Hey all,

I've got someone on a friend's Facebook thread who is insisting that "grianstad" is only used for the summer solstice. FGB simply defines it as "solstice," without specifying winter or summer. Is this possibly a regional thing? She said she was told this by a professor in Irish and a Fulbright scholar, both of whom are from Gaeltachtaí, but she doesn't say which.

Redwolf

Solstice : Griantairseamh( from Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, written by Whitley Stokes) ; Winter Solstice : gamhghrianstad, Summer Solstice : samhghrianstad
The translations are from T O'Neill Lane , Enlarged English -Irish Dictionary published 1917. If anyone wants a good quality dictionary with the contemporary sayings and words I do recommend it.It has stood the passage of time very well.

Why do they think it only refers to summer when it is used with the Winter Solstice?

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I have no clue. She's some kind of "Irish Studies" student in New York, and she's rambling on about how they interpreted the summer solstice in pagan Ireland. She says she's been told this both by her professor and a Fulbright scholar who "come from Gaeltachts," but she can't tell me which Gaeltachts...only vaguely that one is somewhere near Cork and the other one "near" Donegal. I asked her the name of her professor, as I suspect I actually know him, but she hasn't been willing to tell me that information.

She also hasn't said that either of them are native speakers and, as we all know, just coming from a Gaeltacht these days doesn't necessarily imply that one is a native speaker, alas.

I don't know if she's trying to enforce a historical usage that's no longer relevant in the contemporary language or if she's just misinterpreted something her teacher told her, but either way, it's a bit irritating!

Redwolf

Mmmm -when a native speaker says that such and such a word or phrase is not used in context 'X', they are most often correct, but when someone says something to do with 'meta usage' and over something used for at least 1500 years (and we know more), then counter examples are always going to exist, even if we don't have the records to show it (but which we have in this instance)

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I wouldn't have minded if she'd said something like "historically 'grianstad' was only used for the summer solstice" -- I would have filed that mentally as something interesting to check out one of these days -- but what she said was "grianstad IS only used for the summer solstice," got very condescending when I suggested that such a limitation on the word could be a dialect thing ("it's fun to learn something new!" were her words, with the implication that she was teaching me "something new"), and then called me "pretentious" when I addressed her in Irish (and has yet to respond to ME in Irish). So now I've gone from being mildly irritated at being corrected about a definition that I happen to know is correct in Contemporary Irish to being seriously pissed off. I don't mind being corrected when I'm wrong, but this is way over the top.

Interestingly, this all came about when I commented on a friend's post about the origin of the English word "solstice," which, like the Irish "grianstad," came from "sun stop" or "sun stand." All I said was that "grianstad" taken literally means the same thing and then boom! It's world war III with one of her other friends.

Redwolf

The sun shines into Newgrange during the Winter solstice, not Summer. So the shortest day of the year was more important to them. And as fair as I know Lúnasa was the big summer festival so that is after the Summer solistice. Although we do have Lá tSin Sheáin near the Summer event alright.

Some things seem to be coming clearer. The woman has no Irish at all on her Facebook page and, according to a friend of mine who is a professor, a major in "Irish Studies" doesn't mean that the student speaks, or has any intention of learning, the Irish language. Explains why she didn't even try to address me in Irish after I'd posted...she probably had no idea what I said, let alone how to respond! And she called ME "pretentious"! May also explain why she hasn't posted since I mentioned I'd been studying Irish for 12 years.

Her fascination with "Irish Studies" appears to be rooted in an interest in paganism.

Redwolf

Yeah...I remember being surprised the first time I was there, when the bonfires were lit after the solstice (they were burning all around the glen in GCC...spectacular!). Wasn't until I got home that I realized it was St. John's Eve!

Redwolf

Pity we don't get native speaking linguists here, then

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