Mar. 28th, 2014 11:22 am
Tá focal air ann
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muckefuckToday I was finally able to scratch a little lexical itch that's been nagging me for about a week. I got it in my head that there was an Irish word close to aghaidh "face" in form but with the meaning "field". But my searches were turning up nothing and I was beginning to think I'd simply imagined it. In my frustration, I commented on FB that I hated it "when the word [I'm] thinking of doesn't exist." About an hour later, I decided to attempt a search on eDIL, a dictionary primarily useful for Old and Middle Irish, and discovered achad, which I subsequently found in Ó Dónaill in the modern form achadh. Don't know how I missed it before--and I don't know why I remember it with gh except that there is some ch/gh variation between dialects (e.g. Muskerry raghaidh vs CO rachaidh). Also, /x/ is often represented with gh in anglicised forms (e.g. Erin go bragh for [Connacht] Irish Éirinn go brách).
It was interesting to me, though, that everyone who commented assumed that I was complaining about a word which "doesn't exist" in English, urging me to "invent" it, "calque it, coin it, or borrow it outright". I have no qualms about coining English words that fulfill a perceived expressive need for me, but I'm chary of doing this in languages I lack fluency in--and I'm certainly not going to do it in a situation where other common terms exist (in this case, páirc, gort, and machaire).
On the subject of Irish vocab, another Google search the other day pulled up this brief dictionary of an extinct dialect of East Cork, which the authors call "Imokilly Irish". It's interesting to compare and contrast the pronunciation and lexicon to that of my chosen dialect, West Muskerry. There's actually more agreement than I expected, particularly if you ignore two well-known local idiosyncrasies involving /l/ (i.e. /lt/ > /lh/ in Muskerry, /L/ > /ld/ in Imokilly). Imokilly also seems much more consistent when it comes to lowering /oː/ adjacent to nasals (e.g. both dialects have /nuː/ for nó, but only Imokilly has /muː/ for mó and /gnuː/ for gnó). It also seems to agree more with Connemara Irish when it comes to promoting historical datives to nominative/accusative in feminine declensions. In general, however, there's overwhelming agreement, even down to the use of nonstandard prepositional forms, such as leotha and orùm (although not roimis).
My favourite dialectal term from Imokilly so far is Sasana Nua for "United States". Literally, this means "New England", and that's the meaning assigned to it in the standard. This contrasts with Sean-Shasana for what we call "Merrie Old England" only in jest. Darná mháireach or "second morrow" for "the day after tomorrow" is also pretty choice.
It was interesting to me, though, that everyone who commented assumed that I was complaining about a word which "doesn't exist" in English, urging me to "invent" it, "calque it, coin it, or borrow it outright". I have no qualms about coining English words that fulfill a perceived expressive need for me, but I'm chary of doing this in languages I lack fluency in--and I'm certainly not going to do it in a situation where other common terms exist (in this case, páirc, gort, and machaire).
On the subject of Irish vocab, another Google search the other day pulled up this brief dictionary of an extinct dialect of East Cork, which the authors call "Imokilly Irish". It's interesting to compare and contrast the pronunciation and lexicon to that of my chosen dialect, West Muskerry. There's actually more agreement than I expected, particularly if you ignore two well-known local idiosyncrasies involving /l/ (i.e. /lt/ > /lh/ in Muskerry, /L/ > /ld/ in Imokilly). Imokilly also seems much more consistent when it comes to lowering /oː/ adjacent to nasals (e.g. both dialects have /nuː/ for nó, but only Imokilly has /muː/ for mó and /gnuː/ for gnó). It also seems to agree more with Connemara Irish when it comes to promoting historical datives to nominative/accusative in feminine declensions. In general, however, there's overwhelming agreement, even down to the use of nonstandard prepositional forms, such as leotha and orùm (although not roimis).
My favourite dialectal term from Imokilly so far is Sasana Nua for "United States". Literally, this means "New England", and that's the meaning assigned to it in the standard. This contrasts with Sean-Shasana for what we call "Merrie Old England" only in jest. Darná mháireach or "second morrow" for "the day after tomorrow" is also pretty choice.
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