Hello, everyone! My first question on here!

I'm learning about the preposition "gan" and had a question. I understand it lenites a noun that comes after it, except for d, t, s, (and f?) and it does not lenite a personal name nor a modified noun. That said, how would you translate "musician" in the following phrase:

"Without music or a musician"

"gan cheol nó ceoltóir" or would it be "cheoltóir"?

Normally, in traditional Irish, you need to repeat the preposition: gan cheól nó gan cheóltóir. Other option is to use ná: gan cheól ná ceóltóir, but it would mean "neither...nor".

Leave out the "nó" and say "gan cheol gan cheoltóir".

"Ná" would be better instead of "nó": Ní raibh ceol ná ceoltóir acu.

You can use any of these it would seem, depending on style.

gan cheol nó ceoltóir "without music or a musician"

gan cheol nó gan cheoltóir

gan cheol, gan cheoltóir

etc.

(It usually lenites F too.)

I often wondered about "gan". Would it be linguistically related to the French word "san" meaning "without" or is that a pure coincidence?

Any one able to pronounce on that one authoritively.

Bhainfeadh fréamh 'gan' na Gaeilge (< ‘cen’ na Sean-Ghaeilge, .i. abhus, an taobh seo, gan) le 'cis-' na Laidine san ainm Gaill Chisalpina. Féach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisalpine_Gaul

Tá an focal fós linn faoin leagan 'cé': an chruinne ché.

Siar chuig ‘sine’ na Laidine atá ‘sans’ le rianadh a Joe. Tiocfaidh tú ar eolas faoi siúd ar an idirlíon.

I don't think so. It was originally cen - see dil

http://www.dil.ie/results-list.asp?Fuzzy=0&scount=2&searchtext=xmlid%20contains% 20cen&sortField=ID&sortDIR=65602&respage=0&resperpage=10&bhcp=1

just a little correction Joe: "gan" is "sans" in french (with an s) , but just like you I wondered about the etymology of "gan", and I thought it could be compared with Dutsch and German : Dutsch "geen" and German "kein/e" .
Any idea from anyone?

There's no relationship to the Germanic forms. These are aphetic developments of compounds of the negative particle neh, nih (cf. Latin neque) and the indefinite article (itself derived from the numeral "one"). This last bit explains, for instance, why in modern German kein declines exactly like the indefinite article.

So, etymologically, kein and geen correspond not to gan but to ní haon. I'm not sure if there is a Germanic cognate to gan but, if so, it would begin with h-.

French sans (ultimately from Latin "sine") comes from si/sic "this" or "thus" and ne "not".

MacBain's posits the concept of "lacking" or "want" and says it is related to the Greek kenós "empty". This seems probable.

We can say, though, that sans and gan are not from the same roots.


gun: without, Irish gan, Old Irish cen; Greek keneós, empty; root keno-. So Old High German hina, hinweg, Anglo-Saxon hin-.

http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/mb22.html#gun

Also:

cion: want; from the root ken of gun, without.

http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/mb08.html

A Dhomh b n d, A Chara
"if there is a germanic cognate to gan, it would begin with h-"
Could you tell me if that's a rule in linguistics .
K, g (dutsch) and h are so near. haven't they got the same meaning , aren't they the same expression of a guttural sound which would have been distorted throughout the times .
Or, as you seem to say, is there a definite rule for this evolution ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms_Law

*kʷ→hw [xw]

Now this is mostly w in Germanic languages. The best place to see this sound change is in the question words:

Irish cad?
Latin qui?
English what?

Etc.

This sound went to /k/ in Irish, but also the voiced /g/.

(Message edited by seánw on October 06, 2009)

Evolution of language sounds is not random but proceeds according to definite rules. The rules governing the historical changes to the Indo-European languages in general and the Germanic languages in particular are some of the best-studied in all of comparative linguistics. The German scholar Friedrich von Schlegel first described the regular k/h correspondence over two centuries ago and it was subsequently incorporated into Grimm's Law, also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift (Erste Lautverschiebung).