Sliabh na mBan bhFionn.

An Cionnfhaolach · **Joined:** Fri 09 Mar 2012 6:16 pm **Posts:** 1527

Thanks for that an Lon Dub :good:

, I'll have a better look tomorrow when I have time.

WeeFalorieMan · **Posted:** Sat 10 Aug 2013 6:03 pm

I just finished Cuid a ceathair déag – the final part of Sliabh na mBan bhFionn!

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, this is very important to me. Like many (most?) Irish folk-tales, this story has no English translation, and I think it's a privilege to be able to read such an old folk-tale in the original language. Stories like this, show that the Irish language does matter and merits all of the hard work that I've been putting in for the past few years, trying to learn this great language. Thanks Lon Dubh, for the detailed notes and for answering my annoying questions. Thanks David Webb for your Herculean efforts at the Cork Irish web-site. And thanks to everybody who took the time to help me out with this – Bríd Mhór, An Cionnfhaolach, Breandán, Errigal – as long as there are people like you all, the Irish language will never die.

A Loin Dhuibh, please let me know if you would like to work on another story, or maybe a collection of stories. You once mentioned that An Craos-Deamhan was a possibility.

Well, I'm off to go celebrate now. :party:

An Cionnfhaolach · **Joined:** Fri 09 Mar 2012 6:16 pm **Posts:** 1527

An Lon Dubh wrote:

Quote:

also, wasn’t that what you were on about earlier, when you PMed me. I think you were saying that Munster Irish tries to make the foirceann of this tense, in the Céasta, broad, even if it should be slender?

Exactly, the foirceann doesn't match the ending of the root regarding broad/slender quality.

seems to be a common trait in Munster Irish as awhole, as you were saying.

An Lon Dubh wrote:

Past Subjunctive:

Quote:

Just so I understand, in Ring do you have:

Do glantá - Habitual past - you used to clean
Dá nglanthá - Past subjunctive - If you were to clean

Yep

Fascinating!

Yes, but the usual second person conditional is also (do) ghlánthá, probably due to the subjunctive and conditional colliding with each other; more so than any possible distinction between the past subjunctive and the conditional.

An Lon Dubh wrote:

Quote:

Interesting, has the conditional overtaken the past subjunctive after “dá” as well in Kerry, do you know?

Yes, Diarmuid Ó Sé's monograph on Kerry Irish doesn't mention the past subjunctive and for example none of the writer Maidhc
Dainín Ó Sé's books use it. On an anecdotal level, I've never heard it.

Yeah, unfortunately I'd say it has disappeared in all sub-dialects.

An Lon Dubh wrote:

Quote:

It is difficult to say “ag cur shuime” (suim pronounced like the “Sim” in the first name Simon in English)

The "big" difference between West Munster and the Déise is this phonetic feature, that with the loss tense L,N and R, West Munster lengthened some vowels, where as the Déise turned them into diphthongs.

Loss of tense L, N and R could you give an example of that? I've never heard of that. Another defining aspect of Déise Irish is its nasalising quality, which I quite like.

An Lon Dubh wrote:

To be honest, personal speculation, I suspect that calling them both "Munster Irish" is just an artefact of the way Irish is now. Probably if Leinster Irish was still around, you would have just a continuum with Déise Irish equally close to the Irish of Carlow as it is to Kerry Irish.

Yeah, Irish would have been much more like a woven tapestry with difference blending into each other to create a different shade of the same colour. Clare Irish (i.e. Stiofán Ó hEaloire) is an excellent example of this as you can see a beautiful mixture of Conamara and Munster Irish.

An Lon Dubh wrote:

By the way isn't it interesting that Amhlaoibh's Irish is far less conservative than Cork/Kerry/Déise Irish today? He often doesn't use the genitive, rarely uses the genitive plural, often has adjectives in the singular after plural nouns. Reminds me more of old fashioned Conamara Irish grammatically, even though the pronunciation would have been Déise-like.

Yeah, far less conservative, its funny really. Amhlaoibh would have been very aware of "correct" Irish as well, as he had access to manuscripts and wrote "correctly" whenever the occasion or the literature in question required it. It begs the question whether Amhlaoibh's "informal" use of the language was a reflection of the naturally developed language of the time; or the apparent meath na teangan and language shift crises. Though if Conamara Irish used to have the same style it is probably due to natural development. This also reminds me of Scottish Gaelic where the orthography is quite archaic, when compared with Irish, whereas much of their grammar is far less conservative than ours today.

An Lon Dubh wrote:

Quote:

It does not mention anything about lenition after the verbal noun, although one could deduce from the examples given that lenition wasn't that common. It did mention something interesting about the use of the genitive proceeding the verbal noun:

Yeah, an adjective killing the genitive is basically the rule in Kerry Irish. Again, Cork Irish speakers tend to be more traditional on this point. Most people in Kerry would say "a' déanamh an bhróg dhubh", you'd have to go back to Blasket literature to get "a' déanamh na bróige duibhe".

Hmmm that's interesting has Kerry Irish changed that much since the loss of the Blascaod people? Cork's more traditional stance may be attested to its rich literary tradition; where scribes would have been in constant contact with the older literary forms.

An Lon Dubh wrote:

"Ag baint phrátaí" is the canonical example. As far as I can lenition only remains in phrases relating to common farmyard practices and the weather. I recommend Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne, point 101. He says the noun is lenited in mórán frásaí coitianta.

I agree! We basically went in a full circle to come back to where you were already! Sorry about the fuss for no reason!

more coming.......

Cian

An Cionnfhaolach · **Joined:** Fri 09 Mar 2012 6:16 pm **Posts:** 1527

An Lon Dubh wrote:

An Cionnfhaolach wrote:

I think it would be best to put the "ní" in before (faigheann> ní fhaigheann) just so it clear why its dependent. Do you think gheibheann came about as a result of the relative particle "do" preceding faigheann > dh'fhaigheann, just like fághailt can become dh'fhághailt. It looks that way to me, especially since the dependent form has retained the stem after ní (ní fhaigheann) and the g is always lenited in gheibheann. Any idea????

Thanks for that point, I'll read some of my sources on Classical Irish to try to find an answer to your question.

Yeah it would be interesting to see, the Old Irish version is fo-gaib; the first few lines in eDil's account:

The only instances in the O.Ir. Glosses are: sec. fut. pl. 3 (with inf.) fagebtis Wb 8 a 14 . pret. s. 1 -fuar Ml 57 d 3 . 3 (with inf.) fonduair Sg 144 b 3 . In the later lang. fo in the deut. forms is gradually replaced by do; in prot. forms fagb- is fre- quently reduced to fag-, forms without initial f- are not uncommon and are recognized by the mediaeval gram- marians. See IGT , Verbs § 22 .

http://www.dil.ie/results-list.asp?mode ... =10&bhcp=1 (expand all the information on fo-gaib)

An Lon Dubh wrote:

An Cionnfhaolach wrote:

The ag+pronoun form is probably the area I know least about, I know dá (dia Old. Ir) etc... naturally but never really came across these, never where they were actually explained.

Seana-chaint na nDéise, pg. 8, for (ag + possessive pronouns) has:

'ge-m at my
'ge-t (before vowels), 'ge-d (before consonants) at thy
'ge-n-a or geá at his, hers, theirs
'ge-n-ár at our
'ge-n-úr at your (yer)

The thing to keep in mind is that there are basically two types of ag+pronoun form.
The type used with the verbal noun and the type used elsewhere.

Tá sé am bualadh = He is at my beating = He is hitting me.
Tá cairt aigeam' mháthair = My mother has a car.

So, in most circumstances:
aigeam'
aigeat'
ag a/aigeana
ag ár/aigeanár
ag úr/aigeanúr

Before verbal nouns:
am
ad/at'
á
ár
úr

Ah ok, got ya! Thanks :good:

An Lon Dubh wrote:

An Cionnfhaolach wrote:

(4) Canon O' Leary says that "dá" is passive, "ghá" active, but it is not easy to decide in the Déise, as 'á is most often used or else "dhá" or "ghá" which are indistinguishable; still I have heard th full word "dá" in the active sense...thá na prátaí á ndéanadh mar seo, the potatoes are forming just now, thá na báid á mbá, the boats are sinking; thá féara na dúithche á ngearradh anois, the hay-crops of the country-side are being cut now; bhí sé á chailleamhaint le gáire...he was dying of laughter.

Quote:

Actually, I think the dá/ghá distinction was used nowhere and is based on an etymological theory popular at the
end of the 19th century, i.e. nobody made a distinction, but they imagined Classical Irish did and put it in their writings. Hypercorrection essentially.

, I definitely heard you talking about that before.

Cian

more to come....

WeeFalorieMan · **Posted:** Tue 13 Aug 2013 6:49 pm

I was poring over the notes to-day and spotted a couple of typos on page 12:

Tuathaill is a mistake caused by ignorance.

However, [comma] outside of [in The Official Wee Falorie Man Dialect] place names ["place" and "names" are 2 separate words] and fixed phrases, [comma] …

And on page 13:
It is used when the noun before the particle is the subect or object of the next part of the sentence.

That's all.

Oh, by the way, some of the words in the notes are given in the old spelling and some are given in the "new" spelling.

For example:
Fuaduigheadh Past autonomous of Fuadaím I kidnap.

I think it would be better to consistently use one spelling, i.e., the modern spelling, throughout the notes, and then show the older spelling, in seana-chló since that is the way it is shown in the story, alongside the modern spelling in the future glossary – just a thought …

An Cionnfhaolach · **Joined:** Fri 09 Mar 2012 6:16 pm **Posts:** 1527

An Lon Dubh wrote:

An Cionnfhaolach wrote:

I gcás an tséimhiú i ndiaidh an ainm bhriathartha insa Chaighdeán:

Leabhar Gramadaí Gaeilge, le Nollaig Mac Congáil, lch 60

For anybody reading, this is a lovely book, not very detailed for more subtle points of grammar, like copula usage e.t.c. but great for noun and verb inflections and not too bad as a introduction to reading grammars in Irish, if you
want to read things like Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne later.

, its a very good and concise introduction to standardised grammar, except for when the author can't help himself but leave little notes about Ulster nuances every now and again :LOL:

.

An Lon Dubh wrote:

Peadar Ua Laoghaire's works are full of such expressions, one of the joys of reading Séadna is the sheer amount
of such expressions in the story. I was planning to read Séadna again, I must make a big list of expressions such as these

Good idea, it would be a valuable source!

An Lon Dubh wrote:

An Cionnfhaolach wrote:

The word amárach/ amáireach shows the preposition "a" for "i" mix-up very clearly.

amárach comes from i mbárach> amárach. Bárach means spancelling, the act of tying a rope around a cow's neck and attaching the rope to the cow's hoof, in order to stop the cow kicking when you are milking her. When the cow went to kick she would pull her head down and that would stop her from kicking. "At spancilling" became synonymous with morning in Irish.

I have got to tell that to others! Who would have guessed! Where did you find that out?

I first heard it off my old Irish lecturer when we were discussing "Boí and co arabárach" from Aisinge Óenguso. But I said I'd have a better search on-line to see if I could find you something more concrete:

Dineen's dictionary pg. 38

Amárach (i mbárach, i mbáireach). Also Dineen's entry for bárach, pg. 79.

From: Wiktionary:

Etymology
From Old Irish i mbárach, from bárach (“tomorrow”), from Proto-Celtic *bārego- (“morning”) (compare Welsh bore, Cornish bore, Breton beure), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *mr̥Hko- (compare English morning, Lithuanian mérkti (“to blink, twinkle”), Sanskrit मरीचि (márīci, “ray of light”)), from *mer- (“to shimmer, shine”) (compare Greek μέρα (méra, “morning”)), but the phonetic development would be highly irregular and unexplained.

From: eDil:

According to eDIL i mbárach is made up of the preposition "i" and the compound words bó (cow)+ árach (to tying etc...) see eDil (http://www.dil.ie/results-list.asp?mode ... =10&bhcp=1) (see 1st árach and expand) and Dineen pg. 56 (the 1st árach). i mbúrach is the accusative form.

Expand both bárach and 1st búarach

(http://www.dil.ie/results-list.asp?mode ... =10&bhcp=1)

Some opposition to the theory:

From: BRILL's Indo-European Etymological dictionary online> Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic:

bārego- [Noun] ‘morning’

Languages
Goidelic OIr. bárach [o ?] 'tomorrow'
Welsh MW bore [m] 'morning'; boreau, boryau, boreuau [p]
Breton MBret. beure [m]
Cornish Co. bore

Etymology

A persuasive IE etymology is lacking. Hamp's derivation of these words from *bā-rigo- 'cow-tying' is not impossible, but it is semantically far-fetched. From the formal side, *bārego- can be a compound, consisting of PIE *bheh₂- 'shine' (Skt. bhā-, Gr. phaínō, Gr. Hom. pháos 'light, daylight', etc., cf. PCelt. *bāno-) and *h₃reǵ- 'extend, stretch, rule' (Skt. rā́ṣṭi 'rules', Gr. orégō 'extend', Lat. rego 'rule', cf. PCelt. *reg-o-). Note that reflexes of the verb *bheh₂- are regularly connected with dawn (Skt. uṣás-, Gr. Hom. ēṓs) in both Greek and Vedic. A compound *bheh₂-h₃reǵo- 'light-extending' would be similar to the Gr. type phaes-phóros, phōt-agōgós 'light-bringing' (Frisk, II: 989ff.). If this is correct, PCelt. *bārego- is in origin a nominalized adjective, perhaps originally an epithet of dawn.

(+http://0-iedo.brillonline.nl.library.ucc.ie/dictionaries/lemma.html?jump=true&id=16151&dictionaries=proto-celtic&date=&field.virtual.all=tomorrow&)

bārego- [Noun] ‘morning’

Languages
Goidelic OIr. bárach [o ?] 'tomorrow'
Welsh MW bore [m] 'morning'; boreau, boryau, boreuau [p]
Breton MBret. beure [m]
Cornish Co. bore

Etymology

A persuasive IE etymology is lacking. Hamp's derivation of these words from *bā-rigo- 'cow-tying' is not impossible, but it is semantically far-fetched. From the formal side, *bārego- can be a compound, consisting of PIE *bheh₂- 'shine' (Skt. bhā-, Gr. phaínō, Gr. Hom. pháos 'light, daylight', etc., cf. PCelt. *bāno-) and *h₃reǵ- 'extend, stretch, rule' (Skt. rā́ṣṭi 'rules', Gr. orégō 'extend', Lat. rego 'rule', cf. PCelt. *reg-o-). Note that reflexes of the verb *bheh₂- are regularly connected with dawn (Skt. uṣás-, Gr. Hom. ēṓs) in both Greek and Vedic. A compound *bheh₂-h₃reǵo- 'light-extending' would be similar to the Gr. type phaes-phóros, phōt-agōgós 'light-bringing' (Frisk, II: 989ff.). If this is correct, PCelt. *bārego- is in origin a nominalized adjective, perhaps originally an epithet of dawn.

(http://0-iedo.brillonline.nl.library.uc ... l=morning&)

An Lon Dubh wrote:

An Cionnfhaolach wrote:

I personally use leabaidh as the nominative, leapan as the genitive and leapain as the dative. Have you ever seen leapain as the dative? It makes sense to me as leapan is the genitive, just like -__ na teangan (T.G) but don (d)teangain; coisleán na Blarnan, insa Bhlarnain.

In my experience, most people have:
Leabaidh/Leaba (nom.)
Leapan (gen.)
Leabaidh (dat.)

Leaba as the nominative is the less common of the choices, it's the one I use.
Is your declension pattern the typical one in Rinn?

I am not sure what the usage is in an Ring with regards to the Tuiseal Tabharthach bhuatha. Dineen gives both leabaidh and leab/pain as the dative (Dineen, pg. 637)

An Lon Dubh wrote:

An Cionnfhaolach wrote:

Do bhí sé á rá go raibh tuirse uirthi He was saying that she was tired.
The "a" is a contraction of ag + a at its. The sentence would literally translate to:
Do bhí sé á rá go raibh tuirse uirthi He was at its saying that she was tired.

Question, should this not translate to "he was at his saying that she was tired??? or does the á represent tuirse in this sentence, such as the é in the sentence "Bhí áthas orthu é bheith le rá acu go bhfeacadar an Rí" or does it represent the person who is actually making the statement?

The á represents the entire clause: go raibh tuirse uirthi, just as the é in the second example
stands in for the clause: go bhfeacadar an Rí.

So you’re saying the "á" represents "its"? i.e what's actually being said rather than the person doing the act i.e

if it refers to "at its": Do bhí sé "á rá" go raibh tuirse uirthi. "its" being what is actually being said

but if its "at his": Do bhí sé "a rá" go raibh tuirse. "at his" being the person doing the actual act i.e he himself relaying/ saying/ telling her news.

Get what I'm saying? That's why I'm :panic:

; over analyzing everything as per usual.

Thanks for your patience with regard the ag + pronoun + verbal noun.

Cian

An Cionnfhaolach · **Joined:** Fri 09 Mar 2012 6:16 pm **Posts:** 1527

WeeFalorieMan wrote:

I just finished Cuid a ceathair déag – the final part of Sliabh na mBan bhFionn!

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, this is very important to me. Like many (most?) Irish folk-tales, this story has no English translation, and I think it's a privilege to be able to read such an old folk-tale in the original language. Stories like this, show that the Irish language does matter and merits all of the hard work that I've been putting in for the past few years, trying to learn this great language. Thanks Lon Dubh, for the detailed notes and for answering my annoying questions. Thanks David Webb for your Herculean efforts at the Cork Irish web-site. And thanks to everybody who took the time to help me out with this – Bríd Mhór, An Cionnfhaolach, Breandán, Errigal – as long as there are people like you all, the Irish language will never die.

A Loin Dhuibh, please let me know if you would like to work on another story, or maybe a collection of stories. You once mentioned that An Craos-Deamhan was a possibility.

Well, I'm off to go celebrate now. :party:

WeeFalorieMan · **Posted:** Wed 14 Aug 2013 11:47 pm

WeeFalorieMan wrote:

I was poring over the notes to-day and spotted a couple of typos on page 12:

Tuathaill is a mistake caused by ignorance.

However, [comma] outside of [in The Official Wee Falorie Man Dialect] place names ["place" and "names" are 2 separate words] and fixed phrases, [comma] …

And on page 13:
It is used when the noun before the particle is the subect or object of the next part of the sentence.

That's all.

Oh, by the way, some of the words in the notes are given in the old spelling and some are given in the "new" spelling.

For example:
Fuaduigheadh Past autonomous of Fuadaím I kidnap.

I think it would be better to consistently use one spelling, i.e., the modern spelling, throughout the notes, and then show the older spelling, in seana-chló since that is the way it is shown in the story, alongside the modern spelling in the future glossary – just a thought …

Okay, to-day I'm looking at the notes for Cuid a trí and had a quick comment to make:

Do curtí Past habitual autonomous of Cuirim I send.

[That's a perfectly good definition, but almost no person on the face of the earth would be able to understand it.

Maybe it would help to add something along with it, like: "used to be sent/put" (or something like that for people who don't happen to know what the past habitual autonomous is).

An Cionnfhaolach · **Joined:** Fri 09 Mar 2012 6:16 pm **Posts:** 1527

Cuid a cúig

Second paragraph, 2 or 3 lines from the bottom, in both the seana-chló and the roman script: "Mar sin dóibh go dtí go raibh an mhórsheisear acu ar a ndícheall"

Its my understanding that mórsheisear is masculine and not feminine? an mórsheisear.

Both seana-chló and roman font, second line, last paragraph: "connaic sí ag dul i luigheadh é go tiugh"; chon(n)aic sí

Both seana-chló and roman font, 5th line, last paragraph: "do chuir san iongnadh uirthi i deannta an athais"; i dteannta

Question: mar dheineadh sé an olann ní ba réide (last paragraph), should this not be níba (ní ba) réid[b]h[/b]e as in smooth, level. Or is réid a word or is ní ba réide a dialectal version of níba réidhe?

réidh can also mean a rope or twig

Notes

Dhírigh sé ar can also mean he attacked as well.
Another way of saying He started/ He began is: Do chrom sé ar an bhfuinneoig a ghlanadh, do chrom sé ar an obair
Crom literally means to bow, bend; He bowed to the work.

Le linn, can also mean time or during i.e Le n-ár linn during/ In our time, le n-a linn during/ In her his/ her time. Unlike other dialects "le linn" is used more for a precise amount of time, whereas i gcaitheamh/ i r(u)ith are more "general".

De réir a chéile bit by bit might be another way of describing the maning as well as in due order of course

De réir Euro an t-unsa, something small, wouldn't it be more common to say Euro de réir (an) unsa a Euro for/ per ounce or Unsa de réir (an) Euro an ounce per Euro? Another older word for ounce is unga/ uinge (feminine), ungae, iá-stem, in Old Irish.

Cian

WeeFalorieMan · **Posted:** Fri 16 Aug 2013 11:54 pm

I just had a look at Cuid a ceathair and spotted a few typos:

page 19:
D'fhág sé an gleann agus a raibh ann agam Literally: [space] He left the glen and all that was in it at [space] (to) …

In these three sentences, [comma] the main nouns …

page 20:
D'éirigh sí aniar ar a cabhail

page 21:
Go fóill

In this case, [comma] Cíoram é Let's comb it. [not "card" – Do you remember when you and Bríd Mhór were talking about YouTube videos that showed the difference between combing and carding?]

Slámam é Let's tease (card) it. [I think it's good to mention that they are talking about carding, in this case.]

Is fearr-de [maybe a more direct translation might be "It is all the better"]

Sin a bhfuil agam.

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