Can I ask this about chapter 15 of Niamh?

quote:

Ba mhór an radharc an mhór-shluagh san. Bhí seacht cathana ann agus bhí os cionn trí mhíle fear ins gach cath acu san. Bhí gach cath fé n-a ríogra féin.

Seacht cathanna, seven battles (restoring the double n) - hmm, there should be eclipsis there. I am thinking that the -t of seacht may have devoiced the "g" of gcathanna - or may do in rapid speech, so that there would be little difference in pronunciation between "seacht cathanna" and "seacht gcathanna", thus producing the typo??

I know it is not right to always assume typos, but every book in seana-chló I have does have numerous typos (Niamh has "léis" for "leis" and that sort of random typo), and seacht is elsewhere followed by consistent eclipsis in PUL's works.

Also, "Bhí gach cath féna ríogra féin" - every battle was conducted by its own royal house? A different royal house led each battle? Is that right? It is talking about a lot of petty kings taking up arms for Brian Ború, and so it could be that eg the King of Kerry led one battle, the King of Limerick led another, the King of some other petty kingdom led another. Did I understant that right?

Seacht cathanna Seven battalions

Each with it's own leader

Oh, cath can mean battalion? That explains that. Thank you, Aonghus.

quote:

I know it is not right to always assume typos, but every book in seana-chló I have does have numerous typos (Niamh has "léis" for "leis" and that sort of random typo), and seacht is elsewhere followed by consistent eclipsis in PUL's works.

Both seacht + eclipsis and seacht + 0 occur in Corca Dhuibhne, depending on the word, and indeed in many words seacht + loime tends to be the norm. A full description is provided by Ó Sé in his chapter on the numbers.

As for "léis" being a possible typo, may I ask if this occured before the plural article? "léis na"? If so, it is certainly not a typo, as "lés na" can be heard in Corca Dhuibhne. Indeed "le" and "lé" both occur in CD.

quote:

Also, "Bhí gach cath féna ríogra féin" - every battle was conducted by its own royal house? A different royal house led each battle? Is that right? It is talking about a lot of petty kings taking up arms for Brian Ború, and so it could be that eg the King of Kerry led one battle, the King of Limerick led another, the King of some other petty kingdom led another. Did I understant that right?

I think "cath" means "battalion" and not "battle". See Ó Dónaill under "cath" and also Dinneen. "Each battalion was administered/led by its own royal house".

Ailín, the context for léis is this:

quote:

Níor chuir an chaint iongnadh ar aoinne de’n bheirt, ná ar aoinne de ríghthibh ná d’uaislibh na h-Éirean a bhí ag éisteacht léis an gcaint.

I like the old script and spelling, but it did undermine itself by the fact that EVERY SINGLE BOOK contained numerous typos. Well, they were working without word processors and spell checkers. And in fact in 1907, when Niamh was published - well it was the same year that Dinneen published the smaller version of his dictionary, but many of PUL's works came out when there was no good dictionary--and he disagreed with Dinneen on many spellings as well. So, working without a dictionary, a spell checker or a computer--it is easy to see how typos crept it.

But every book by PUL I have has numerous cases of the dot for lenition being missed off, síntíos fada being capriciously applied, and in fact words spelled differently in adjacent sentences!

By the 1930s, the seanachlódh works were more reliably spelled - especially those without the long r and long s (with the capitalised R and S) - they belong to an era with more consistent spelling. Although I really do not like to see the R and S instead of the long r and long s - it looks kind of like Cyrillic with capitalised letters in the wrong place.

Even taking the sentence above: ríghthibh - this appears as righthibh as well in the same book, and the two spellings are kind of in free variation. Maybe pre-World War 1 Irish spellings were seen as similar to 16th English spellings - ie, there was no set spelling, and all you had to do was get the point across, and it didn't matter if the same sentence contained the same word spelled differently.

quote:

I like the old script and spelling, but it did undermine itself by the fact that EVERY SINGLE BOOK contained numerous typos. Well, they were working without word processors and spell checkers. And in fact in 1907, when Niamh was published - well it was the same year that Dinneen published the smaller version of his dictionary, but many of PUL's works came out when there was no good dictionary--and he disagreed with Dinneen on many spellings as well. So, working without a dictionary, a spell checker or a computer--it is easy to see how typos crept it.

I don't agree that "léis an gcaint" is necessarily a typo. What are the other typos that you speak of? Can you give us some examples?

quote:

But every book by PUL I have has numerous cases of the dot for lenition being missed off, síntíos fada being capriciously applied, and in fact words spelled differently in adjacent sentences!

Are you absolutely sure that these are all "typos"? Are you aware of the fact that two forms of the same word or grammatical form may exist in the same dialect, even in the speech of the same speaker? Can you give us some examples?

quote:

By the 1930s, the seanachlódh works were more reliably spelled - especially those without the long r and long s (with the capitalised R and S) - they belong to an era with more consistent spelling. Although I really do not like to see the R and S instead of the long r and long s - it looks kind of like Cyrillic with capitalised letters in the wrong place.

The reminds me of the sign over the door of "An Bóthar" pub in Corca Dhuibhne, in Gaelic script, where long-tailed "r" was replaced by short-tailed "s", resulting in "An Bóthas"!

quote:

Even taking the sentence above: ríghthibh - this appears as righthibh as well in the same book, and the two spellings are kind of in free variation. Maybe pre-World War 1 Irish spellings were seen as similar to 16th English spellings - ie, there was no set spelling, and all you had to do was get the point across, and it didn't matter if the same sentence contained the same word spelled differently.

This reminds me of my own research into the Irish of Co Wexford for my master's degree where spelling "errors" by eighteenth centry scribes came in very useful indeed in building up a picture of how words were actually pronounced.

Fuat for Fuath in Mo Sgéal Féin

Imigéineamhla in Mo Sgéal Féin, followed by imigcéineamhla in the next sentence.

Stuama, stuamdha in Mo Sgéal Fein

Whatever spelling he was advocating, it jumped around on the page in the edited versions.

Cad é an ainim atá ort-sa, a mic?, in Niamh. In my copy of Niamh, which was obviously used by a student in the 1920s, he has pencilled in a dot for lenition above the m of mic.

Tairbeánadh for taisbeánadh in Niamh.

d’aon guth for d'aon ghuth in Niamh.

thaisbeánt for thaisbeáint in Niamh.

Má thárla do thárla gur tugadh an mí do M’lsheachlainn in Niamh, with no lenition on M'lsheachlainn.

The examples are so numerous I couldn't list them all. There are dozens of typos in Mo Sgéal Féin, Séadna, Niamh etc. Things that are definitely typos. Eoghan one sentence, and Eóghan in the next. That sort of thing. Dhein and dhéin. gheobhad and gheóbhad. No consistency at all.

Fair enough, some of those are obviously typos, while others display a conflict between classical spellings and spellings closer to modern pronunciation. Not typos in my book, but certainly lacking in consistency.

I have found these examples of "seacht" in PUL's works:

quote:

seacht mbó
seacht mbliana
seacht gcéad
seacht bparóistibh
seacht n-uaire
seacht mbailtibh
seacht mbológaibh
seacht gciseánaibh
seacht cathana
seacht cinn

Note that there seems to be no issue with eclipsis of b - it is always seacht mb-. No issue with n-prefixation of vowels, which is regularly there.

The issue relates only to eclipsis of a c-. It is hard to hear the difference between c and g after seacht.

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The issue relates only to eclipsis of a c-. It is hard to hear the difference between c and g after seacht.

I think you would need to have more examples than those to establish any kind of rule or pattern. I don't think the lack of eclipsis is necessarily due to phonological factors, indeed looking at Corca Dhuibhne, you will find some words with initial c, eclipsed, lenited or left unmarked after "seacht". These are grouped in broad categories as Ó Sé has done.