Cousin = col ceathar
Second cousin = col seisear

So what's the deal here? Do you count all the people in the way? Me, my mum, my aunt, my cousin - 4 people = col ceathar

Me my mum, my grandad, my great-aunt, my 1st cousin once removed, my second cousin - 6 people = col seisear

Are there any more? Could an aunt be col triúir? A third cousin col ochtar?

Col is a blood relation.

I had a good description, but it is not quite the count you were suggesting.

My recollection is that it is the number of generations.

I'm not sure about the aunt. But a third cousin is a col seisear, and first cousin once removed is col cúigear.

col ceathar is your first cousin, the child of a sibling of your mother or father.

Aoghus, col seisear is second cousin. But thanks for the info on col cúigear. It makes sense.

Col ceathar = 1st cousin
Col cúigear = 1st cousin once removed
Col seisear = 2nd cousin

Most people don't know their third cousins, so it gets theoretical from there on...

Bodhrán that was a great link. I could only access it through Google cache at http:///search?q=cache:9MN4e6uUQFwJ:irishcultureandcustomes.blogsp ot.com/2008/03/gaelic-english-dictionary.html+site:http://irishcultureandcustome s.blogspot.com/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk

quote:

col seisear is second cousin

Dar ndóigh. Botún.

Bhí miniú breá i sean leabhar scoile de chuid m'athair agam, ach ní cuimhin liom na sonraí. Bhí col beirte ann do phaistí lanúin.

Tá col seachtar & ochtar ag an Dálach.

Dia dhuit,
I've got my first contact with the irish language some weeks ago. It's a very nice language, but very difficult. But as I am very curious, I would like to explore more about this celtic language.

I've found a old language course on the Internet : linguaphone Irish, with 2 audiofiles for the recorded dialogues and texts.

My question is : when I learn the Irish from e.g. Munster, can I be understood in Conemara, or vice versa? Is there such big difference?

Who is an Dálach?

Niall Ó Dónaill, foclóir Gaeilge Béarla.

Dia Dhuit Kurt,

quote:

My question is : when I learn the Irish from e.g. Munster, can I be understood in Conemara, or vice versa? Is there such big difference?

If you learn any dialect well, you will be understood. The differences are there, but because of Radio and Television, people will understand a fluent speaker of any dialect.

There used to be (still?) Church charts for consanguinity. The count is correct if you include yourself. It seems like this is only used for cousins, and rightly so, since it was primarily in this relationship that the Church would have to analyze the relationship to see if a dispensation was needed to be married, or there was an impediment.

Here is an example:

http://blog.metmuseum.org/penandparchment/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/consanguini ty_overlay_full.jpg

What was the "limit"? Eg you were allowed to marry second cousins (col seachtar), but not first cousins (col ceathar)? I think you can marry first cousins today, but I am not sure about the historical take on that. Your chart was interesting.

quote:

I think you can marry first cousins today

I could be wrong here but I think legally you can marry anyone, but if you are a Catholic, you would need permission from the bishop to marry your first cousin.

There are good scientific reasons not to marry too close to your family. The Church Laws reflected/reflects that.

The current Irish law is outlined here - first cousins are not prohibited from marriage:

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/categories/birth-family-relationships/getting- married/legal_prerequisites_for_marriage?tab=more

And the Irish version - which uses the word "col" a lot!

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/categories-ga/breith-teaghlach-agus-caidrimh/a g-posadh/reamhriachtanais-don-phosadh?tab=more

I could be wrong here, but I am pretty sure that we were taught in high school biology class, and Stanford School for Medicine seems to agree that the odds of a nuclear incest pairing causing any genetic problem was 1:16. For extended family pairings, the odds are not much different from a non-related person. However, it must be remembered that while 1:16 is a base number, it really depends on the specific disease.

If you have 16 kids, I think the real problem is the parents are suffering from a case of the "Rabbit's Disease" ;-)

"All of us carry several recessive disease genes. Many incest laws are socially rather than biologically based. This is certainly the case in ones that forbid first cousin marriage.

Many cultures encourage first cousin marriages and their kids seem to be pretty safe. Recent studies have shown that the risk for first cousins to pass on diseases is only 2-3% higher than for unrelated people."

http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=243

But like all things, each local region ultimately creates the laws that govern these types of topics. For example, in my native Iowa you cannot marry with the nuclear family, first, or second cousin. Missouri to the south of us says you can marry your first cousin.

Population is the utlimate factor, not religion, or law. Both religion and law will reflect the needs for survival. Where you find small populations without the ability to bring in new genetics to the gene pool, you usually find more liberal social controls on possible pairings.

And before any tries:

Just because you live in a small town, with a small population, and with strict laws on the topic doesn't negate this. If you think it does, ask yourself the following two questions:

How close is the next population base?

How easily can I get to the next population base?

(Message edited by do_chinniúint on November 02, 2009)

Church law is this:

- Forbidden: One's own children, Parents, Siblings, Grand-parents (any who are alive including "greats").
- Dispensation granted with difficulty: Uncles, Aunts, Nieces, Nephews
- Dispensation granted more easily: First Cousins, Second Cousins, Grandnieces and -nephews, Great aunts and -uncles, Children or Grandchildren of your Great Aunts and Uncles.
- No impediments based on these criteria: Everyone else!

The impediment is called "Blood Relationship" or "Consanguinity". It is annoucned at the banns, and is based on the deformities that can develop from these matches. I remember speaking to a man from Inis Mór who had to find a wife in Galway because he was too closely related to the eligible women on the island!

The Irish terms seem to be a useful way, in a small town, to know growing up if someone was too close to you to even consider.

Small islands like your man from Inish Mór are a very good example of what I was talking about. Because there was a lack of new genetic material entering the local population, an increase in genetic failures began to manifest. Why?

Because the people of the island were inbreeding. Not because they wanted to, but because there just wasn't a very big population base to give them a lot of options. Socially, it was allowed or it wouldn't have gotten to the point that the genetic failures were recycled enough to develop on large scale.

Religion, especially in the Christian world, caught on to the amount of power it held over its people. And they used religion as a means to weed out negative social problems, in this case inbreeding, by associating it with religious interpretation.

Take the 10 Commandments for example, only 3 of them have anything to do with religion or a belief system. The other seven or laws designed to regulate the day to day social behaviors of people. I find it odd that the Judeo/Christian/Islamic Creator Of All That Is really felt it necessary to remind the Hebrew people in tablet form of the societal laws that were in place long before the Jews left Egypt. LOL

quote:

If you have 16 kids, I think the real problem is the parents are suffering from a case of the "Rabbit's Disease" ;-)

.....Religion, especially in the Christian world, caught on to the amount of power it held over its people.

I think it would be best to keep our comments related to the Irish language, please!

A Bhodhrán,

I will retract my statement if you can prove me wrong. However, if you feel that I am attacking the Church or making some negative statement, I am not. I am simply saying the truth.

And no offense, but if you read a good portion of the threads here, the above statements are tame in comparison.

And the last is directly related to the topics being discussed in the thread. Christianity, yes Christianity has used its power and influence to manipulate the breeding habits of people, which includes the classification of family structure. Why? Beause they were the authority by which couples were being married, not the government.

In Ireland, as well as all others under the Christian rule, the institution of marriage was taken out of the hands of the people and placed into the hands of the Church after the Council of Trent, when they declared that only through Christian contract could a man and woman be officially recognised as married. And to solidify their power, they set the rules by which men and women could be married to include the matters of marriage within the family.

Just look at the power “they” gave “themselves” over people:

http://history.hanover.edu/texts/Trent/ct24.html

If that’s not using one’s power over their people, I don’t know what is.

My point about the Church was simply that they have been instrumental in controling social behavior in terms of marriage. That is not an opinon. That is fact. And it directly relates to the topics being discussed in that people have been using different terminology, even the Irish and their use Col ceathar, Col cúigear, Col seisear, as a qualification system for establishing mate selections.

Which again is at the heart of this "Irish language" themed thread: why there are differences in the terminology used for the levels of familiar relations.

(Message edited by do_chinniúint on November 02, 2009)

Gavin,
Off we go again. How did we go from col ceathair to power hungry clerics? As before you come off as a rabid anti-Christian even though you said you are Christian. Perhaps it is your approach that turns people off. I have heaps of criticisms for Church corruption, and your style turns me off. Okay man is sinful, corrupt, and under the mantle of the Church given a lot of power to be corrupted a lot. This is not unique to Christianity, and there is a teaching there from its founder to contradict them if they are against Him. Maybe this is related to what my priest said this Sunday, that the percentage of humans, not to mention Catholics, in heaven is small. Or maybe why Dante has a Pope in hell. "Amen I say to you, that the publicans and the harlots shall go into the kingdom of God before you."

Now, to clear the concept. The Catholic Sacrament of Marriage has always been contracted by the two people marrying each other. True the Church requires two witnesses, and a clerical witness for the sacrament to be valid, and naturally Catholic countries recognized this as law. This was codified in the Council of Trent for the most part to clarify for Catholics that they could not be sacramentally married through the civil government nor the Protestant churches (clandestinity). If somebody doesn't like this they could simply reject it and come what may. If you haven't noticed, Catholic countries and Catholics have almost wholesale rejected this Church law, so I don't know why you're complaining -- the world must be a better place for it. If you disagree with these requirements, then your concept of the Catholic Church must be very much skewed because since God created man and woman, and Jesus the God-man instituted His Qahal to be the salvific vehicle for living souls, then naturally His Church would have something to say about His creation. But you mix up the issue. One discussion was about Irish words based on natural law, the other about a positive law of the Church under God's authority, and primarily aimed at the government of the sacrament. ?!?!?!?

Gavin, to be quite straight with you, I don't think you've added to anyone's understanding of Irish, and I definitely think you have provided a skewed view of the history and doctrines of Christianity in relation to marriage. Slán leat, I won't give anymore off topic posts here.

I'm sure there are more appropriate forums on which to continue this discussion.

Caoimhín