Entry for April 28, 2007 Irish Gaelic 101

P.S. Please enlarge pic for better viewing.

Most English speakers have little or no practical knowledge of accents / diacritics .... nor how they are used in the writing systems of many modern languages. However , to explore and explain what purpose accents serve would only guarantee the automatic self-destruction of this blog . What could be more sleep inducing than listing them all ?..... acute and grave accents as in French ' déjà vu ', cedillas as in French ' façon ', circumflex as in French ' tête ' , umlaut and ring as in Swedish ' vän ' and ' blå ' , the tilde in Spanish , etc Nevertheless , I think I'll take a chance anyways and say a few words about two interesting cases that are constantly omnipresent in my little world these days...... my personal handle here in Yahoo360 .... SeanRud.....and the Gaelic word for my dear Ireland...... Éire.

Let's start with SeanRud. Should you look the word up in a Gaeilge - Béarla ( Gaelic - English ) Dictionary you would find the word as such with the meaning , " old thing , old person , grumpy old man ". Essentially "sean" means "old" and "rud" has as its basic meaning "thing". Were the Sean Connerys and Sean Penns of this world to write their name in Gaelic the way it should be penned then they would write " Seán " ( which corresponds to English " John " ) and pronounce it with a long vowel " á "..... very close to a prolonged " ah " in the English word " father ". S before vowels e and i is always pronounced " sh ".

" Irish history writing Pet peeves
It really annoys me when people who should know better use the word Eire when they should use Éire. " The foregoing sentence is drawn from a stamp collector's site on the internet. If you look very closely at the country's official name on the stamps in the above picture you shall notice a certain flagrant discrepancy..... as not all are spelt correctly with the " fada" (not "fatwa" ) or length accent Éire. Usually a printing mistake like this would make the stamps more valuable to collectors. However , there were too many errors made either through ignorance or simply because of laziness ...... this outright disregard / disrespect for Irish tradition and linguistic patrimony sickens and infuriates those of us who care. The right way to write the dear old sod's name is Éire ... pronounced "aayre " whereas without the fada .... eire...... the word means burden , load , cargo , lading , etc and is pronounced " ayre ".

There are many words used when referring to Ireland... Gort Féilim ... Feilim's Land , Feilim being an ancient Irish culture hero. One common anglicized term for the Emerald Isle is Erin which is derived from the dative form of Éire ..... Éirinn ........ as seen in one of the stamps ( lower left ) above honouring the coming of Christianity to Ireland.... Teacht na Críostaíochta go hÉirinn.