Thank you AnBraonach. I don't see how i could have provoked these kind of responses unless asking questions and discussing things is against the linguistic religion these guys are trying to defend.
I came here because i was hoping that i can get help in analyzing some words and expressions for which you can not find any or you can find conflicting etymologies and roots. I was hoping that presence of native Gaelic speakers with knowledge of old and middle Irish would help.
I am originally from Serbia, but have been living in Dublin for last 20 years. I am married to a Cork woman who hates Gaelic (she blames the Irish school system and Peg) and who can't understand why i waste my days reading Irish dictionaries and old manuscripts. My son is learning Irish in school, and good luck to him. I myself have no particular interest in learning contemporary Irish language. Didn't need it so far, and will need it even less in the future, considering how many Irish people speak it and how much they care to preserve it. Speaking it in public in Dublin might cause you go get abused and have things like "go back to wherever you came from..." shouted at you, as happened to some Irish girls few years ago on O'Connell street when they were speaking Gaelic to each other (they posted it on
http://www.overheardindublin.com/)
After all the studying i have done, i believe that Irish is a composite language, hiding barber, Slavic and Germanic nuggets in its Gaelic bedrock. I am even convinced that up until the early medieval time, there were few languages spoken in Ireland of which only Gaelic now survives as a language of the victors in the last taking of Ireland by Ui Neill. There are archaeological "hints" (i don't want to call them evidence yet) that a substantial Germanic and even Balto Slavic population might have lived in Ireland well before the 9th century and the first mention of the Vikings. But if the archaeology is still inconclusive, the language is clearly showing traces of these now assimilated people. And genetics is confirming this too. We now know that Cruithneaigh were I2 people and not R1b like most of today's Irish, clear sign of the south Baltic population residing in Scotland and north east of Ireland in early medieval time.
Anyway, that is enough about me.
Now to answer some of the Domhnaillín's questions:
Quote:
Does it (gar do) even exist in Old Irish?
Yes it does.
Quote:
Are there parallel expressions in Welsh or Gaulish?
What would that prove or disprove?
but here is welsh example
Welsh
Preposition
ger
next to.
Irish had completely different influences from both Welsh and Gaulish. Irish had their Fomorians and their linguistic and cultural influence.
Quote:
The race are known as the Fomoire or Fomoiri, names that are often Anglicised as Fomorians, Fomors or Fomori. Later in Middle Irish they are also known as the Fomóraiġ. The etymology of the name Fomoire (plural) has been cause for some debate. Medieval Irish scholars thought the name contained the element muire "sea", owing to their reputation as sea pirates.[1] In 1888, John Rhys was the first to suggest that it is an Old Irish word composed of fo "under/below" and muire "sea", concluding that it may refer to beings whose (original) habitat is under the sea.[2] Observing two instances of the early genitive form fomra, Kuno Meyer arrives at the same etymology, but takes it to refer to land by the sea.[3] Whitley Stokes and Rudolf Thurneysen, on the other hand, prefer to connect the second element *mor with a supposed Old English cognate mara "mare" (which survives today in the English word night-mare).[4][5] Building on these hypotheses, Marie-Louise Sjoestedt interprets the combination of fo and the root *mor as a compound meaning "inferior" or "latent demons".[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FomoriansAgain the medieval irish were right, as Fomori is actually Pomori, and Fomorian is actually Pomorian - which in Slavic languages means coastal people, people who live by the sea, sea pirates...South Baltic pirates were famous during late iron age and all the way to the "Viking" time when they manned most of the invasion fleet that created Danelaw. And againg today we think we know more than the contemporaries and are inventing demonic mumbo jumbo...
Quote:
Pomerania in all languages is derived from Old Slavic po, meaning "by/next to/along", and more, meaning "sea", thus "Pomerania" is literally "seacoast", referring to its proximity to the Baltic Sea.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PomeraniaQuote:
It is not possible. We already know what the etymology of gard, gord, etc. is. It's PIE *ǵʰortós from a root *ǵʰer- meaning "enclose". This etymology is the work of countless scholars applying a rigid methodology for nearly two centuries; you're not going to improve on it with fifteen minutes of Googling and looking for sound-alike words in a couple of dictionaries.
This is not in contradiction to what i said, it just confirms it. How did people in the early "Celtic" central Europe enclose their towns where they lived close together? With wooden palisades made from sharpened wooden poles. And these wooden poles were called Ga, Gar, Ger, and they were tall, ard, and they were on top of hills, they were elevated, again ard, and they were guarded by people with spears (sharpened sticks) called ga, gar, ger...
So does the verb ǵʰer mean to enclose or to surround with gers, gars, gas, spears, sharpened wooden poles?
Quote:
From Middle English gar, gare, gere, gore, from Old English gār (“spear, dart, javelin, shaft, arrow, weapon, arms”), from Proto-Germanic *gaizaz (“spear, pike, javelin”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰayso- (“pointed stick, spear”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰey- (“to drive, move, fling”). Cognate with West Frisian gear, Dutch geer (“pointed weapon, spear”), German Ger (“spear”), Norwegian geir (“spear”), Icelandic geir (“spear”). Related to gore.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/garQuote:
The pre-migration term reported by Tacitus is framea, who identifies it as "hasta"; The native term for "javelin, spear" was Old High German gêr, Old English gâr, Old Norse geirr, apparently from Proto-Germanic *gaizaz. The names Gaiseric, Radagaisus indicate Gothic gaisu besides gairu.
Latin gaesum, gaesus Greek γαῖσον was the term for the lance of the Gauls. Avestan has gaêçu "lance bearer" as a likely cognate. The Celtic word is found e.g. in the name of the Gaesatae. Old Irish has gae "spear". Proto-Germanic *gaizaz would derive from PIE *ghaisos, although loan from Celtic has also been considered, in which case the PIE form would be *gaisos. Pokorny has *g'haisos (with a palatal velar aspirate), discounting the Avestan form in favour of (tentatively) comparing Sanskrit hḗṣas- "projectile".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period_spearSo...
Quote:
Seems you're only interested in it as something to comb dictionaries for to find chance resemblances to words in your native language. You don't need a forum for that.
Maybe you should do more of this yourself...As Dr. Seuss once said: You may like it, yes you may. Try it and you may i say.
