I am noticing in Niamh how subjects speak to the king in imperatives:

quote:

“Leog domhsa imeacht, a rí,” arsa Niamh.

Chrom Brian a cheann chúichi, agus d’imigh sí amach.

Niamh actually orders the king to let her go out - as an imperative is actually an order. She doesn't say "please may I leave".

It may be a cultural thing -that the Gaels were more "democratic" than other stratified cultures. Of course there is "led thoil" and "más é do thoil é", but clearly, from this example, they were not used to quite the extent as in other cultures. Even speaking to the king does not require a "please".

You can see the same thing in tú vs. sibh. In nearly all European languages, the 2nd person plural can be used to a singular person to show respect (tu vs. vous in French, du vs. sie in German, tú vs. usted in Spanish, tú vs. Lei in Italian, ty vs. vy in Russian and so on), but not in Irish. Apparently there is an exception that a priest can be addressed as "sibh", but I have no examples of this - and PUL always shows priests and bishops being addressed as "tú"; it would be interesting to find examples of a single priest being "sibh".

Am I right about "please" not being overdone in Irish culture?

I don't think so.

I would have translated the above as "Let it be me who goes"

dá mb'áil leat leogaint domhsa imeacht?

But there is also this: "i bhfochair an tslóigh". Can "i bhfochair" be followed by "de"? I bhfochair den tslua? or "do"? I bhfochair don tsua? [but at any rate without the genitive]

Oops posted in the wrong thread - this refers to the sluaite vs. slóite thread...

(Message edited by corkirish on December 04, 2010)

David, consider the Lord's Prayer
"Ná lig sin i gcathú"

I think it is wider than an imperative.

yes, I see

quote:

Am I right about "please" not being overdone in Irish culture?

Well, you are aware that English speakers use "please" and "thank you" much more than speakers of other languages?

When I went to Italy first, I had to stop myself from saying "grazie" and "per favore" to everyone I met as Italians don't use those expressions half as much as Anglophones say "please" and "thank you".

Another point about politeness: in Irish the conditional forms are often used in expressions of courtesy; "An ólfá piúnt eile? Ólfad, go deimhin", "An sínfeá chugam mo mhálasa, a Mháire? Sínfead, siúráltha".

Yes, English speakers use "please" and "thank you" more. When I was in China I explained to many Chinese people how English people like to "ham up" the politeness, eg "you couldn't, by any chance, tell me the way to the post office, could you? I am so very sorry to trouble you..."

to my English mind, "a rí" addressing the king, and "a ríogain" addressing the queen seem disrespectful. What about "your majesty"??? There is "a mhórgacht"...

But I got the feeling the Irish were traditionally less impressed by people claiming to be kings and queens, and by mummery and flummery, than the English traditionally have been...

(Message edited by corkirish on December 06, 2010)

quote:

to my English mind, "a rí" addressing the king, and "a ríogain" addressing the queen seem disrespectful. What about "your majesty"??? There is "a mhórgacht"...

I suspect "A Mhórgacht" is a relatively recent coinage. As a republican (a believer in a republican system of government), one of the definitions given by Dinneen sums it up best: mórdhacht - pride, self-conceit ;)

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But I got the feeling the Irish were traditionally less impressed by people claiming to be kings and queens, and by mummery and flummery, than the English traditionally have been...

I wouldn't be so sure about that, David. There are a number of individuals in this state who would be only too glad to see Queen Lizzie as head of state here.

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to my English mind, "a rí" addressing the king, and "a ríogain" addressing the queen seem disrespectful.

I'm sure one of David Cameron's servants may well say to him something like "Prime Minister, a car is waiting outside to take you to the airport" and not "Your Supreme Ministerialness" or some such.

you mean in the South too? I thought the Anglo-Irish had been so fully integrated that they no longer existed as a separate cultural group any more? But the English papers claim today that more than one-third of the southern Irish want to adopt the £, including 43% of SF voters - but I think this is more a question of not wanting a long economic depression than wanting Banrín Shasana to nip over to Teamhair na Rí...

quote:

you mean in the South too? I thought the Anglo-Irish had been so fully integrated that they no longer existed as a separate cultural group any more?

Absolutely! I'm talking about the mass of the population who were traditionally Roman Catholic and largely of indigenous Gaelic ancestry. The Anglo-Irish are nowadays a tiny minority. A number of prominent figures are on record as saying that they would welcome Irish membership of the British Commonwealth, including - hold your breath - ex-Gaeltacht minister Éamon Ó Cuív whose grandfather Éamon de Valera fought in 1916.

There are also one or two groups on the lunatic fringe who who like to see the state return to British rule once again but you could probably count their membership on the fingers of one hand.

True,Carmanach,we don't have an established caste system anymore,but we have wealthy Irish snobs in abundance 'is nach orthu bhí an éirí in airde?'

If Banrion Eilís was to rule here how could Sir Anthony O Reilly complain? Not that he'd want to.Like 'sir' Bono,Saint bob ,Sir Peter Sutherland, Lord Darzi et al!

Fintan O Toole writes 'we need a second republic.' Hmm,we never had a first one?

"Prime Minister, a car is waiting outside to take you to the airport" and not "Your Supreme Ministerialness" or some such.

- Exactly. We don't traditionally go into lavish terms of ass licking like the English do, your majesty, your highness etc.

I'd say that most employees in Gaeltacht areas would call their employers by their first names too. And it is not a sign of disrespect. He is still very much the boss.
(Unless the employer is a blow-in who wants to be called "Mr. ..")



I agree the conditional tense is used for politeness.
"Please" translated to "le do thoil/más é do thoil é" is not part of Irish culture. And in a way neither is "thank you" -gratitude is shown more as a salutation like Bail ó Dhia ort or similar.



I think addressing priests as "sibh" is something left over from the days before modern Irish when we had a formal/informal forms of "you" like the other celtic languages today - Scottish Gaelic, Welsh etc. A lot of the people who used it later probably didn't even know that. For example I knew an old woman who told me it was because the priest had the holy communion with him. She didn't understand it was an old grammar rule.
Not even old people address priests as "sibh" anymore.

I believe the formal/informal rule in Welsh isn't as strict as other languages. If you address a stranger as "tu" instead of "chi" people wont normally get offended, but if you "du bist" somebody in German without permission (which they are unlikely to give most of the time) your goose will be cooked. :)

I think a lot of the lessening of honorifics was due to liberal democracy more than any other factor as a general counter to the monarchical order (a close second is the general lessening of manners). For instance, George Washington certainly set a precedent when he preferred to be called "Mr. President" as opposed to "His Highness, the President of ...". Each culture has their own ways of honoring and being polite. A problem I see is cut and pasting these cultural codes into another language as though the difference was the language and not the code. Some may take the code of New York as being too brusk. I knew someone who visited England, supposedly very polite and proper, and she was turned off by all the people who ignored her on the streets and wouldn't make eye contact. Obviously the codes did not mesh. I think the key is to understand the Irish code, and more specifically the Irish language code, and not apply a foreign one even though it may seem impolite to you. Now it doesn't help that respect for those in positions of power is probably at an all-time low, so I am sure the "honorifics" are quite colorful these days.

quote:

Not even old people address priests as "sibh" anymore.

One of the characters in the Radio na Gaeltachta soap Cois Cuain used to.

In Germany, formarilty is age and rank related. I used "du" with almost all my colleagues (who were all older than me) but Sie with my boss. Socially things are more relaxed again. But that was in Berlin - I think as in many other things there is a gradient in Germany - as you go south and west things become more formal...

Well, I have been addressing all my professors by first name here (Tübingen) from day one. This could originally be an American thing, but that is common in academia nowadays. This is unheard of in Russia, but widespread in Israel, as I was told.

Peter, in offices in England, you have to call your managers by their Christian names, whether you feel comfortable about that or not - companies like to create a false sense of camaraderie among the staff. But it can throw you off your guard a bit - he is still your manager, and you need to maintain a distance, whether the company encourages that or not.

This Western business culture is also quite common in offices in Russia nowadays. But as the post-Soviet scientific community is almost completely isolated from the rest, things have not changed that much there. So I used to use first names + patronymic and 'Вы' with my professors, but call my boss by his first name and used 'ты' with him.

Micheál Ó Cléirigh uses the 2nd person pl. addressing his patron Fearghal Ó Gadhra here:-
"Tanaċċ-sa an braṫair boċt d’Urd S. Fronseis Miċel Ó Cléricch … da ḃur laṫair si a uasail, a Ḟearġail Uí Ġaḋra. Do ḃraiṫeas ar ḃar n-onóir gurḃ’ aḋḃar truaiġe agus neṁele, doġaisli agus dobróin liḃ (do ċum Glóire Dé agus onóra na hÉireann) a ṁéid do ḋeaċattar slioċt Gaoiḋil meic Niuil fó ċiaiġ agus dorċadas …”

quote:

I suspect "A Mhórgacht" is a relatively recent coinage.

What about “A Shoil(l)se”? Does that have a long tradition?

The use of 'sibh' as a respectful term was always drummed into me, for a priest or especially a bishop.

I have been informed that it was formerly even more commonly used as it is in Scotland, although it is becoming rare there also.

However I have never ever heard it in speech and when I have used it I have been misunderstood, or even corrected.

Like many things in Irish that are quite correct, even more correct than things commonly said, one tires of getting corrected, even by basic learners.

If I ever say 'sibh' to one person now it is accidental.

Incidently, I think that is a pity.

quote:

But it can throw you off your guard a bit - he is still your manager, and you need to maintain a distance, whether the company encourages that or not.

Amen!

quote:

Incidently, I think that is a pity.

Well, it would appear that native speakers haven't used "sibh" in that manner for a long time and that the language has changed and moved on and so must we. Even Dinneen says that sibh is a plural pronoun and makes no reference to its use in addressing one person. A friend of mine heard another colourful explanation of the use of "sibh" when addressing one person; that you are addressing the person as well has his or her guardian angel! He heard this from one of the last native speakers in Clare back in the 1950's I think.

quote:

Like many things in Irish that are quite correct, even more correct than things commonly said, one tires of getting corrected, even by basic learners.

Well, it might be somewhat analogous to me going round using "thou" and "thine" and "thy". Correct of course, but antiquated and never used nowadays in spoken English.

Ailín, don't be so sure "thou" is never used in spoken English. In Yorkshire dialect it is in full vigour. As a student, I got a job in a cash-and-carry in Leeds, and met a lot of the real dialectal locals.

What they would say was:

do you know where the beans go? = does tha' know where 't beans go?

/duz ðæː no: wɛəʔ bi:nz go:/

ʔ is the symbol for a glottal stop

Of course, it is not correctly conjugated, as it was "knowest thou?" in the 16th century English, and definitely not "does thou know?", but the word itself, "thou", is definitely in use.

quote:

Ailín, don't be so sure "thou" is never used in spoken English. In Yorkshire dialect it is in full vigour. As a student, I got a job in a cash-and-carry in Leeds, and met a lot of the real dialectal locals.

By gum!!

That reminds of that Avid Merrion sketch where he takes off Craig David: "It's proper Bo, I tell thee!!". I note that Leigh Francis himself is from Leeds so he's obviously drawing on the local dialect.

I think Monty Python did something similar in the "Three Yorkshiremen" sketch:

- When we were young, we used to live in an 'ole int' road!
- An 'ole int' road?!! Thou wast lucky. We didn't 'ave nowt so fancy as an 'ole int' road!!

Michal Palin of course was born in Yorkshire.

A very good example of traditional Yorkshire dialect is at http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/england/welwick/ - a 1955 recording of a lady born in 1890. (she uses "thou" half way through) . The transcript is on that page, and the audio link too, but I would categorise this as very hard to understand without reading the transcript at the same time.

quote:

Well, it might be somewhat analogous to me going round using "thou" and "thine" and "thy". Correct of course, but antiquated and never used nowadays in spoken English.

Some Quakers still use thee, at least amongst themselves. Yes, most English speakers do not uses these anymore except in certain contexts like prayer.

quote:

If I ever say 'sibh' to one person now it is accidental. Incidently, I think that is a pity.

I think it is good that that tradition is gone. While I am all for honoring people and offices, I think the plural for singular deal has caused too much linguistic chaos in English. In common everyday speech there is not much of a problem because you have a lot of non-verbal communication and context, and new uses have come up like you all/y'all in some areas. But think of all bickering and debating, and rightly so, over translating Bibles and Missles. To just name one instance (very important to the doctrine of the Papacy), Lk 22:16-18, focusing on the idea that Jesus is speaking to all the apostles and then addresses Peter alone. Example one is clear who is being addressed. Example two is ambiguous when translated according to the Greek. They resolve it (not all that well to me) by adding the words "of you" and "own". How many probably debated and complained about such an addition!

Older English Translation:
And the Lord said, "Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.

Modern English Translation:
"Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers."

I say be thankful you have a clear tú/sibh opposition!

quote:

A very good example of traditional Yorkshire dialect is at http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/england/welwick/ - a 1955 recording of a lady born in 1890. (she uses "thou" half way through) . The transcript is on that page, and the audio link too, but I would categorise this as very hard to understand without reading the transcript at the same time.

Very interesting indeed. "If ya don't kneeeed yer flooooor weeeeel".

quote:

and new uses have come up like you all/y'all in some areas.

I've read that this "y'all" in the southern U.S. comes from the one of the Gaelic languages, Irish or Scottish Gaelic, "sibh uile/go léir". In Hiberno-English we use "yous all" all the time, though I would probably use that more with my family and friends in Wexford than here in Dublin: "Are yous all going to the match?"

Carmanach,
I would think this is a very likely reason. In other parts of the country such a use didn't catch on, but in the south, where the Irish and Scottish influence is very strong, they have it. I hear you guys most often, and you all just a little bit in my area.

See also:
http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_50.html

There aren't many languages where's there's no difference between you singular and you plural. Except English and some dialects of Breton, I don't think I've heard of any other...

"Ye" in the plural is very common in Munster English.

Ailín, I wonder if Munster English is careful to keep ye and you (nominative, accusative) separate?

Now "ye" is archaic, no one cares if it used right and so many examples can be found of wrong usage. In the song "Men of Harlech" (a Welsh warlike song, see the film Zulu) it says "keep these burning words before ye" - even though before would require "you", not "ye"...

Or another funny one is ye olde shoppe, as though it was pronounced ye, but it is the old letter for th, so the olde shoppe.

quote:

Ailín, I wonder if Munster English is careful to keep ye and you (nominative, accusative) separate?

Good question. I'm not sure to be honest. All I know is that you (singular nominative) vs ye (nominative plural) are used.

quote:

Or another funny one is ye olde shoppe, as though it was pronounced ye, but it is the old letter for th, so the olde shoppe.

I've seen that been being claimed before, namely the edh (ð) being confused with a y but then I wonder where the y in Yola (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yola_language) comes from since the word "Yola" is said to mean "old". If it isn't "ye ole", what is it?

Well, in old English there was no difference between eth and thorn - in Icelandic eth would be only the voiced version of "th", but in old English both voiced and unvoiced versions were written with both consonants.

But there was a tendency, not absolute, to use thorn (þ) at the beginning of a word, so that "the" would be þe (as well as ðe). Note that this word was originally "se", no the move from "se" to "þe" was already a modernisation.

So it is really thorn that was confused for a "y" and not eth.

Why does yola mean "old"? Well I don't know, but the original Old English word was "eald" with the comparative "ieldra".

The pronunciation of "ea" is reconstructed as /æɑ/, but I'm not sure anyone really knows for sure. but you could see how "ea" or "ie" or ieldra could produce a y...

quote:

There aren't many languages where's there's no difference between you singular and you plural. Except English and some dialects of Breton, I don't think I've heard of any other...

Here's a article and a map from the WALS on inclusive/exclusive grammatical distinction. According to this, there are 12 languages in the (supposedly representative) sample of 200 languages that either 'have no basic way of expressing any ‘we’-like concept' (group 1) or use one pronoun that covers both the English 'I' and 'we' (group 2): http://wals.info/feature/description/39 . Now, on the ethnologue website the figure of living languages stands at 6,909. Extrapolating to the entire set, we get about 415 languages lacking this distinction in the first person only. Clearly, it is possible that even more languages lack this distinction in other persons, particularly the 3rd person (see chapter 33 on plurality marking, about 8% of all the languages in the sample lack any nominal marking whatsoever).

Yes, Chinese and Japanese, among others, don't have plural forms for nouns as far as I know. You say "house" and "houses" the same way. To express plural, you need to put a word that means "many" etc before them. But there are plural pronouns.

quote:

There aren't many languages where's there's no difference between you singular and you plural. Except English and some dialects of Breton, I don't think I've heard of any other...

In Esperanto, if you consider this a language proper, it is also the case that "thou" and "you" are identical forms, namely "vi". I think I read that Zamenhof put things this way, because he thought it a difficulty to decide between the formal and the informal address, when people meet. So he invented a form which ressembles more the polite system in European languages.

PS. "ci", a form of "thou" is actually never used, I only read it once in a text, when a queen was shouting at her slave.

I can't take a comparison with Esperanto seriously, I am afraid - others might.

quote:

So it is really thorn that was confused for a "y" and not eth.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y#Thorn

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... but then I wonder where the y in Yola comes from since the word "Yola" is said to mean "old". If it isn't "ye ole", what is it?

OED gives:

OE æald , OE ealdd , OE ealld , OE–eME æld, OE–eME eald, OE–ME aeld, lOE eæld, lOE ealð , lOE–ME eld, eME eold, eME ȝelde , eME heald, eME healde, ME eeld, ME eelde, ME eild , ME eilde , ME elde, ME elle, ME held, ME helde, ME yalde , ME yeald , lME yold ; Irish English (Wexford) 17 yolaw, 17–18 yola, 18 yole.

I think it is a natural development from the ea diphthong, much like in north Irish the ia and ua can go to ya. OED gives quotes of the form at least back to the 14th century.

To Ingeborg:

Zamenhof's both native languages, Yiddish and Russian, have a strong T-V distinction and relatively free word order. Zamenhof tried to preserve as much of syntactic flexibility as possible. Many early Esperanto texts sound like word-by-word translations from Russian. But he also wanted to get rid of peculiar culture-sensitive elements, so this distinction had to go. It might also have something to do with his "Homaranismo" philosophy, which treats all human beings as equal.

To everyone:

Maybe I'm stupid, but how do I quote a post on this forum?

(Message edited by laplandian on December 14, 2010)

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