Category: Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig)

Cennin Pedr

By Simon

Daffodils / Cennin Pedr / Narcissi

Yesterday was St David’s Day (Dydd Gŵyl Dewi), a day when many Welsh people wear daffodils (cennin Pedr) in honour of their patron saint. The daffodil (cenhinen Bedr) is one of the national symbols of Wales, along with the leek (cenhinen), and the Welsh name for daffodil means “Peter’s leek”. The leek has been a Welsh symbol for many centuries and features prominently in traditional Welsh dishes such as cawl cennin (leek soup). The daffodil became popular as a national symbol during the 19th century, especially among women.

The names for daffodil in Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic are similar: lus an chromchinn, lus ny cam-ching and lus a’ chrom-chinn, which mean “bent-headed plant”. Alternative names in Manx include lus ny n’guiy (goose plant) and lus yn arree (Spring plant).

The English word daffodil is thought to comes from the Middle English affodill (asphodel), from the Middle Lation affodillus, from the Latin asphodelus, from the Greek asphodelos, the origin of which is unknown. The initial d perhaps came from a merging of the Dutch definite article de with affodil (Source).

According to Plutarch the Latin name for daffodil, narcissus, comes from the Greek ναρκαώ [narkao] (to numb), which is also the root of narcosis, as the plant which produces numbness or palsy (Source). Although other sources claim that the narcissus was named after Νάρκισσος [Narkissos], the character in Greek myths.

The daffodil or narcissus is a symbol of vanity in the West, while in China it’s a symbol of wealth and good fortune.

Word of the day – cawl

By Simon

Today’s word, cawl /kaul/, is a Welsh word meaning soup, broth, gruel or a mess.

Cawl is also a traditional Welsh stew made with meat and vegetables. It’s the kind of dish that’s made from whatever is available so the exact ingredients vary, but it often includes lamb and leeks, and is often served with bread and cheese. There a recipe for cawl and more information here.

The word cawl probably comes from the Latin caulis, which means the stalk of a plant, a cabbage stalk or a cabbage. It is related to the Irish cál, the Scottish Gaelic càl, the Cornish caul, the Breton kaol, the German Kohl, the English cole, as in coleslaw, and the Scots kail, all of which mean cabbage. The Welsh word for cabbage is completely different – bresychen.

The Proto-Indo-European root of caulis is *kaw(ǝ)l, which means tubular bone or pipe.

It’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht

By Simon

Full moon

I went for a walk with some friends last night and one of the things we were talking about was the moon, which was nearly full and very bright. One of my companions suggested that there should be an adjective similar to sunny to describe such a night. He came up with moony, and I couldn’t think of anything better – can you?

I’ve since discovered that full moons have different names in different months. A December full moon like the one tonight, for example, is known as the oak moon in the medieval English calendar, as the cold moon in the Celtic calendar, as the peach moon by the Choctaw, as the snow moon by the Cherokee, and as the bitter moon by the Chinese. More moon names.

By the way, the title of this post is the Scots for ‘It’s a beautiful moonlit night’ and comes from a song by Sir Harry Lauder called Wee Deoch an Doris, which you can hear here. Deoch an Doris comes from the Scottish Gaelic expression ‘deoch an dorais’ – lit. ‘drink of the door’, which means ‘one for the road’ or ‘the parting glass’.

Y Cooish

By Simon

I’m currently in the Isle of Man for the Cooish, a festival of Manx language and traditional music from the Isle of Man, Ireland and Scotland. Last night I went to an excellent concert in Peel which included the Arrane son Mannin (Song for Man) competition, and there’s a lecture in Manx (Leaght y Ghaaue) this evening.

Yesterday I met a Manx-speaking friend on the boat coming over and we talked Manx throughout the crossing. Well actually she did most of the talking and I contributed to the conversation whenever I could. It was the longest conversation I’ve ever had in Manx and I was pleased to find that I could understand almost everything, and even got the jokes.

My Manx tends to get mixed up with Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and even Welsh sometimes, but my friend is fluent in Irish, and speaks some Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, so this didn’t matter so much. We did try to stick to Manx most of the time though.

One of the things we were discussing was false friends between the Gaelic languages. For example, daoine means people in Irish, while in Manx dooiney means men, and the word for people is sleih, mooinjer or pobble. In Scottish Gaelic people is poball or sluagh, and men is daoine.

We also tried to translate Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody into Manx, though couldn’t remember all the words in English and weren’t sure of the Manx equivalents of some of the words we could remember.

When is a language extinct?

By Simon

The recent publication of UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger has generated quite a few new stories and discussion.

The Atlas has a list of 2,500 endangered languages ranked according to five different levels: unsafe (607), definitely endangered (632), severely endangered (502), critically endangered (538) and extinct (200). Of these languages, 199 have fewer than 10 speakers, and 178 have between 10 and 50 speakers. The Atlas is apparently available online, although I can only find information about endangered languages in Africa.

Among the extinct languages it mentions Manx and Cornish, which has stirred up a lot of comment, especially among those who speak these languages and are learning them. For example, the website iomtoday.co.im tells us that the ‘Manx language is very much alive’ and there are articles on Manx and Cornish on the BBC site.

The comments on the iomtoday site are interesting and seem to agree that Manx is nobody’s first language, which I believe is true. One commenter points out that Manx is dead because “there are no longer any monoglot Manx speakers, or even speakers with Manx as a first language”. I’m not sure why it’s essential for there to be monoglot speakers of a language for it to be considered living. There are very few, if any, monoglot speakers of Welsh, Irish or Scottish Gaelic over the age of 5 or so, but there are plenty of people who speak them as their first language.

My dissertation will be a study of the revival of Manx, and this will give me a better idea of the current state of the language.

Faclair Dwelly

By Simon

I heard recently that there is now an online version of Dwelly’s Gaelic Dictionary, the most comprehensive Gaelic dictionary currently available. You can search for words via Scottish Gaelic or English, a significant improvement on printed version. You can also search for whole words, parts of words, exact spellings or similar sounding words. Another advantage of the online version of the dictionary is that you can read the text clearly and change the size if necessary – in the printed version the text is quite small and not always easy to read.

Edward Dwelly (1864-1939) was an English man with no Scottish connections who became fascinated by Scotland and learned to speak Gaelic like a native, and to play the bagpipes to a virtuoso level. He was also an active member of Comunn Gàidhealach an Lunainn (the Gaelic Society of London). He started work on his Illustrated Gaelic-English Dictionary in 1891, and it was published between 1902 and 1911. He not only compiled the dictionary, but also edited, illustrated, proof-read and printed it.

While the dictionary is somewhat out of date, the guys who digitised it are planning to add new words, recordings and images to it to bring it up-to-date.

Gaelic in Glasgow / Gàidhlig ann an Ghlaschu

By Simon

Scottish Gaelic is making something of a comeback in Glasgow, according to an article I found today in The Herald. This is largely thanks to the Sgoil Ghàidhlig Ghlaschu / the Glasgow Gaelic School, which provides education from nursery to secondary level through the medium of Gaelic.

Gaelic medium education has been available in Glasgow at primary level since 1986, when half the children who took this option had connections with the Gaelic-speaking highlands and islands. The Glasgow Gaelic School was opened in 2006 and currently has about 700 pupils, 80% of whom have no Gaelic connections, and some are from other countries. Demand for places outstrips supply and there are plans to expand the school over the next few years.

A new generation of young Gaelic speakers is emerging in Glasgow, and some of their parents are learning Gaelic as well. Similar things are happening in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. There is also an increased interest in Gaelic culture and music, and a thriving Gaelic pub scene.

In 1901 approximately 18,500 people in Glasgow spoke Gaelic according the census, though the actual number was probably higher. In 2001 the census revealed over 10,000 Gaelic speakers, and those speakers are spread across all age groups, whereas elsewhere in Scotland it’s mainly the older generations who speak Gaelic.

Word of the day – poc

By Simon

In Welsh a poc (/pok/) or pocyn (/’pokɪn/), is a kiss, however this word is rarely used in everyday speech. The more common word for kiss is cusan (/’kɪsan/) or sws (/sʊs/) and ‘to kiss’ is cusanu.

When I came across the word poc while looking for something else in the dictionary, it immediately reminded me of the Irish word for kiss – póg (/po:g/) and I assumed that they came from the same root. At first I thought the root was a ancient Celtic word, but have since discovered, via MacBain’s Dictionary, that both words come from the Latin pâcem, “the kiss of peace”, a part of the Mass.

There are similar words for kiss in the other Celtic languages: pòg in Scottish Gaelic, paag in Manx and pok in Breton.

Number of Gaelic speakers

By Simon

According to the most recent census, the number of people in Scotland who speak Scottish Gaelic is 58,650. However some of people I talked to last week who are involved in teaching or researching Gaelic believe that the actual number is higher. They suggested that some fluent Gaelic speakers who don’t read and write the language very well, if at all, don’t admit that they speak it on the census to avoid receiving forms and other official literature in Gaelic. They estimate that that real number of Gaelic speakers in Scotland is at least twice the census figure, and that there are several thousand more in other parts of the world, especially in England, Canada, Australia and the USA.

I’ve heard similar stories about Welsh speakers who don’t tick the box on the census saying that they speak Welsh for fear of receiving incomprehensible documents in Welsh.

Some Gaelic speakers apparently don’t believe that their Gaelic is good enough for jobs that require it, even though they speak it fluently. However such insecurity doesn’t seem to effect younger people so much, or Gaelic learners from other countries. There were certainly quite a few people from other countries with fluent Gaelic working at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig.

Does this sort of thing happen with other minority languages?