Materials for Irish Learners by Panu Höglund, the Finnish Gaeilgeoir

Due to software problems, I will discontinue this blog. Probably there will be new English-language entries about teaching Irish in my Irish-language blog, gaeilgepanu.blogs.ie

I simply don’t understand why this blog hasn’t been working satisfactorily, while my Irish-language blog has always been quite OK. Maybe I should simply delete the whole blog and start it from scratch. 

Gabhaigí mo leithscéal nár chuir mé leis an mblag le tamall. Níl an bogearra seo (nó an ríomhoideas seo, mar a déarfadh Ciarán Ó Duibhin) ag obair go rómhaith. Agus nuair a d’fhoilsigh mé an iontráil faoin teideal "Sealaíocht", bhí an ceann faoin teideal "Beatha Cholm Cille, second instalment" iompaithe ina dhréacht! 

Sorry for not updating for a moment. The software is not working too well, I don’t understand why. And publishing the last post until this, I saw that the second-last one had reverted into a draft!

Next on Page 11, the word sealaíocht.

D’éirigh le dream ar leith díobh, Muintir Chanannáin a shíolraigh ó Shéadna ua Chonaill, an réim a bhaint amach i dTír Chonaill agus a coinneáil ar feadh tamaill gur bhain Muintir Mhaoldoraidh, dream eile de shliocht Shéadna, sealaíocht díobh uirthi.

 
What I find especially interesting here is the word "sealaíocht" and how it is used in this particular sentence. Of course, we can have a look at the other parts of the sentence two.

The first part is not difficult: "a particular group of them" - who "they" are, is not of interest here, as we are only analyzing the sentence - "Canannán’s people, who were Séadna ua Conaill’s descendants" - it says "a shíolraigh ó Shéadna ua Conaill", i.e. "who descended from S. ua C., who were of his semen/seed/offspring" (síol) - "succeeded in taking the power in Tír Chonaill" - i.e. Tyrconnell, or Donegal. Note that for "power" (more commonly cumhacht), Séamus Ó Searcaigh uses here réim, which above all means "course, career", but also "power, sway, authority".

Then it becomes a little trickier. You would expect …an réim a bhaint amach i dTír Chonaill agus í a choinneáil ar feadh tamaill, i.e. to attain power and to keep it. But in Ulster, they still might use the possessive adjective instead of the "object pronoun + a + lenited verbal noun" structure, like this:

mo choinneáil = mé a choinneáil

do choinneáil = thú a choinneáil

a choinneáil = é a choinneáil

a coinneáil = í a choinneáil

ár gcoinneáil = sinn a choinneáil

bhur gcoinneáil = sibh a choinneáil

a gcoinneáil = iad a choinneáil.

The right-hand versions are more modern and less provincially Ulster, but the Ulster way to say it is not at all wrong or obsolete, and you will often see it even in newer literature by native Ulster authors.

But let’s get back to our original sentence:

…gur bhain Muintir  Mhaoldoraidh, dream eile de shliocht Shéadna, sealaíocht amach uirthi.

"Until" is usually translated into Irish as go dtí go/gur, but even mere go/gur can have that sense. So, this clause means "until Maoldoradh’s people, another group of Séadna’s descendants" (sliocht means descendants, a person’s children, the same as clann) - "until they attained/achieved/reached sealaíocht on it." But what does sealaíocht mean?

According to Ó Dónaill, it means alternation, taking turns. I don’t know if you can say in English "they took their turn of it", but the idea is, that Maoldoradh’s people had their turn to rule Tyrconnell. - Yes, I know we don’t use the name "Tyrconnell" in English anymore. However, in Irish Tír Chonaill is very common as a name for the Irish-speaking parts of County Donegal.

On page 8, I have underlined Oirear Gael; it seems to mean Argyll, or Earra-Ghaidheal in Scots Gaelic.

On page 9, we progress into the chapter called Clann Néill Naoighiallaigh. There we see the expression réab an croí aige, which means, literally, "his heart broke asunder". It does not refer to unrequited love (which, by the way, would be grá éagmaise in Irish, and has a broader sense than just unrequited love, because grá éagmaise can be any one-sided romantic attachment, for example when you fall in love with a girl just seeing her picture), but simply heart attack, which becomes clear in the larger context: leath bealaigh suas thit an gaiscíoch marbh: réab an croí aige - halfway up the hero dropped dead, because he got a heart attack from exhaustion.

 Page 11: bhí a gcuid de lochta an chine dhaonna ar shliocht Chonaill, ach bhí déanamh gnoithe iontu. Although the book has been rather heavily standardized, we still have some Ulster shibboleths left there, such as gnoithe for gnó. A more standard form would be …bhí déanamh gnó iontu, of course. Gnoithe as a way to indicate the Ulster pronounciation ("grih-huh") of the word is rather well-established. You sometimes see gnaithe used for the Connemara - Cois Fhairrge pronunciation, which is [gra:], i.e., simply gr- followed by a long a. (It is distinguished from "grá", love, by the vowel: grá has a historically long a, which is in Connemara more like "aw" than "aaa".)

When we say bhí déanamh gnoithe iontu, or in the standard language bhí déanamh gnó iontu, the idea is that they had the innate capacity to "do business", which means less in Irish than in English. In Irish, if you say déanfaidh sé gnó, it means basically "it will do", "it is good enough" - but really only good enough, no better than that.

To start with, this book might be less historically accurate an account on St Columba’s life than Colm Cille na Staire by Ciarán Ó Doibhlinn, but as Irish, it is much better. Ó Doibhlinn’s Irish is otherwise very good, but he invariably uses the ag agent with autonomous verb. This is not entirely alien to native Irish, but so rarely used there, that if you encounter it very often, you can usually be sure that the writer is a non-native. And if you have learnt your Irish by reading literature by native speakers, you are bound to be disgusted by this usage.

But that’s stuff for another entry. Let’s have a look at Séamus’s book now.

On page 7, in the chapter Sean-Chúige Uladh, we found the following sentence:

Tuairim na bliana 331 d’aois Chríost ghluais na Trí Cholla agus a lucht leanúna aniar as Connachta gur bhain talamh amach dóibh féin ar an taobh thiar agus i lár Chúige Uladh.

Let’s take a look at this, now. To start with, why do I want to look at this sentence? Actually, it’s because I have underlined it while reading the book for the first time. I found the expression "d’aois Chríost" for "A.D." interesting. For less advanced readers, however, other things will be highlighted.

"Tuairim na bliana 331" means, of course, "about the year 331", "more or less in that year". In Irish, usually, if a noun is followed by a number which is not grammatically an ordinal number but is used in the sense of such - i.e., when we want to say "phase one" instead of "the first phase" - the usual rule is, that the number will be preceded by an a which does not affect consonants, but adds a h- to vowels (and requires special forms for 2 and 4: a dó and a ceathair), but the noun will not be preceded by an article. So, we get ceacht a haon = lesson one, ceacht a dó = lesson two, ceacht a trí = lesson three, and so on.

However, this does not apply to years. The number of the year is preceded by bliain in the definite, i.e. an bhliain 2007, or an bhliain 331, for that matter. And if you want to read out those numbers in Irish, they are an bhliain dhá mhíle a seacht and an bhliain trí chéad tríocha a haon, respectively.

Note that the word bliain is not just definite, but also enters a genitive construction with tuairim.

Tuairim na bliana seo is, of course, about, around this year. You could also say taca na bliana seo. Tuairim means usually "opinion, conjecture, guess", and implies an inexact, fuzzy value. This has given rise to such expressions as tuairim na bliana seo and tuairim an ama seo.

In this blog you will find my notes regarding Irish grammar and vocabulary.