a practice of putting a lenited D in front of verbal nouns preceded by a possessive pronouns, all of which expresses an object. What the hell does that mean? "Dhineas e a dh'aistriu'' translates as "I did its moving; ie I moved it.")
(All these examples are from Diolaim Dheiseach, edited by Diarmaid O hAirt, Royal Irish Academy, 1988, which is a collection of words and idioms collected in County Waterford.)
So word for-word does not equal “Irish.”
A person can memorize the various senses, meanings and nuances of “aistriu” as they appear in the dictionary, and then try to remember and use them, but that’s a kind of heavy construction in the dark that shouldn’t be asked of language learners.
Lucky for you, though, I have an answer. Yes, for only $12.95 a month through PayPal, I will link you into “Gael-o-Can”, gathering real-Irish sentences and idioms from the stratosphere where they have gathered over the centuries, and beaming them into your own mind.
Well, maybe some other time.
Well, maybe some other time.
There is another way, though.
Much of the Irish published in the early 20th century was written or translated by native speakers using their dialect.
Who cares? Dialect in the U.S. and U.K. today mostly means “accent” plus a few local words. This, however, is a new development reflecting the destruction of traditional speech-communities by integration into national socio-economic systems.
But standard languages ares only dialects with an army, as someone said--the dialect of a dominant social group-- and other dialects are not ignorant perversions of the Standard. Rural English dialects, for example, developed in an unbroken line from local Anglo-Saxon and were language systems in themselves--complex structures of sound and sense integrated into an (almost) seamless whole. (“Almost” because every system changes constantly in response to inputs and perhaps to the exigencies of its own structure, and is never static.)
Today more and more people apparently find that the media can do their thinking for them, so that they don’t need a lot of words with which to distinguish the aspects of their world, or words with which to distinguish shades of meaning. Learning a foreign language tends to happen on the same pattern.
We can get by without knowing how to express “slant-wise” or “doing bits of work, then stopping” or “taking care of someone” or “sympathetic feeling” or” headfirst” or “sunrays” or “rim of a pot”. Yet one of the things that makes Irish what it is, is not only the huge number of distinctions that it makes among things, thus allowing its speaker to perceive and think more clearly (says I), but it is also the specific ways that it divides up the world. If we’re learning a language, we might as well it enter into its world, and not insist in using our phrasebooks to speak to the natives, or only eating at MacDonalds. Learning Irish can still be an adventure and way of enlarging our humanity.
Anyway, so there are all these books and texts and magazine articles from the earlier part of the 20th century, written by people to whom making the kinds of distinctions among experience that Irish allows was second nature. Most contemporary spoken and written Irish that we’ll come into contact with is a much poorer thing. The older material is a great resource for those who want to really learn the language.
Anyway, so there are all these books and texts and magazine articles from the earlier part of the 20th century, written by people to whom making the kinds of distinctions among experience that Irish allows was second nature. Most contemporary spoken and written Irish that we’ll come into contact with is a much poorer thing. The older material is a great resource for those who want to really learn the language.
So….Na Deisi.
The Decies (in English) is now generally identified with County Waterford, but that’s not really accurate. I’m using “Na Deisi” as shorthand for the Irish dialect that was spoken in County Waterford, south Tipperary, east Limerick, northeast County Cork, south Kilkenny (in many ways) and maybe even Clare, in some ways. If you look at a map, you’ll see that this is an arc of territory extending from the sea at County Waterford northwest to the sea in Clare—or to the Shannon Estuary, if we leave Clare out. South of it is the classic Munster dialect of Cork, Kerry and west Limerick. North were the poorly-known dialects of the Midlands (north Tipperary, north Kilkenny, Laois….).
Unless we live in a place where we can interact with good Irish speakers in a variety of situations every day, it’s difficult to learn Irish well.
Here we are back at the topic of books. It happens that, of all Irish dialects, Na Deisi is best and most widely represented in published material. Yes, there’s Mairtin O Cadhain for Cois Fhairrge, O Laoire and all the others for Muskerry in west Cork, the O Grianna brothers for the Rosses in Donegal, and the 421 men and women from the Dingle peninsula who wrote books, but learning Irish from those books requires that we analyze the novels and stories, compile lists of usage, idioms and words—time-consuming work.
Here we are back at the topic of books. It happens that, of all Irish dialects, Na Deisi is best and most widely represented in published material. Yes, there’s Mairtin O Cadhain for Cois Fhairrge, O Laoire and all the others for Muskerry in west Cork, the O Grianna brothers for the Rosses in Donegal, and the 421 men and women from the Dingle peninsula who wrote books, but learning Irish from those books requires that we analyze the novels and stories, compile lists of usage, idioms and words—time-consuming work.
In Na Deisi, some people have done that work already.
There are published collections of words and idioms for some other dialects, but they focus only on unusual meanings of words; ones not found in the usual dictionaries. Michael Sheehan in the early part of the 20th century set out, as part of the Revival, to record Deisi Irish in great detail in books of words and idioms. That means that we get everyday language with all its distinctions, levels of meaning and strangenesses, and not just the ‘different’ stuff. He worked mainly in An Rinn parish (Ringville) and Seana-Phobal (The Old Parish), places where Irish was still very strong at that point.
Piaras de Hindeberg continued the process in the mid-20th century, working particularly in the mountains by Mount Melleray. His collections from everyday conversations over many years with Maire Ni Chaoimh are particularly fascinating, and can be supplemented with her brothers’ published work. (His stuff is published as part of Diolaim Dheiseach.)
Irish is a very rich language, but the supple eloquence of O Griofa's language is astonishing. It might have been because of that, or just because De Valera was from neighboring Limerick, that O Griofa was selected to translate the Irish constitution into Irish.
Anyway, Clare is interesting in itself--an area of overlap of three major dialects;First, the FitzGerald lordship lands of north Kerry (including Dingle) and Limerick (southwest Clare Irish (Kilbaha, Kilkee etc,) sounded a lot like Dingle Irish); Second, the Deisi dialect; and Third, Galway.
Anyway, before the book, an amhran verse:
Ni chreidfinn o raite na sagart, an easpaig, no a dtaine de'n chleir,
na go reifeadh Dia dhom caointhaithneamh a thabhairt tamall do bhab na gcraobh;
Ce d'fheadfadh a threithe a's a maitheas a chaitheamh, a's blath a shaoil,
gan a beilin tais craorac meala a bhlaiseadh le fainne an lae?
(A translation aid....)
I wouldn't believe from the priests words, the bishop, or of crowds of clergy
that God would not forgive me for being enthralled a while by a beautiful girl.
Who could spend his abilities and vigor, and the flower of his life,
without tasting her sweet soft scarlet lips as the sun comes up?
(I will start entering fadas next week. It's a pain with this keyboard, but the language does look strange, to say the least, without them....)
And now, from Chapter Ten:
Do chuir muinntear Chuinn futhu i dtigh an aodhaire; agus ce na raibh ann ach aon-tseomra, bhi an seomra go leathan glan, agus coir tine agus beiriuchain ann. Do chaith Tomas cupla la ag cur an tighe i dtreo maireachtala; agus nuair a bhi gach ni feistithe aige, do labhair an bhean leis agus is e duirt--
"Cad dubhras leat, a Thomais?" ar sise. "Is goire cabhair De na an dorus, buiochas mor go brath leis."
Ach ni bhionn a fhios ag an meabhair is cruinne agus is eolai ar thalamh an domhain cad a bhionn beartaithe ag Dia na Gloire.
Do chuir Feargal cis mhona chuchu, agus mala pluir agus mala mor pratai; agus do thiomain abhaile chuchu an da bhuin agus an dha ghamhain agus an lao, agus duirt leo iad a scaoileadh amach ar na pairceannaibh le h-ais an tighe. Bhi go maith, go n-uige sin, go h-airithe.
Maidean an cheathru lae, ni raibh se i gcumas do Thomas eiri. Bhi greim idir a dha shlinnean air agus tocht analach. Thug a bhean faoi ndeara dath mi-litheach a bheith ina ghnaoi; ach cheap si na raibh air ach sladan a leigheasfai le teas ne leabthan. Ach d'áibig an phian agus an tocht go dti go raibh cneadach ar an bhfear mbocht; ach an uair sin fein, nior shil se, agus nior shil Maire, go raibh de bhreoiteacht air ach an sladan.
I gceann lae eile, bhi Tomas lag go leor.
"A Thomais," ar sise leis. "ce acu is mo a mhothaionn tu ort, an teas no an fuacht?"
"Teas agus tinneas, is doigh liom." ar seisean. "Ta mo chuid fola scolta, ach mar sin fein, taim ar bhaillchrith leis an bhfuacht. Is docha go raibh an t-eadach leabthan fliuch."
"Beireod braon bainne dhuit," ar sise.
"Beirbhigh," art seisean.
Nior chuir an bainne beirithe aon fheabhas air ach amhain gur thuit suan fada air ina dhiadh. Bhi tamall maith de'n oiche caite sul ar dhuisigh se. Thug si an bainne beirithe dho aris, ach nior chuir an bainne chun suain i n-ath-uair e. Do chaith se an chuid eile de'n oiche go tinn corruitheach, ag iompo agus ag cur an eadaigh de agus ag cneadail.
Ar maidin la ar n-a bhaireach, do shroich sceala a bhreoiteacht muinntear Lochlainn, agus thainig Feargal agus a mhathair a feachaint gan mhoill. Nuaoir a chonnaic Brid Ni Sheachain an riocht a raibh an fear breoite, thainig fearg uirthi le Maire.
"Is mor an naire dhuit," ar sise, "gan fios a chur orainn. No an as do cheill a bhis?"
"A Bhrid, " arsa an bhean eile, "an bhfuilir i ndairibh? An bhfuil se go dona?"
"Ni fios dom, a chuid," arsa Brid go seiomh, "ach ar eagla na heagla, cuirfimid fios ar an ndochtuir."
Muintear Chuinn - the Quinns
aodhaire - herdsman
coir tine agus beiriuchain - a means of making fire and cooking
dubhras - I said (duirt me)
dha bhuinn - two cows
paireceannaibh - dative plural of 'pairc''. Dative plural used generally still by old native speakers in Munster
thug fe ndeara - noticed
leigheasfai - would be cured
na leabhthan - genitive of leaba
mothaionn - feel
baillchrith - trembling of limbs
beireod - I will boil (beiroidh me)
corruitheach - uneasily
riocht - state
bhis - you were (bhi tu)
an bhfuilir - are you (singular) (an bhfuil tu)
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