BEFORE the bell has sounded at the start of her first title fight in Clint Eastwood's Oscar-nominated film "Million Dollar Baby," the scrappy, big-hearted boxer Maggie Fitzgerald, played by Hilary Swank, finds herself cheered into the ring by shouts of "Mo Cuishle," the Irish Gaelic moniker she's been given by her manager, Frankie Dunn, played by Mr. Eastwood.

And before Wes Davis gets his article out of the first paragraph, he's managed to spell mo chuisle incorrectly.

Then he treats us to the redundant "Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge?)"

apparently it's misspelled in the movie. the author notes that it is not the correct spelling.

in addition, he knew that yeats didn't know irish...i'm impressed...more homework than I would have expected would be done...

Only members can read. Any chance you could post it up?

You can sign on free. That's copyrighted material - ypu can't reproduce it.

One should never just register on a site just because it's free. Sites like NYTimes.com appear to have no reason to ask readers to register unless you look at their Terms of Service where most sites with "Free" "membership" help themselves to profitting from your personal data by selling it to unscrupulus businesses, telemarketers, and your e-mail address to spammers. You can however view ANY article on NYTimes without signing in if you have an RSS link(Link from a news reader). The links NYTimes puts in RSS feeds have special arguments like partner=rsssynt&en=codenumberhere that let RSS users in without trying to harvest their personal data. If this link wasn't too old, I could've found the RSS link but now that Feed is dead.

Interesting thing about "Million Dollar Baby" though. Most people I've talked to coming out of that theatre assume the guy is speaking Scottish because they call it "Gaelic". Or when you ask them if the character used Irish they'll reply: "No, Gaelic" as if it wasn't Irish. I don't know why people in America seem immediately associate the term Gaelic soley with Scottish but for the most part aren't aware the Irish EVER spoke anything but English but mabye that's just my city.

coming from the orange-lite NY Times the article is quite extraordinary, despite its orthographic mortal sins. but then i did not come from a grammatical culture myself - like many on this excellent and well educated list -- and sadly we mis-spelled and mispronounced irish and english words all the time. and we mis-pronounced "dem," as well. i guess we wuz (were) ignorant pikers? we pronounced sa/ch u/r "sucker." even though a sa/ch u/r was born every minute. however, despite the cracked orthography in the fillum (movie) i believe, after much research, that the phrase mo cuisle may be mo chuisle, pron. macushla, but i cd. be wrong. perhaps it is amadan? or omadaun. or sanas? or sain-fhios?

humhrey o'sullivan in his diaries has numerous mis-spellings, but luckily we have not flunked him, notched the stick around his neck, kicked his keister into the sraid, and ignored the book. what the article says, i believe, is that there is a secret tongue in america. it is called by many monikers at the moment: gaeilge, irish, gaelic, traveller gammon, tinker's back slang, low class cant, criminal slang, thieve's argot, longshoreman's slang, underworld jargon, and brooklyn low class "english" to name just a very very few. the irish who came to america in the millions were not good spellers in english or irish, unless they were thomas addis emmett. but then neither are the dudes and swells who edit the OED! they spell saol luim, slum, and gla/m, glom and gruaim be/il grumble. i am all for ignoring the OED for their mis-spellings of kidmapped words from Gaeilge, Gaelic, Gaelg.

by the way, wes davis, the young asst. prof who wrote the article told me they are starting an irish studies program at Yale.

Re registering for the Times page,
you can give 'em a fake email address.
They ask for demographic info:
I'm a 98-year-old carpenter
who lives in Antarctica,
in case you're wondering.

Le meas,
Gan ainm

outside of those I know from daltaí, the only americans i have ever met who know that ireland even has a language other than english refer to it as 'gaelic' and assume it to be a dead language - and those are the 'knowledgable' ones (sigh)

it appears that only irishmen, scotsmen, and gaeilgeoirí make the distinction between 'irish' and 'gaelic' - any linguistic texts i've read call it 'irish gaelic' in the write up under the header 'gaeilge'

in a world where most outside of ireland don't know that ireland has a non-english tongue, i suppose to call it 'irish' doesn't tell the listener anything.

The Orange NY Times has now featured an Irish phrase in its dull-as-dishwater (except for Maureen Dowd, Dan Barry and Jim Dwyer) prose two days running!!!!! Amazing that the NYT didn't burst into Hiberno-flames from the Teas of the Irish words. But, even mis-spelled, the phrase Mo Chuisle still beats with the hidden heart of the Irish language in America, mavourneen (mo mhuirni/n.)

For the newest ugly orthographic overcoat "mo cuishle" see NYT excerpt below. What do we expect? The OED spells somhaoineach swank. So, whadda' ya' gonna' do ? Keep doing what Daltai and others are doin' already. Open up more Irish Studies Programs at all levels and teach North America how to spell the Irish and Gaelic already in their their gob (cab.) As a leading Native American activist said to his people, urging them to reclaim their penalized tongues and cultures:

"We need to remember all the things we never knew."



NYT 2/28.05 MILLION DOLLAR BABY WINS OSCAR (excerpt)

Hilary Swank also won her second Oscar for best actress, for her portrayal of Maggie Fitzgerald, the waitress-turned-boxer who battles her way to the championship bout. At the podium, she thanked her husband, Chad Lowe, whom she forgot to thank publicly when she won for "Boys Don't Cry" in 2000. Finally, Ms. Swank turned to Mr. Eastwood. "You're my 'Mo Cuishle,' " she said, using the Gaelic term Mr. Eastwood's character translated as "my darling, my blood."


Personally I hate the newest NYT phonetic-straitjacket: Mo Cuishle.

But it beats her saying "My Vein or My Pulse" in Be/arla - like a straight flush beats two pair in a poker game.

pax
dc

Cool! She said it (albeit incorrectly) at the acceptance?

BTW, I really don't mind the term Gaelic for Irish, it is, after all, the language of the Gaels.

A chairde,

Googling re Hilary Swank's use of "Mo chuisle" on the Oscars broadcast,
I found this very odd "typo" (or something) in
the Long Beach, California, Press-Telegram:

"With his ever-growing bent for breaking taboos, understanding social complexity and deepening humanistic realizations, Eastwood is a libertarian even the most doctrinaire Democrat can love. This year, he was truly Hollywood's mo cosulacht - a Gaelic line from his film - its darling, its heart."

Wow!

Paul

Cosulacht means likeness, remembrance, appearance. It appears that someone looked up what they thought they heard.