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Mar. 31st, 2014 12:36 pm
Béarla briste
Only fifty pages of Famine left, so soon I'll be in the position to post a final review. For the nonce, I'd like to comment on O'Flaherty's use of language. At the time the Famine, Irish-speakers were still the majority in Ireland. The percentage varied, but it was highest in Connacht, where the action of the novel is set. (Even though all local placenames in the story are invented, geographical references place it in Connemara. Ireland's central plain begins just to the east of the "Black Valley" inhabited by the protagonists while the shore is less than a day's walk away and County Mayo lies less than three day's walk to the north.)
The proportion of Irish-speaking monoglots in the rural West was still rather high, but curiously there's no reference to any communication difficulties between any of the characters and various English-speaking outsiders, such as the landlord's representative or the Quakers who seek to organise a relief effort. Language is never explicitly mentioned at all, which is particularly surprising given what an emotive issue it is in Ireland generally. Perhaps this in itself is reason to avoid it in order not to distract from the central tragedy, but the author doesn't shy away from addressing other volatile political issues in the text.
But even though English is used throughout, it's not the same sort of English, which leads me to believe that O'Flaherty may be signalling which conversations take place in Irish by rendering them in Hiberno-English (the form of Irish English historically used by those whose native language was Irish). O'Flaherty himself was a fluent native speaker of Irish and also produced prose in it, so it would've been possible for him to compose these dialogues in Irish and then translate them semi-literally into English.
Of course, forms of Hiberno-English continued to be spoken by the less-educated even after Irish ceased to be the language of daily life. O'Flaherty has his peasant characters say, "The hunger is upon us!" (i.e. "Tá an t-ocras orainn!") both in the presence of their neighbours and when appealing to the kindness of foreigners. And he writes asthore (a phonetic rendering of a stór "my treasure", a common term of endearment) in contexts where one would expect the vernacular to be Irish rather than English.
Despite the apparent inconsistencies, I still find this the most satisfying explanation. It's not without its problems, though, as it exoticises the speech of the peasants to a degree which can be comic. Perhaps I should blame John Synge, who made extensive use of Hiberno-English in his works, for that association. But it's there and plays right into common stereotypes which prevent the reader from perceiving the the full humanity of the characters.
It's also a barrier to comprehension for the non-Irish reader. With the knowledge of Irish that is at me, small it be, it's little the trouble I have with the unusual syntactic constructions in it. But even I would be lost at times if not for Dolan's trusty dictionary to explain such relics as "kish" (cis "wicker basket"), "pookaun" (púcán "small open boat"), and "sorra" (alteration of sorrow, apparently corresponding in usage to Irish tubaiste).
The proportion of Irish-speaking monoglots in the rural West was still rather high, but curiously there's no reference to any communication difficulties between any of the characters and various English-speaking outsiders, such as the landlord's representative or the Quakers who seek to organise a relief effort. Language is never explicitly mentioned at all, which is particularly surprising given what an emotive issue it is in Ireland generally. Perhaps this in itself is reason to avoid it in order not to distract from the central tragedy, but the author doesn't shy away from addressing other volatile political issues in the text.
But even though English is used throughout, it's not the same sort of English, which leads me to believe that O'Flaherty may be signalling which conversations take place in Irish by rendering them in Hiberno-English (the form of Irish English historically used by those whose native language was Irish). O'Flaherty himself was a fluent native speaker of Irish and also produced prose in it, so it would've been possible for him to compose these dialogues in Irish and then translate them semi-literally into English.
Of course, forms of Hiberno-English continued to be spoken by the less-educated even after Irish ceased to be the language of daily life. O'Flaherty has his peasant characters say, "The hunger is upon us!" (i.e. "Tá an t-ocras orainn!") both in the presence of their neighbours and when appealing to the kindness of foreigners. And he writes asthore (a phonetic rendering of a stór "my treasure", a common term of endearment) in contexts where one would expect the vernacular to be Irish rather than English.
Despite the apparent inconsistencies, I still find this the most satisfying explanation. It's not without its problems, though, as it exoticises the speech of the peasants to a degree which can be comic. Perhaps I should blame John Synge, who made extensive use of Hiberno-English in his works, for that association. But it's there and plays right into common stereotypes which prevent the reader from perceiving the the full humanity of the characters.
It's also a barrier to comprehension for the non-Irish reader. With the knowledge of Irish that is at me, small it be, it's little the trouble I have with the unusual syntactic constructions in it. But even I would be lost at times if not for Dolan's trusty dictionary to explain such relics as "kish" (cis "wicker basket"), "pookaun" (púcán "small open boat"), and "sorra" (alteration of sorrow, apparently corresponding in usage to Irish tubaiste).