Posts tagged with "dó"

Cineálacha Sneachta: Kinds of Snow

Posted by róislín 2 Comments
Feb 8 2010

As a tribute to the amount of snow that fell over the weekend ar chósta thoir na Stát Aontaithe, and, I suppose, as a belated tribute to the amount that fell in Éirinn i mí Eanáir, let’s talk about some of the ways it can fall or accumulate.

 

The most basic statement would be:

 

Tá sé ag cur sneachta.  It’s snowing, lit. It is “putting” snow. 

 

That verb “cur” (putting) is used for other forms of precipitation as well, as in “Tá sé ag cur fearthainne” or “Tá sé ag cur báistí” (both meaning “It’s raining”) and “Tá sé ag cur seaca” (It’s freezing).   

 

Other forms of snow are:

 

caidhleadh sneachta [KAL-yeh …] , a blizzard, from the verb “cadhail” (“pile” or “twist” in general, “drive” regarding “snow”)

 

flichshneachta [FLIH-HNAKH-tuh, the first “c” and the “s” are silent], sleet, from “fliuch” (wet) + “sneachta”

 

greallach sneachta, slush, from “greallach” (mire, puddle)

 

One of my favorite phrases in Irish is “muc shneachta.”  For those of you who know your domestic animals in Irish, yes, you read that right.  It means a “snow drift” but literally it is “pig of snow.”  For the plural, muca sneachta, you lose the first “h” in “shneachta,” following the standard pattern for feminine plural nouns (cf. fuinneog mhór, a big window, but fuinneoga móra, big windows)

 

I just learned a new term in English, thundersnow, for which I can’t find any Irish equivalent.  But, múineann gá seift, and we could always improvise with a beautifully long word like *toirneachshneachta [TIR-nukh-HNAKH-tuh] with no fleiscín (hyphen), as per the current rules of modern Irish punctuation.  Or we could go for the genitive and say “sneachta toirní” (lit. snow of thunder, on analogy with “stoirm thoirní,” thunderstorm, using “toirní,” the genitive case of “toirneach”).  Apparently that’s what some areas received this weekend. 

 

Beautiful as the tírdhreach sneachtúil may be, it can always present the danger of dó seaca (frostbite).  “Dó” literally means “burning” and is a completely different word here from “dó,” the number “two.”  There are two ways to say the adjective form, frostbitten, “dóite ag an sioc” and “siocdhóite.”  So, in Irish, the frost “burns” instead of “bites.” 

 

How many of these snow-related phrases can you figure out: daille shneachta, plúirín sneachta, liopard sneachta, fear sneachta, and liathróid shneachta?  If, as you work through them, you wonder why some say “shneachta” and others say “sneachta,” it’s because some are grammatically feminine.  “Daille,” blindness, follows many abstract nouns in being feminine (like áille, gile, etc.).  As for why “liathróid” (ball) is feminine, there’s no apparent reason.  It’s just a feature of Irish, like most Indo-European languages except English, that nouns have grammatical gender.  Every noun is either masculine or feminine, except for a handful of genderless nouns referred to in Irish grammar as “substantives.”  Most of these are limited to use in set or fixed phrases today, like “féidir” in “Is féidir liom” (I can).  So, from the group above, the “snowdrop” (flower), “snow leopard,” and (logically enough) “snowman” are all masculine.  Now that you have all five translations, you can probably match which one goes with which Irish phrase. 

 

Nótaí: gá [gaw] need, necessity; seift [sheft] plan (here “invention,” which should help you translate this phrase into the familiar proverb).  “Seaca” [SHAK-uh] is the possessive (genitive) form of “sioc” ([shuk] frost).  Even though phrases like “ag cur seaca” or “dó seaca” don’t involve possession in the sense of ownership, they are still required, in Irish, to be in the genitive case, which typically marks possession.  So you can think of these, very literally, as “at frost’s putting” (at the putting of frost) and “frost’s burning.” 

 

 

 

 

 

An Bliosán Gréine (Jerusalem Artichoke): Ainm Contráilte i mBéarla ach “Neamhchontráilte” i nGaeilge (An English Misnomer but Irish “Non-Misnomer”)

Posted by róislín 6 Comments
May 25 2009

Tamaillín ó shin (a little while ago, May 6 to be specific), I hinted at a discussion of the term “Jerusalem artichoke” in Irish.  And why not?  It’s suimiúil (interesting) on several counts: “luibheolaíocht” (botany), “logainmníocht” (toponymy), “sanasaíocht” and “bréagshanasaíocht” (etymology and pseudo-etymology), “cócaireacht” (cooking), and “eolas contráilte”(misinformation), to name just a few.

 

You may recall that the key to understanding “Jerusalem artichoke,” the English name of the plant Helianthus tuberosus, is the Italian word “girasole” (turning toward the sun, heliotropic).  It has nothing to do with Jerusalem, which, if it were part of the phrase, would be “Iarúsailéim.”  So, if we look at the word’s history, its sanasaíocht, or in this case, bréagshanasaíocht, we find that the “girasole” element eventually became Jerusalem, through similarity of sound and the fact that so many plant and animal species are, in fact, named after geographic locations, accurate or not.  Stranger things have been known to happen, soundwise, like “sparrowgrass” for “asparagus,” or toponymically, as in Philadelphia Cream Cheese, which originated in New York, or “Panama hats,” which are traditionally made in Ecuador. 

 

Whether the plant actually turns to the sun or not, I will not question here, not being a luibheolaí (botanist), but if anyone can vouch for the plant’s héileatrópacht (heliotropism), I’d be interested to hear about it.   Or maybe we should ask the aptly named character, Miss Heliotrope, from the children’s book, The Little White Horse, which is one of my all-time favorites, and to judge from her recent endorsement, one of J. K. Rowling’s childhood favorites also.  Of course, Miss Heliotrope’s name comes from the color of her nose, which matches the color of the heliotrope flower, and not from any sun-turning propensities, but, sin Á.B.E.

 

Irish, I’m pleased to say, drops the ainm contráilte (misnomer) and simply uses “bliosán gréine” (sun artichoke) for H. tuberosus.  We’re still left with calling this sunflower an “artichoke” but that much seems irreversible.  Apparently its root is edible and tastes something like artichoke, hence the connection.  Can’t say I’ve ever tried it though.  Agus tusa?  Ar ith tú fréamh bliosán gréine riamh? (And yourself?  Ever eat Jerusalem artichoke root?).  If so, I’d be interested to know how it was prepared and I’m sure other readers would be interested too.  That might even help us work on one particularly ambiguous bit of Irish vocabulary, the verb “bruith,” which can mean to boil, bake, broil, grill, or become burnt, usually from the sun, not culinarily, which would typically use the verb “dó” (to burn).  So that’s our cócaireacht connection. 

 

The globe artichoke (Cynara cardunculus), the plant we normally eat, is actually member of the feochadán (thistle) family.  Thistles and their Celtic connections could easily occupy a full blog, so I’ll save that for blag éigin eile. 

 

Pronunciation tip:

sanasaíocht: SAHN-uss-ee-ukht; the “kh” here represents the guttural “ch” sound, like German has in “Buch” or “Achtung” and as in the word “Chutzpah.”

bréagshanasaíocht: remember the “bréag” (false) part is a prefix, which softens or “lenites” the initial “s” of sanasaíocht to “sh,” and that means that the original initial “s” is not pronounced at all!  The “sh” sound in Irish is pronounced like an “h,” so here we have BRAYG-HAHN-uss-ee-ukht.  You may have learned that the first syllable is stressed in pronouncing Irish words, which is true, but the rule changes for compound words.  They typically have equal stress on the prefix and the first syllable, which I indicate here with ceannlitreacha (capital letters). 

 

You can also see this pronunciation rule for prefixes in effect in words like “seanchapall” (old horse), which would be represented as SHAN-KHAHP-ull, with the first two syllables having equal emphasis.  More examples of that later, i mblag eile, if you let me know that “comhfhocail” (compound words) are of particular interest.  Bhur mblagálaí – Róislín

As Easy as “a hAon, a Dó, a Trí” – Na Maoluimhreacha i nGaeilge

Posted by róislín No Comments
Mar 19 2009

Quite a few of the basic Irish numbers from one to ten are recognizable if you know at least one other European language. In each case, the actual number is preceded by the single letter “a,” which here is the numerical particle. It has no actual meaning. It simply indicates that a “maoluimhir” (independent number) is coming up. It’s unstressed in pronunciation, like the “a” in English “about.”

 

The term “maoluimhir” in Irish refers to numbers not directly followed by a noun. “Maoluimhreacha” (plural) are used in telling time, phone numbers, arithmetic problems when spoken aloud, countdowns, bus or train routes, the abbreviation TG4 for the Irish language TV, raffle tickets, and bingo. We’ll eventually learn other forms of numbers for counting objects and people.

 

Seo iad na maoluimhreacha (here are the independent numbers):

 

a haon: Think of “un” or “uno.” Always be prepared for lots of vowel change when looking for European parallels to Irish words. Vowel change happens in many words that really are related, like Irish “tír” (land) and Italian “tèrra” (land).

 

But of course, it’s not just vowel change here. The basic number is “aon.” The numerical particle “a” causes the letter “h” to be prefixed, making “aon” look a lot less like “un/uno.” In capitalized words, like titles, the “h” remains lower case and “aon” is capitalized, as you can see in “teideal an bhlag seo” (the title of this blog). Before the streamlining of Irish spelling and punctuation which started in the 1950s, this used to be written “a h-aon” and I think it’s still useful today to recall that, since it indicates more clearly that the “h” is a prefix.

a dó: Not too far from “two,” “deux,” or “dos,” or even Hindi “do” (yes, Hindi is related because it’s Indo-European). Examples include “RTÉ a Dó” (an Irish television station) and “Séamas a Dó” (James II)

a trí: Not unlike “three,” “trois,” “tre,” “tres,” or “drie.” You could use this to indicate the region known as “Dublin 3,” which would be “Baile Átha Cliath a Trí” if spoken aloud. And by the way, only Dublin has post codes in the Republic of Ireland; so far, the rest of the Republic of Ireland manages with just the actual place names.  Post codes are used in the north of Ireland (as part of the UK post code system).

a ceathair: “quatre,” anyone? Example: “TG4,” spoken as “tee-gee a ceathair,” TG standing for Teilifís Gaeilge.

a cúig: Admittedly a stretch from “five” but think “cinq” or “cinco.” Example: iarann a cúig (a five iron in golf)

a sé: A near match to Esperanto “ses,” not to mention “sis” or Bulgarian “shest.” Very prevalent in Irish in the phrase “Nuacht a Sé” (the six o’clock news)

 

a seacht: Think “sette” or “siete,” and listen next time you go to an Irish dance lesson. Even if most of the instruction is in English, the basic footwork sequence of “sevens” and “threes” is often taught in Irish: A haon, a dó, a trí, a ceathair, a cúig, a sé, a seacht, A haon, a dó, a trí, Is a dó, a dó, a trí.” Those “a’s” really get swallowed here!

a hocht: Change just the first three letters and you’ve got the English equivalent, eight. Other languages follow suit: Italian and Norwegian “otto” and German “acht.” The Group of Eight (G8) in Irish? Usually written as G8 in Irish, which uses the same first letter, but said as “Grúpa a hOcht.” The “h” is inserted here for the same reason as with the number “one”: numerical particle “a” + h + number that happens to begin with a vowel.

 

a naoi: Swedish “nio” or Danish “ni,” mar shampla (for example). Example: “tairseach a naoi” (the 9 o’clock watershed, in broadcasting).

a deich: Think “decimal,” “deciliter,” or even “decimate” (the latter originally meant killing every tenth soldier if there had been a transgression). Example: spásáil chéim a deich? Hint: means the same as “spásáil phíoca” (pica spacing, in computese). Got it? Ten-pitch spacing!

Sin é! That’s it! A haon go dtí a deich as Gaeilge! One to ten in Irish!

Bhur mblagálaí, Róislín

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