In any language, have you ever heard someone say something which struck you as sounding incorrect, but after you thought about it for a few seconds, you realised that they were tip-toeing around the "rules" of the language in order to avoid ambiguity, or perhaps even an undesireable meaning?

I was watching Teilifís na Gaeilge there a week or so ago, and a particular sentence immediately struck me as sounding odd... but when I thought about it, I realised that the speaker had deliberately circumvented the language to avoid an alternative meaning of what they were saying. The sentence in question went something like:

Caitheadh ocht billiún punt.

This immediately struck my ears as sounding odd because a "b" sound shouldn't follow 8 -- but then I realised that if an urú had been placed on it, it would sound identical to "milliún".

Have many of you here encountered similar situations, in any language?

"billiún" is a foreign word, it can't change. They call me "Mario", not "a Mhario" like "a Mháire". When such items are
forced into a specific grammar system that cannot recognize
their semantic value, there may rise serious troubles. One of my German teachers, a great scholar (some 40 years ago), was kicked off because of an elementary mistake in one of his works, where ambiguity could cause some troubles, kind of milliún/mbilliún. A Japanese word like "mokusatsu" means "to ignore" as well as "no comment"; in 1945 the translated response to USA ultimatim was "to ignore", while the original Japanese text meant "no comment" (this expression would imply a reflection standby for the Emperor, who was keen to accept the ultimatum from Potsdam, for he needed more time to discuss the issue). The war would have been over with no bomb on Hiroshima if translation were correct.

Is uafásach an scéal é sin faoi Impire na Seapáine. Níor chuala cheana é.

I agree with the tendency to avoid changing foreign words -- at least until we get used to them.

From what I see, the vast majority of "foreign words" fit in seemlessly:

Tá sé sa gcarr.

ironic how car was apparetnly a celtic word into Latin, then later into Irish via Anglais

quote:

then later into Irish via Anglais

I don't think that is true. Chariots were around in Ireland long before the Angles and Saxons made it to england.

Don't forget that English didn't start to be become an international language til the 16 Century and the Tudors.

"gluaisteán" is a neologism.

(Down south they call automobiles "cairt")

---

gluaisteán [ainmfhocal firinscneach den chéad díochlaonadh]
carr a thiomáintear le hinneall.

If "biliun" is a foreign word, then what is the native Irish word or term for "billion"?

Maybe they didn't count that high up... ? Farmers and fishermen wouldn't need such big numbers. It's only scientist, engineers, etc. who would need them.

Perhaps they would have said "míle milliúin" for billion.

quote:

If "biliun" is a foreign word, then what is the native Irish word or term for "billion"?

Why not use exponentials, for example, "ten to the 9th" for "billion?"

Although some of the greatest mathematical minds were from Ireland (Stokes, Hamilton), access to the sciences for the general Irish was repressed for centuries. I wonder what effect that had on the Irish language. Were scientific words unneeded, and if so, are they be created now?

http://www.focal.ie!

Creation is ongoing; there were scientific works in Irish up to the 17th century; the better terminologists recover words where possible.

Funny thing too. In Collins Irish dictionary, it gives -

billion - n (BRIT) billiún m1 + sg; (US) míle m4 milliún + sg.