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Ainmneacha teangacha, or, A tangle of tongues
Last night, I was exploring the world of Irish language names. To my surprise, the default ending is -(a)is, which looks suspiciously close to English -ish. (On the other hand, its Welsh counterpart, -eg, is equally suspiciously close to Latin -ica, so maybe there simply wasn't a handy Common Celtic alternative.) My dictionary lists language names close to gentilics so I was a little thrown by apparent random allomorphic variation--why Polannach/Polainnis but Bascach/Bascais?--until I realised that the adjective ending -ach makes slender endings broad. So in the first case the root is an Pholainn "Poland", which takes the slender allomorph -is. However, there is no *an Bhaisc; the nation is called Tír Bhascach "Basque Country" so the ending stays broad. So far, I've found only one exception: Vítneam > Vítneaimis, although Vítneamais does appear to be an accepted variant.
Normally, smaller dictionaries only include names for the biggie languages (if they include any such terms at all rather than relegating them to an appendix or excluding them altogether), so it's a bit surprising to see that the authors of mine have endeavoured to provide names for most anything the average educated European has heard of (e.g. Vítneaimis isn't listed, but Vallúnais "Walloon" is; strike a blow for ERML solidarity!). This has resulted in the coinage of a number of neologisms, with sometimes confusing results. For instance, the following are the names of three distinct languages; can you tell me which is which?
BTW, in Irish, you don't "know" a language, you "have" it. But since Irish is one of those languages without a word for "have", the actual way to say, for instance, "I know German" is Tá Gearmáinis agam, lit. "Is German at-me". To specify the degree, you modify the language name, e.g. Gearmáinis líofa "fluent German". For "bad", there is the special prefix droch-, e.g. drochPhuinseaibis "bad Punjabi", but a much more colourful way to express this (and what's the point of learning Irish if it can't be colourful?) is Níl ach Puinseaibis a chodail amuigh agam "Isn't but Punjabi which slept outside at-me".
Normally, smaller dictionaries only include names for the biggie languages (if they include any such terms at all rather than relegating them to an appendix or excluding them altogether), so it's a bit surprising to see that the authors of mine have endeavoured to provide names for most anything the average educated European has heard of (e.g. Vítneaimis isn't listed, but Vallúnais "Walloon" is; strike a blow for ERML solidarity!). This has resulted in the coinage of a number of neologisms, with sometimes confusing results. For instance, the following are the names of three distinct languages; can you tell me which is which?
- Romainis
- Rómainis
- Rómáinis
BTW, in Irish, you don't "know" a language, you "have" it. But since Irish is one of those languages without a word for "have", the actual way to say, for instance, "I know German" is Tá Gearmáinis agam, lit. "Is German at-me". To specify the degree, you modify the language name, e.g. Gearmáinis líofa "fluent German". For "bad", there is the special prefix droch-, e.g. drochPhuinseaibis "bad Punjabi", but a much more colourful way to express this (and what's the point of learning Irish if it can't be colourful?) is Níl ach Puinseaibis a chodail amuigh agam "Isn't but Punjabi which slept outside at-me".
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1. Romainis : Either Latin or Romansch
2. Rómainis : Romany
3. Rómáinis : Romanian
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