Dear all,

I am new in your group. I am a Dutch citizen, living in The Hague. One of my hobbies is: making elaborate travel journals of summer holidays, spent with my wife and children. In these travel journals I pay a lot of attention to the language of the country I just visited (if the language is not too familiar). That's because linguistics are more or less a hobby too.

In July I visited Kerry, Clare and Dublin. Ireland and the Irish language were completely new for me. But now, working on the first pages of the 2017 journal, I am starting to understand a little bit more of your complicated language, thanks to the dictionaries and especially the grammars I bought, and thanks to some beautiful websites.

Here comes my first question.

On http://www.logainm.ie the Irish place name Baile an Sceilg is translated as: 'the town(land) of An Sceilg'. I know the meaning of the three words. That's not what my question is about. What bothers me is that I do not understand which construction or word causes the possessive meaning, represented in the translation by the word 'of'. Am I right that there is no genitive in this three words? Am I right that there is no preposition? Is it the magic of the word 'an'? If so, could somebody explain that magic to me?

Thanks in advance. Kind regards.

Gert Haverkate

In the dictionary, the genitive of sceilg is sceilge, and sceilg is feminine in grammatical gender, so it should theoretically be Baile na Sceilge ("town of the crag"). Irish has several dialects, however, and sometimes a word which is feminine on one dialect is treated as masculine in another dialect, so that might be happening here (there are some more fluent speakers on the forum who may know). Still, even if the word were treated as masculine in gender, it should be Baile an Sceilge. The only thing I can surmise is that sceilg as a genitive form might also be dialectical. One of the various ways to put a word into the genitive is to add an "i" near the end, like the "i" in sceilg, so it might be seen dialectically as being the same in the nominative and the genitive. That's just a guess, though.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Although Caoimhín has discussed some possible explanations, I think the more likely explanation is that logainm.ie is wrong. That website can be helpful and interesting but is filled with many obvious errors. There are thousands of places included and they have not been properly reviewed. I am not sure if it is human or computer error, but sometimes the Irish version may seem plausible but is actually completely wrong. If accuracy is important, I advise against using the site.

A more reliable source of placenames in Irish could be dúchas.ie, which is a folklore database of writings collected from each townland. If there are any books in Irish for a particular place, they will have that place's name written in them. Since the people who live there will have written it, it will almost always be right.

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ЯГОН ТОҶИК НЕСТ ИНҶО???

Well it looks like I was wrong!
https://www.duchas.ie/ga/cbes/4742136
^^ it seems that Baile an Sceilg is indeed the correct Irish version of the name

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ЯГОН ТОҶИК НЕСТ ИНҶО???

I asked this very question a few years ago. According to Lon Dubh, "Baile na Sceilge" is the correct name. He has books from writers from there referring to it as such,

http://irishlanguageforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3603

Nach ait an rud é sin
Léigh mé a scríobh an Lon Dubh

Ach ar dúchas.ie feictear go bhfuil ainm na háite scríofa ag a muintir mar "Baile 'n Sgeilg"
https://www.duchas.ie/ga/cbes/4742136/4739420


I would also point out that in Ó Dónaill there is supposedly a dialect form of Sceilg which is "scealg" and is masculine. Most likely what is going on here.

This leaves the question whether a dated dialect form could be considered part of the correct name today. The answer is probably no, at least in the CO

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ЯГОН ТОҶИК НЕСТ ИНҶО???

Thank you all for your reactions to my question about the Irish 'original' of Ballinskelligs.

The mere fact that there is so much discussion possible about this single Irish place name makes me wonder wether there is any governmental concern with this issue. Or is everybody free to spell these names as he likes it? If, like Gumbi says, 'Baile na Sceilge' is the correct name (italics added), then why does the Kerry County Council use 'Baile an Sceilg' and why does the National Mapping Agency of the Ordnance Survey Ireland use 'Baile an Sceilge'?

(By the way, the NMA/OSI gives 'Bá na Scealg' for the bay. Is that an acceptable variation of Gumbi's 'na Sceilge'?)

And to Cúmhai I say: still no Tajik in the house. I'm sorry: I am Dutch.

Regards.

I am not Irish. But my impression is that, as with all issues relating to Irish, the Irish government makes token efforts but really can't be bothered to spend enough money to really do anything. That is capitalist democracy for you. If Ireland were a fascist dictatorship they would have resolved it decades ago. But... it's not. And that's almost certainly a good thing.

аммо забони тоҷикиро медонед ака? ёкӣ ақалан хондаш метонед. офарин! Тоҷикистонда ягон бор набудед? форидай ку?

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ЯГОН ТОҶИК НЕСТ ИНҶО???

I think it is not actually uncommon. For example, there is a town that the government (and road signs) refer to as "Cill Chartaigh", but all of the local people call the town "Cill Charta" when speaking Irish.

I did a good bit of digging a while after Gumbi's original question.

The original name of the town was "Baile na Sgealg", genitive plural, "Town of the Crags". However there seems to be a main crag, hence certain features were named after this, giving plenty of "X na Sceilge". People began to not know if it was "CragW or "Crags", so around the turn of the century you'd see "na Sceilge" as well. A few organisations in the town have "na Sceilge" today (e.g. some facebook pages)

I've been told young people started to say "An Sceilg" in the 1920s, so quite a while ago, but usage is quite inconsistent, because they'll say "An Sceilg" for the town, but "na Sceilge" for everything else, e.g. "Cliathán na Sceilge", a novel from the area. This usage is ungrammatical, even within the local dialect, so there must have been some confusion of forms.

I hope to go down there next year and ask more. My suspicion is that "Baile an Sceilg" arose from a combination of thinking there was only one crag (which is what caused the "na Sceilge" form") with a memory of "Scealg" being in the word, i.e. "there's only one crag but Dad didn't say Sceilge"

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal