Liam Smith wrote:
>>Gearóid Ó Laoi/Garry Lee wrote:
>>
>>>My experience is that you have to learn Scots Gaelic, though it's very
>
> easy
>
>>>if you speak good Irish.
>>>It's not a dialect. Dialects are mutually comprehensible. It's a
>
> separate
>
>>>language.
>>>Before I learnt some of it, I could get the gist of it but no more.
>>>Some of the key words are very different.
>>>Also, Irish = chomh maith, freisin. SG cuideacht.
>>>Very Irish = an- ana-. SG glé-
>>>etc.
>>>
>
> Einde O'Callaghan replied (in part):
>
>>I can still remember some of the differences: in Connacht "How are you?"
>>was/is "Caidé mar atá tú?" whereas I remember "Conas taoi?" in Donegal
>>and "Conas tá tú?" in the Caighdeán. I also seem to remember major
>>differences in the form of the genitive plural and the use of the
>>séimhiú (aspiration was what we called it) and urú (called lenition, I
>>believe), although large parts of the grammar were more or less
identical.
>>
>>Here in Germany, most Germans find it impossible to understand Swiss
>>Germans - so much so that when Swiss German politicians are interviewed
>>on television (e.g. in the news) there are subtitles, although when
>>Swiss French or Swiss Italian politicians are interviewed they require
>>no subtitles since they speak excellent High German (the standard
>
> dialect).
>
> Liam chimed in:
> We, in my Irish Study Group, have learned that "How are you?" is
> "Cén chaoi a bhfuil tú?" in Connacht, while it's
> "Cad é mar atá tú?" in Donegal, and
> "Conas atá tú" most everywhere else.
>
Just goes to show how my memory is playing tricks on me. also the
confusion of dialects that arose because I effectively learned three
different dialects at different times.
Addeed to the confusion that arises when you hear that "Cén chaoi a
bhfuil tú?" is actually pronounced as "Cé hí bhfuil tú?" by native
speakers from the Connemara Gaeltacht. And "Cad é mar atá tú" is
pronounced "Caidé mar atá tú?". I'm almost certain that the
Munster/Caighdeán version is "Conas tá tú?" But it's over 30 years since
I could speak the language fluently.
> The séimhiú is, indeed, aspiration in most applications, but it is now
> referred to as lenition. The urú is called eclipsis, in that the initial
> letter of a word is eclipsed to a pre-pended letter, thus causing the
> desired phonic mutation.
>
The formal terminology in English is something that I never learned -
also in linguistics the word "aspiration" has a different meaning.
> Simple? (Not really!)
>
No natural language is particularly simple. Speaking as a teacher of
English as a foreign language i can say taht the English language, which
seems to straightforward and logical to those of us who speak it as a
native language, is full of pitfalls and illogicalities to speakers of
other languages.
Slán, Einde O'Callaghan
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