Jan. 20th, 2012 12:31 pm
Deighilte ag comhtheanga
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muckefuckLooks like I'm sliding back into the study of Irish again. A little earlier than most years, but that's all to the good, since I have my work cut out for me trying to make it through the book of Irish short stories ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu gifted me with at Christmas. Half an hour on the first page of the first one and I think I understand that there is a small child playing on the carpet.
To make it all a bit more interesting, I'm playing around with a recent (2003) edition of Teach Yourself Gaelic I picked up sometime over the past year or so. It never ceases to surprise me how different idiomatic expressions can be in the two languages despite their closeness. For instance, the way Robertson and Taylor teach you to say, "What is your name?" is Dè 'n t-ainm a tha ort? Literally, this is "What be the name that is on you?" An equally literal Munster Irish equivalent would be Cad í an ainm a tá ort?. Now, I'm only guessing, since I'm not a fluent speaker, but I suspect this might be interpreted as "What's your reputation?" since overall Munster is pretty clear about the is/tá distinction (parallel to the ser/estar distinction of Ibero-Romance).
The actual native Munster idiom for "What is your name?" is Cad is ainm duit? ("What be [a] name to you?"). But travel north to Ulster and the idiom there is the equivalent of the Gaelic, i.e. Cad é an t-ainm atá ort? But there are other equally striking examples. For "A person can get used to anything", Dillon and Ó Cróinín give Téitear i dtaithí ar gach rud [leis an aimsir] (the bracketed phrase means "with time"), using an autonomous form of the verb téigh "come" that I reckon would strike a lot of speakers as literary. In TY Gaelic, this is given as Fàsaidh duine cleachdte ri rud am bith (lit. "A person grows accustomed to anything"); only rud "thing" is common to both versions. Again, I suspect an Ulster equivalent would be closer, since cleachta exists in Irish as well.
monshu gifted me with at Christmas. Half an hour on the first page of the first one and I think I understand that there is a small child playing on the carpet.To make it all a bit more interesting, I'm playing around with a recent (2003) edition of Teach Yourself Gaelic I picked up sometime over the past year or so. It never ceases to surprise me how different idiomatic expressions can be in the two languages despite their closeness. For instance, the way Robertson and Taylor teach you to say, "What is your name?" is Dè 'n t-ainm a tha ort? Literally, this is "What be the name that is on you?" An equally literal Munster Irish equivalent would be Cad í an ainm a tá ort?. Now, I'm only guessing, since I'm not a fluent speaker, but I suspect this might be interpreted as "What's your reputation?" since overall Munster is pretty clear about the is/tá distinction (parallel to the ser/estar distinction of Ibero-Romance).
The actual native Munster idiom for "What is your name?" is Cad is ainm duit? ("What be [a] name to you?"). But travel north to Ulster and the idiom there is the equivalent of the Gaelic, i.e. Cad é an t-ainm atá ort? But there are other equally striking examples. For "A person can get used to anything", Dillon and Ó Cróinín give Téitear i dtaithí ar gach rud [leis an aimsir] (the bracketed phrase means "with time"), using an autonomous form of the verb téigh "come" that I reckon would strike a lot of speakers as literary. In TY Gaelic, this is given as Fàsaidh duine cleachdte ri rud am bith (lit. "A person grows accustomed to anything"); only rud "thing" is common to both versions. Again, I suspect an Ulster equivalent would be closer, since cleachta exists in Irish as well.
Tags: