I am sorry to have so many questions, but I have come across this in Niamh:

quote:

Nuair a bhí na huaisle go léir cruinnithe bhí mórshlua álainn uasal acmhainneach ag Brian. Níor mhiste “gasra nár dhóigh” a thabhairt ar an mórshlua san, mar a tugtar sa tsean-amhrán.

I modernised the spelling. But it is "gasra nár dhóigh" that is bugging me. Does this mean they were "an unlikely band"? A group of people you couldn't expect much from?

Well, is there any clue as what this old song could be? "Gasra nár dhóigh" could very well mean as you suggest, "an unlikely band" or "a band who did not burn (something or somebody)" going solely on the text given.

As for "tugtar", I note Amhlaoibh Ó Luínse has "tugathar".

Of course in the south, "dóigh" substantive is pronounced "dó". In Corca Dhuibhne, forms such as "Is dóigh liom" have come to be understood as "Is dóil liom" giving rise to a new form commonly heard from good speakers "Is dóil go bhfuil . . .".

There is no indication what the song is, but this is the whole context (spelling updated by me):

quote:

Níor fághadh an giolla turais i bhfad ag déanamh an tionscail, áfach. Do comáineadh chun siúil é ar theachtaireacht eile. Is air a glaoití i gcónaí nuair a bhíodh gá le dithneas agus le cruinneas agus le géarchúis. Chuir duine éigin des na huaislibh leathscéal éigin uaidh á rá ná féadfadh sé teacht. B’éigin do Chaoilte dul ag triall air agus a thaispeáint dó gur cheart dó teacht, go mbeadh sé ag déanamh díobhála dhó féin mura dtagadh sé agus a thaispeáint dos na huaislibh eile go raibh sé chomh maith le héinne acu chun dualgais fir do chomhlíonadh.

Nuair a bhí na huaisle go léir cruinnithe bhí mórshlua álainn uasal acmhainneach ag Brian. Níor mhiste “gasra nár dhóigh” a thabhairt ar an mórshlua san, mar a tugtar sa tsean-amhrán. Ó thosnaíodar ar theacht bhí Meargach Gabha agus a raibh de cheártanaibh ’en tsaol aige ag obair go dian ag déanamh arm agus ag deisiú arm. Tháinig gaibhní in éineacht leis an muintir a tháinig. Mura mbeadh san níorbh fhéidir do Mheargach teacht ar an obair. Na gaibhní a tháinig, áfach, is amhlaidh a luíodar isteach san obair a bhí ar siúl, i dteannta na ngaibhní a bhí ann rompu, agus do stiúraigh Meargach an obair go léir. B’shin mar ba thúisce a bhí an obair go léir críochnaithe. Do críochnaíodh an obair go léir fé dheireadh agus do scoireadh na longfoirt agus do ghluais an mhórshlua chun bóthair.

In addition to the gasra nár dhóigh thing, I am doubtful about "mura mbeadh san níorbh fhéidir do Mheargach teacht ar an obair". Meargach is the crusty blacksmith in charge of Brian Ború's weapons forging and casting works, but "teacht ar" - does it mean "manage to complete the work"?

(Message edited by corkirish on November 15, 2010)

Ailín, PUL also had dóil. There is this in chapter 4 of Séadna:

quote:

An dóigh leat an mbeidh Peig abhfad? Ní dóil. Tá tamall mór ó imthigheadar.

Tugtar - yes Amhlaoibh Ó Loingsigh had tugathar. It would be interested to know how an tAthair Peadar pronounced this - he certainly wrote tugtar. I think you would struggle to find even one person today who pronounced tugtar tugathar...

I don't want to replace all occurences of tugtar in Niamh by tugathar, because a) the original spelled it tugtar; and b) tugtar is used in Standardised Irish. The point of the spelling modernisation is to make it accessible, and to try to use the Standardised spellings as far as it is possible for West Muskerry Irish. I note that some modernisations (eg Scéal mo Bheatha by Dónall Bán Ó Céileachar) produced in Muskerry recently contain spellings like cínn, with a síneadh fada, but that merely generates numerous words spelled differently from the Standardised Irish, when the pronunciation with a long /i:/ in cinn can be derived from the phonological rules presented in The Irish of West Muskerry.

At the beginning of my Niamh, I have a long footnote explaining my approach to modernisation:

quote:

The spelling adopted is largely that of Standardised Irish, except where West Muskerry (hereinafter, WM) dialect forms require a departure therefrom. Note that where regular rules can produce the WM pronunciation, the spelling is left as it would be in Standardised Irish. For example, “eo” is regularly pronounced “eó”, and so there is no need to spell a large number of words distinctively. A similar rule applies to lengthened vowels before “r”: while ard was once written árd, the length of the vowel can be deduced without the lengthmark. The rules on vowels in position before nasals—discussed in Brian Ó Cuív’s The Irish of West Muskerry (IWM), p 121—also cover a large number of words. Thus sinsear is pronounced sínsear and dinnéir dínnéir, but the reader is expected to draw these conclusions from general rules. A rule applies whereby an “l” or “ll” is dropped in pronunciation before “r” and a diphthong produced, and so it has been thought better here to adopt the Standardised spelling of the word dealramh, pronounced /dʹaurəv/, rather than the deabhramh used in the original work, which in turn was at variance with the historically correct form, deallramh. Similarly, banrín is so written, despite the deletion of the first “n”, producing /bau'rʹi:nʹ/. Another example is aon rud, pronounced /e:rəd/, but familiarity with IWM will resolve many problems of this nature, and copious footnotes point many of these things out. Prepositional pronouns spelled “-u” in Standardised Irish are so spelled here too, including words such as rompu and eatarthu where the final vowel is a neutral vowel /ə/ in WM Irish. Irish surnames such as Ó Ceallaigh are given in full, although such surnames are pronounced without the final “-igh” in WM Irish, /o: kʹalə/.
On occasion, a spelling at variance with both the original text and the Standardised Irish form is preferred, eg adhsáideach for the original eidhsáideach. This is because adhsáideach is listed as a variant of aosáideach in Ó Dónall’s Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, and yields the correct WM pronunciation, whereas eidhsáideach would simply be, and was, an idiosyncratic spelling choice. The Standardised Irish spelling of the autonomous forms of the imperfect and conditional tenses is used, according as it does with the caol le caol, leathan le leathan spelling rule, although the endings “-taí/-tí” or “-faí/-fí” are generally pronounced with slender “t” and “f” in WM Irish, regardless of the spelling. Similarly, the Standardised Irish spelling of the autonomous forms of the present and future tenses is used, although the endings “-tar/-tear” or “-far/-fear” are generally pronounced with broad “t” and “f” in WM Irish, regardless of the spelling. This is to avoid producing a large number of variant spellings, and is any case something that allowed for some variation among the speakers of WM Irish. Spellings used by PUL that were at variance with WM pronunciation, but that are identical to those used in Standardised Irish (eg, tar for tair) are retained, to avoid artificially imposing a deeper dialectal appearance on the work, but a note is given to explain the WM pronunciation. Finally, some words are spelled in a manner that poorly illustrates the pronunciation, eg, inniu for /i'nʹuv/, but it has been thought better to retain the spelling rather than generate innovative spellings never in general use. The general approach is therefore one where the correct pronunciation of all words should be derivable from the spelling used, provided the reader has a close familiarity with IWM. Notes are employed to highlight anything unusual. Occasional apparent typographical errors are corrected, including d’aon ghuth for d’aon guth and sa ríogain for sa ríogan.

quote:

The point of the spelling modernisation is to make it accessible

Just a curious thought then, why are you using a Gaelic type font?

I am not using a Gaelic type font. Does it appear in Gaelic type on your screen? It doesn't on mine.

Yes. For instance when I view chapter 12 of Niamh, it shows the embedded fonts as Times New Roman and Gadelica. The whole thing comes out in a Gaelic type font. No Roman type to speak of.

Niamh 12

I see the same

Baile-Áṫa-Cliaṫ: Muintir na Leaḃar Gaeḋilge, 6 Sráid d’Olier, 1907. Fógarṫar gaċ ceart ar cosnaṁ

Is this what we are meant to be looking at or is this the original text?

It is. David's new edition is to be found here

http://www.corkirish.com/wordpress/niamh-in-modernised-spelling

Gabh mo leithscéal. Thanks, Aonghus. I was looking at his website, and that entry is a month old. I was wondernig where all these footnotes where! David, good work. I am not against the Gaelic scripts at all, I just was wondering how such a thing would be widely accessible.

(Message edited by seánw on November 17, 2010)

I am uploading chapter by chapter in the original spelling and Gaelic fonts, but that is largely for me. Separately, I am uploading a Roman-font modernised spelling version with footnotes, to be accessible to everyone.

I am sorry, Seánw, I did not understand what you meant. I thought you meant that my post in this thread appeared in Gaelic font. Now I see what you meant.