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Post by greatkingrat on Feb 26, 2018 22:59:35 GMT
I'd never seen the spelling Órfhlaith before. Órlaith is the more common variant. It does look like someone is trying just a *bit* too hard with the Irish identity schtick. Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin says hello. |
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on Feb 27, 2018 1:04:46 GMT
No real logic. Why is it "on a bus" but "in a taxi" when talking about transport? Ultimately, it's hard to codify languages according to difficulty. Because you get *in* to a car/taxi/etc, you scrunch up small to fit in, it's the same as getting *in* to a box, or *in* to bed, or *in* to a burrow. You get *on* to a bus, you stride forewards in a walking stature, it's the same as getting *on* to a platform, or *on* to a pavement, or *on* to a ship. |
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obsie
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Post by obsie on Feb 27, 2018 2:53:38 GMT
It does look like someone is trying just a *bit* too hard with the Irish identity schtick. Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin says hello. Again, it's another example of the old-fashioned but etymologically correct version - caomh (gentle) and gín (birth, origin) with the necessary changes for consonant harmony being made - but the more modern Caoimhín (which might be glossed as 'little gentle one') is more common. Irish language versions of names replacing anglicised equivalents or older Irish names being revived (Fiachra, Cian, Aoife, etc.) is just a more general trend in Ireland over the last few decades. |
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YL
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Post by YL on Feb 27, 2018 7:36:46 GMT
To be fair, the Irish spelling system was also invented by missionaries. Some of the oddest bits of Irish spelling for an English speaker are incredibly old, and are basically down to the fact that 5th century British Latin seems to have been spoken with a truly bizarre accent. I would have thought it's mainly about trying to get a language with parallel sets of palatalised and velarised consonants (including lenited consonants) to fit into the constraints of a 18-letter alphabet while allowing mutated words to still be recognisable as their original forms. The weirdest thing for an English speaker might be "c" = /k/ in all circumstances although that seems to have been an original feature of Latin (c.f. Albanian qytet, city) rather than a Britannic innovation, but then I'm so accustomed to Irish spelling at this stage that I'm not going to see the coill for the crainn. I think it's more the lenited consonants (those written with another consonant plus "h"); several of their sound values are surprising (most obviously "mh") and they have a tendency to be silent (probably more so in Scottish Gaelic than in post-reform Irish) or just be a modification of the preceding vowel (e.g. "Tadhg"). And yes, English does quite a bit of this too, but the sort of people who love to mock minority languages rarely have much self-awareness in this respect. I think people also find the unwritten vowels in words like "dearg" and "gorm" (I'm thinking of the Scottish Gaelic pronunciations, roughly "jerrag" and "gorrom" respectively, but I think this happens a bit in Irish too) strange. |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 27, 2018 8:30:57 GMT
I would have thought it's mainly about trying to get a language with parallel sets of palatalised and velarised consonants (including lenited consonants) to fit into the constraints of a 18-letter alphabet while allowing mutated words to still be recognisable as their original forms. The weirdest thing for an English speaker might be "c" = /k/ in all circumstances although that seems to have been an original feature of Latin (c.f. Albanian qytet, city) rather than a Britannic innovation, but then I'm so accustomed to Irish spelling at this stage that I'm not going to see the coill for the crainn. I think it's more the lenited consonants (those written with another consonant plus "h"); several of their sound values are surprising (most obviously "mh") and they have a tendency to be silent (probably more so in Scottish Gaelic than in post-reform Irish) or just be a modification of the preceding vowel (e.g. "Tadhg"). And yes, English does quite a bit of this too, but the sort of people who love to mock minority languages rarely have much self-awareness in this respect. I think people also find the unwritten vowels in words like "dearg" and "gorm" (I'm thinking of the Scottish Gaelic pronunciations, roughly "jerrag" and "gorrom" respectively, but I think this happens a bit in Irish too) strange. Though a lot of those sound values aren't surprising in the context of other European languages. The affects on vowels are a little more unusual, admittedly. |
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Post by gwynthegriff on Feb 27, 2018 12:36:35 GMT
Taxis had doors and buses didn't when the term evolved?  (Including in Tyrone.) [Anyone know what the terms would be in Irish Gaelic. Could be an election issue.]
Prepositions are their English equivalents Would "on the bus" be something like "ar y bhus" ? (i.e. what is the definite article in Irish?) EDIT: I see it wouldn't ! "na bhus"? "an bhus"? What gender is a bus anyway? |
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obsie
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Post by obsie on Feb 27, 2018 12:47:36 GMT
ar bhusi dtacsaí
Prepositions are their English equivalents Would "on the bus" be something like "ar y bhus" ? (i.e. what is the definite article in Irish?) (Caighdeán and southern dialects) or ar an bhus (Ulster, where preposition + article always lenites). an in this context would be pronounced /ə/ unless followed by a vowel. |
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obsie
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Post by obsie on Feb 27, 2018 12:54:01 GMT
ar bhusi dtacsaí
Prepositions are their English equivalents Would "on the bus" be something like "ar y bhus" ? (i.e. what is the definite article in Irish?) EDIT: I see it wouldn't ! "na bhus"? "an bhus"? What gender is a bus anyway? Buses and taxis are masculine. Trains are feminine. (In both cases because of the word endings.) |
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spqr
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Post by spqr on Feb 27, 2018 15:52:00 GMT
I would have thought it's mainly about trying to get a language with parallel sets of palatalised and velarised consonants (including lenited consonants) to fit into the constraints of a 18-letter alphabet while allowing mutated words to still be recognisable as their original forms. The weirdest thing for an English speaker might be "c" = /k/ in all circumstances although that seems to have been an original feature of Latin (c.f. Albanian qytet, city) rather than a Britannic innovation, but then I'm so accustomed to Irish spelling at this stage that I'm not going to see the coill for the crainn. I think people also find the unwritten vowels in words like "dearg" and "gorm" (I'm thinking of the Scottish Gaelic pronunciations, roughly "jerrag" and "gorrom" respectively, but I think this happens a bit in Irish too) strange. Unwritten vowels can occasionally be found in spoken variants of Scots English too - so 'film' becomes fillum, for example. |
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Post by therealriga on Feb 27, 2018 19:07:23 GMT
No real logic. Why is it "on a bus" but "in a taxi" when talking about transport? Ultimately, it's hard to codify languages according to difficulty. Because you get *in* to a car/taxi/etc, you scrunch up small to fit in, it's the same as getting *in* to a box, or *in* to bed, or *in* to a burrow. You get *on* to a bus, you stride forewards in a walking stature, it's the same as getting *on* to a platform, or *on* to a pavement, or *on* to a ship. Alright then, what about the "wonders" of articles? Take just a limited example, water-related geographical places. Seas usually have the definite article: The Baltic. Lakes usually don't: Windermere, Baikal. Oh, unless it's a group of lakes in which case it does: The Great lakes, The Mazurian lakes. Rivers? The Thames. Canals and oceans, the same. But waterfalls....? Uh, no usually not. Victoria/Niagara falls etc. Same with countries, most don't but some of the major ones do. The U.S. / The U.K. If you had to explain that to them tomorrow, how is the average non-native speaker supposed to get their head round that? That last sentence would also cause confusion for them. Why do we use a past form had in the first sentence when we're referring to a future event? Why is it " the" average non-native speaker and not " an" average nn speaker? Why use words like get head round when there is no receiving or circular movement of head at all? Why don't native speakers just say comprehend instead of get your head round? Don't even get me started on spelling versus pronunciation. English is one of the worst offenders in that department in Europe. |
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Chris from Brum
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Post by Chris from Brum on Feb 27, 2018 20:11:27 GMT
Alright then, what about the "wonders" of articles? Take just a limited example, water-related geographical places. Seas usually have the definite article: The Baltic. Lakes usually don't: Windermere, Baikal. Oh, unless it's a group of lakes in which case it does: The Great lakes, The Mazurian lakes. Rivers? The Thames. Canals and oceans, the same. But waterfalls....? Uh, no usually not. Victoria/Niagara falls etc. Same with countries, most don't but some of the major ones do. The U.S. / The U.K. If you had to explain that to them tomorrow, how is the average non-native speaker supposed to get their head round that? That last sentence would also cause confusion for them. Why do we use a past form had in the first sentence when we're referring to a future event? Why is it " the" average non-native speaker and not " an" average nn speaker? Why use words like get head round when there is no receiving or circular movement of head at all? Why don't native speakers just say comprehend instead of get your head round? Don't even get me started on spelling versus pronunciation. English is one of the worst offenders in that department in Europe. To be fair, other languages' rules regarding presence or absence of articles (for languages that actually *have* a definite article) on the water features you cite can also be inconsistent. And they also have the complication of gender to deal with. Why, for example is a lake "der See" (masculine) in German, but the sea "die See" (feminine)? English was of course one of the first languages to be widely printed, thanks to Mr W Caxton. But moving from an oral tradition to a written and printed one can be an erratic process, and at first people just wrote what they heard, and even then not always the same each time. Even Wm Shakespeare spelled his own name differently from time to time. The big move to standardisation came with the King James Bible - funny how it's so often the Bible that is the root of "standard" versions of languages* - and so we're stuck largely with the inconsistencies codified therein, which carry on many of the "write what you hear" traditions, but use a single source for these rather than many and varied. *As an example, the Faroese language was for many years unwritten, as Danish was the official language of the Faroe Isles, used in the law, in commerce, in education and in the church. But it survived as a language of the street, and was the language of the popular tradition of ballad dancing, where lengthy songs based on ancient legend are communally sung and danced in mixed company, hence was well-preserved in use. Attempts to record it using the "write what you hear" method were tried, but were found unsatisfactory, then V.U. Hammershaimb devised a standard dating from 1854, and a Faroese Bible was quickly published and achieved wide circulation. This new standard related the spoken language to Old Norse, with the result that the written language is not very phonetic, and contains quite a lot of "silent" letters, usually acting as glide consonants, but is recognisably similar to Icelandic, its closest relative. Faroese gradually assumed official status in most aspects of public life, a role cemented after the islands achieved home rule after WW2. Danish remains the official language of the law, and is still learnt by all children at school. But they all seem much keener to learn English, for some reason. Perhaps the British occupation during the war left its mark. They're big tea drinkers, are also quite fond of Scotch whisky as well as their local akvavit, and have a love of British chocolate, particularly Cadbury's. And they enjoy fish and chips. But who doesn't? |
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Feb 27, 2018 20:54:24 GMT
Because you get *in* to a car/taxi/etc, you scrunch up small to fit in, it's the same as getting *in* to a box, or *in* to bed, or *in* to a burrow. You get *on* to a bus, you stride forewards in a walking stature, it's the same as getting *on* to a platform, or *on* to a pavement, or *on* to a ship. That last sentence would also cause confusion for them. Why do we use a past form had in the first sentence when we're referring to a future event? Why is it " the" average non-native speaker and not " an" average nn speaker? Why use words like get head round when there is no receiving or circular movement of head at all? Why don't native speakers just say comprehend instead of get your head round? Well, English is a Germanic language, after all. In German, "if you had to explain that to them tomorrow " would be a Konjunktiv II clause, in which the auxiliary verb would be hätte*, a form of haben ('to have'). The simple past form of that same verb, hatte, would be employed to make the pluperfect in most cases. My best guess is that English ended up using 'had' for both types of clause when it lost diacritic marks from its writing system. Yes, the expression "get one's head around" doesn't involve any actual movement of the head, because 'head' in that instance is obviously a reference to the brain. I wouldn't want my native language to be one with absolutely no figurative phrases whatsoever. As Chris from Brum pointed out, others languages which have separate definite and indefinite articles are equally inconsistent, arbitrary and seemingly illogical in their usage of them. * [In this particular instance you could probably get away with just the active verb, müßte... but let's not complicate matters too much.] |
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CatholicLeft
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Post by CatholicLeft on Feb 27, 2018 21:53:35 GMT
Whilst I do not wish to drag this thread into the trivial matter of electoral politics, I was interested to see that the SDLP had 60 odd workers out in Strabane at the weekend.
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Post by greenchristian on Feb 27, 2018 22:13:28 GMT
The big move to standardisation came with the King James Bible - funny how it's so often the Bible that is the root of "standard" versions of languages Actually, the Bible is often the reason a written version of the language exists in the first place. And you're probably giving the King James Bible a bit too much credit for determining the idiosyncrasies of English, since it was basically just a revision of Tyndale. The only notable thing about the KJB as a translation is that it was the only Bible translation allowed to be printed in English/British ruled territory for a couple of centuries. |
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Chris from Brum
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Post by Chris from Brum on Feb 28, 2018 10:57:37 GMT
Irish language versions of names replacing anglicised equivalents or older Irish names being revived (Fiachra, Cian, Aoife, etc.) is just a more general trend in Ireland over the last few decades. Surely the first and last of those are the equivalents of Vera and Eve? Not sure that Cian has an "English" equivalent. |
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Chris from Brum
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Post by Chris from Brum on Feb 28, 2018 11:04:49 GMT
It does look like someone is trying just a *bit* too hard with the Irish identity schtick. Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin says hello. So does Phil Mac Giolla Bháin. Though it's often said that his (UK) birth certificate actually says "McGillivan". Scottish born, identifies as Irish, lives in Glasgow and then complains about how hard it is being Irish in Scotland. Go figure. |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 28, 2018 13:41:37 GMT
Irish language versions of names replacing anglicised equivalents or older Irish names being revived (Fiachra, Cian, Aoife, etc.) is just a more general trend in Ireland over the last few decades. Surely the first and last of those are the equivalents of Vera and Eve? Not sure that Cian has an "English" equivalent. Fiachra is a man's name, so no. And Aoife is a very traditional old name - it turns up in the Tain, for example. |
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obsie
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Post by obsie on Feb 28, 2018 15:30:58 GMT
Surely the first and last of those are the equivalents of Vera and Eve? Not sure that Cian has an "English" equivalent. Fiachra is a man's name, so no. And Aoife is a very traditional old name - it turns up in the Tain, for example. is not generally a feminine suffix in Irish (its a common plural suffix and it also tends to be added on to a lot of medieval borrowings from English/French, e.g. seomra, gúna, bosca - these nouns are masculine), or at the very least not a reliable indicator of femininity, c.f. Éanna / Enda. The equivalent of Eve would be Éabha (the bh sound being a bilabial fricative/approximant rather than a labiodental as in English). |
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Post by mrpastelito on Feb 28, 2018 16:55:51 GMT
Don't even get me started on spelling versus pronunciation. English is one of the worst offenders in that department in Europe. English was of course one of the first languages to be widely printed, thanks to Mr W Caxton. But moving from an oral tradition to a written and printed one can be an erratic process, and at first people just wrote what they heard, and even then not always the same each time. Even Wm Shakespeare spelled his own name differently from time to time. The big move to standardisation came with the King James Bible - funny how it's so often the Bible that is the root of "standard" versions of languages* - and so we're stuck largely with the inconsistencies codified therein, which carry on many of the "write what you hear" traditions, but use a single source for these rather than many and varied. The problem with English spelling is that codification started long before the Great Vowel Shift was anywhere near completed. |
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Post by therealriga on Feb 28, 2018 17:18:36 GMT
That last sentence would also cause confusion for them. Why do we use a past form had in the first sentence when we're referring to a future event? Why is it " the" average non-native speaker and not " an" average nn speaker? Why use words like get head round when there is no receiving or circular movement of head at all? Why don't native speakers just say comprehend instead of get your head round? Well, English is a Germanic language, after all. In German, "if you had to explain that to them tomorrow " would be a Konjunktiv II clause, in which the auxiliary verb would be hätte*, a form of haben ('to have'). The simple past form of that same verb, hatte, would be employed to make the pluperfect in most cases. My best guess is that English ended up using 'had' for both types of clause when it lost diacritic marks from its writing system. Yes, the expression "get one's head around" doesn't involve any actual movement of the head, because 'head' in that instance is obviously a reference to the brain. I wouldn't want my native language to be one with absolutely no figurative phrases whatsoever. As Chris from Brum pointed out, others languages which have separate definite and indefinite articles are equally inconsistent, arbitrary and seemingly illogical in their usage of them. * [In this particular instance you could probably get away with just the active verb, müßte... but let's not complicate matters too much.]I strongly doubt the use of past forms in second conditional sentences has anything to do with German because that seems to form conditional sentences differently. My German friend, who usually speaks excellent English often says things like "If I would have time, I would go there." They'd do it the same way in Russian and Latvian. I'd say "If I had time, I would go there." Or "If I went to Panama next week, I would sunbathe." Again, a past form used to speak about the future. In the "get one's head round" phrase, the issue for non-native speakers, who now outnumber native speakers, according to most estimates, is not the head part. It's the use of get, a verb which has a ridiculous number of meanings. As a main verb: receive, arrive, ask someone to do something, understand etc. As a phrasal verb: get over, get into, get up to, get on with etc. It's the latter which screws with the non-native speakers, who prefer to use regular verbs in such situations. A Spanish speaker would much prefer to say "I tolerate my neighbour's music." An English native speaker would often say "I put up with my neighbour's music", which is often incomprehensible to foreigners. cjb1 and you are exactly right, but that's totally the point. English is no more logical or consistent than most other languages, including Irish and nor would I want it to be. |
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