Category: Manx (Gaelg)

Eilean Mhanainn / Ellan Vannin

By Simon

I just listened to the first in a series of programmes on Radio nan Gàidheal on the Isle of Man (Eilean Mhanainn in Scottish Gaelic, and Ellan Vannin in Manx), which focuses on the Manx language. I found it very interesting, and was pleased to find that I could understand almost all the Scottish Gaelic, as well as the Manx.

Interestingly, when they were talking to Manx speakers, all but one of whom spoke in Manx, they translated their words into Scottish Gaelic, probably assuming that speakers of Scottish Gaelic would have difficulty understanding the Manx. This doesn’t tend to happen when Scottish Gaelic speakers are interviewed on Irish language radio or vice versa. While there is a fair bit of mutual intelligibility between the Gaelic languages, it seems to take speakers of each one a while to become sufficiently familiar with the others to be able to understand them – perhaps this is more the case with Manx as Irish and Scottish Gaelic speakers rarely hear it.

Summer chicks and glowing coals

By Simon

Butterfly

Last night we were talking about the Pili Palas on Anglesey, a butterfly centre, which also has birds, snakes and other exotic creatures. The name is a pun combining pili-pala (butterfly) and palas (palace) – it took me ages to realise this. We were trying to think of the words for butterfly in various other languages and came up with the French, papillon, and the Spanish mariposa, but got stuck after that. This got me wondering why these words are so different in different languages.

The English word butterfly comes from the Old English buttorfleoge, perhaps from bēatan (to beat) and flēoge (fly), or perhaps it was the name just for yellow butterflies, and/or because butterflies were thought to eat butter and milk.

In Middle High German butterflies were known as molkendiep (“milk-thief”) and in Low German a butterfly is a Botterlicker (“butter-licker”) [source]. In Modern German Schmetterling /ˈʃmɛtɐlɪŋ/ is the word for butterfly – from Schmetten (cream) – from the Czech smetana (cream). This is based on the folk belief that witches transformed themselves into butterflies to steal cream and milk [source].

Welsh words for butterfly include iâr fach yr haf (“summer chick”), glöyn byw (“living coal”), pila-pala and bili-balo.

Like iâr fach yr haf in Welsh, butterflies are known as “summer birds” in Norwegian, sommerfugl, and in Yiddish, zomerfeygele.

In Irish the word for butterfly is féileacán, possible from the Old Irish etelachán (little flying creature / butterfly), from etelach (flying) [source]. The Manx butterfly, foillycan, comes from the same root, but in Scottish Gaelic butterflies are seilleann-dé (“God’s bee”) and dealan-dè (“God’s lightening”).

The French word for butterfly, papillon, comes from the Latin pāpiliō (butterfly, moth) – of unknown origin, and also the root of the English word pavilion (via Old French) [source]. The Italian farfalla (butterfly) comes from the same source.

The Spanish word for butterfly, mariposa, apparently comes from the expression Mari, posa(te (Mary, alight!), which features in children’s songs and games, or from la Santa Maria posa (the Virgin Mary alights/rests). Other theories about the etymology of this word.

There is more discussion of words for butterfly in various languages on AllExperts, and there are words for butterfly in many more languages here.

Panceltic concert

By Simon

Last night I went to a great concert in St John’s (Balley Keeill Eoin) at which all the modern Celtic languages were sung and/or spoken, as well as English and French. It was wonderful to hear them all, and I even understood odd bits of the Cornish and Breton, the only Celtic languages I haven’t got round to studying yet.

I think it was the first time I’ve heard Breton spoken and sung live – I have heard recordings before though. I thought that it sounds kind of similar to French, but when you listen closely you realise that it isn’t French at all.

I spoke to various people in Manx, English, Welsh, French and a bit of Irish, and joined in with songs in Manx and Scottish Gaelic at the session in Peel (Purt ny hInshey) after the concert.

An Irish group called Guidewires will be playing in Peel tonight, supported by a Manx group called Scammylt, and before that there’s a talk on Welsh poetry by Mererid Hopwood.

Tomorrow I’m off to Gleann Cholm Cille in Donegal for a week of Irish language and music at Oideas Gael’s Irish Language and Culture Summer School.

Yn Chruinnaght

By Simon

At the moment I’m in the Isle of Man for Yn Chruinnaght (‘the gathering’), the Manx National and Inter-Celtic Festival. Yesterday I heard some Scottish Gaelic and odd bits of Manx at a fantastic concert featuring Capercaille and a bunch of local musicians (David Kilgallon and Some Thoroughly Nice Folk), and expect to hear all the other Celtic languages while I’m here as performers and visitors from all the Celtic lands are here for the festival.

The word cruinnaght means ‘assembly, function, gathering, event’ and is used in such expressions as:

– cruinnaght skeerey – parish gathering
– Cruinnaght Vanninagh Ashoonagh – Manx National Assembly
– cruinnaght-vooar – mass meeting

In case you’re wondering, cruinnaght acquires an extra h after yn (the) because it’s feminine and the initial letters of feminine nouns usually mutate after the definite article, in the singular at least. This is a peculiarity shared by all the Celtic languages.

The verb form of cruinnaght is cruinnaghey, which means ‘to gather, huddle, troop, enclose, beseige, raise, round, head, screw up, sum up, focus’.

Source: Online Manx Dictionary

Levees and ganseys

By Simon

Last night the words levee and gansey came up in conversation and while I’d heard both of them before, I wasn’t entirely sure of the meaning of the former, or the origins of the latter. I did know that a levee had something to with flood prevention and was something you drive your chevy to, and that gansey sounded similar to the Irish word, geansaí (jersey, jumper), though I hadn’t heard it used in English before.

A levee, /lɪˈviː/ or /ˈlɛviː/, is a natural embankment along a river formed by sedimentation, or a man-made embankment along a river or around a field designed to prevent flooding. It is also a landing place or quay; a formal ceremony held when a sovereign gets up in the morning, or an afternoon reception for men at court [source].

Levee in the sense of a man-made flood-prevention embankment is apparently used mainly in American English (especially in the Midwest and Deep South), and was first used in English in New Orleans in around 1720. Other words for levee include levée, dike/dyke, embankment, floodbank and stopbank.

Etymology: the feminine form of the past participle of the French verb lever (to raise), from the Latin levare (to raise), from levis (light in weight), from the Proto-Indo-European root *le(n)gwh- (light, easy, agile, nimble) [source].

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, gansey, /ˈgænzɪ/, is a jersey or pullover and is a dialect variant of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands famous for its knitted sweaters. It is also written gansy, ganzee, ganzey, ganzie & ganzy. This dictionary also has a Guernsey coat, “a thick, knitted, closely-fitting vest or shirt, generally made of blue wool, worn by seamen”, which is also known as a Garnesie, Garnsey or Gernsey.

Another source claims that the word gansey comes from “a word of Scandinavian origin meaning ‘tunic'”. This sounds plausible as the Norwegian word for such a garment is genser [source], though it’s possible that the Norwegian word comes from Britain or Ireland.

The Art of the Fishing Communities website, “Ganseys (Guernseys), Jerseys, Aran and Fair Isle are names given to fishermen’s knitted pullovers that were universally popular in the 19th and early 20th century. Each fishing village had its own pattern and within the local pattern there were small variations, and sometimes names, that identified the family and individual.”

The Irish word for jersey or sweater, and also the island of Guernsey, is geansaí /gʲansiː/, sounds similar to gansey and possibly comes from the same source. The word is also found in Manx – gansee and in Scottish Gaelic – geansaidh.

What do you call a knitted woollen top?

Jumper, sweater, pullover and jersey, and indeed gansey, are all used in the UK, and I normally say jumper.

Christmas

By Simon

Nadolig Llawen
Joyeux Noël
聖誕快樂
Nollaig shona doibh
¡Feliz Navidad!
Nollick Ghennal
Bo Nadal
Nollaig chridheil
メリークリスマス
Buon Natale
Frohe Weihnachten
Bon Nadal
Veselé vánoce
and Merry Christmas!

Colds, streams and rivers

By Simon

A snow-covered Siliwen Road in Bangor

It’s rather cold here at the moment with daytime temperatures not much above freezing, and nighttime dropping to -10°C (14°F) or even -20°C (-4°F) in places. As a result, some of the snow that fell last week has frozen solid and been trampled down on pavements and ungritted back streets making them decidedly icey and slippery.

I also have a cold at the moment, so I thought I’d look into how to say “I have a cold” in a number of languages. In French it’s “Je suis enrhumé” or “I am enrhumed”. Enrhumé comes from rhume (cold), which comes from the Old French reume, from the Latin rheuma, from the Greek rheuma (stream, current, a flowing), from rhein (to flow), from the Proto-Indo-European *sreu- (to flow). The Proto-Indo-European *sreu- is also the root of the Irish sruth (stream, river), the Welsh ffrwd (stream) and the Polish strumyk (brook). [source].

The Czech word for cold rýmu appears to be spring from the same source – mám rýmu is “I have a cold” by the way – as does the English word rheumatism. You can also say jsem nachlazený for “I have a cold” in Czech, which has a similar structure to the French phrase – “I am colded” or something like that.

In Welsh you don’t have a cold but rather a cold is on you: mae annwyd arna i, and the other Celtic languages use the same structure, “Is cold on/at me”: tá slaghdán orm (Irish), tha ‘n cnatan orm (Scottish Gaelic), ta feayraght/mughane aym (Manx).

In German “I have a cold” is Ich bin erkältet (“I am becolded?”), with erkältet coming from kalt (cold).

In Mandarin Chinese you say 我感冒了 (wǒ gǎnmào le) or “I catch cold [change of state particle]”.

Bœuf

By Simon

One thing we were discussing last week at the French conversation group was words for animals and their meat. In French the words for meat are also used for the animals: bœuf means beef and ox, porc means pork and pig, mouton means mutton and sheep, while in English there are different words for these things.

The popular explanation for the different English words for the animals and their meat is that after the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066, the animals were reared by the English, who called them cý, pecges and scéapes (cows, pigs and sheep) and eaten by the Normans, who called them boef, porc and motun (beef, pork and mutton). However the distinction between the names for the meat and the animals didn’t become set until the 18th century, and mutton and beef were used to refer to sheep and cows for many centuries after the Norman Conquest.

Bœuf comes from the Latin bos (ox, cow), the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root of which is gwóu (cow). This is also the root of vache, the French word for cow, via the Latin vacca (cow), and of the English word cow, via the Old English cú (pl. cý) and the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word kwom. In fact many of the words for cow, bull or cattle in Indo-European languages probably come from the PIE root gwóu. Examples include: bó (Irish and Scottish Gaelic), booa (Manx), buwch (Welsh), bugh (Cornish), buoc’h (Breton), govs (Latvian), կով (kov) (Armenian), گاو (gav – Persian) and Kuh (German).

As well as ox or steer and beef, bœuf also means (a) surprising; unusual; (b) stupid (in Swiss French); (c) (musical) jam session / jazz improvisation.

Idioms containing bœuf include:

  • avoir un boeuf sur la langue (to have a cow on the tongue) = to keep quiet; not give anything away
  • boeuf carottes (beef carrots) = internal affairs (Police)
  • comme un boeuf (as an ox) = very strong
  • gagner son boeuf (to earn one’s beef) = to earn a living
  • on n’est pas des boeufs (we are not cattle) = a little consideration and respect, I beg you

Meanings of mouton include: (a) sheep; (b) mutton; (c) sheep / lamb (someone easily led); (d) stool pigeon / grass; (e) moutons = white horses (on waves) / fluff / fluffy or fleecy clouds. Mutton and mouton possibly come from the Gaulish multo (ram) via the Middle Latin multonem and the Old French moton (ram, wether, sheep).

Idioms containing mouton include:

  • mouton à cinq pattes (a sheep with five feet) = white elephant rara avis / rare bird (something difficult or impossible to find)
  • revenir à ses moutons (to return to one’s sheep) = to return to the thread / subject of one’s discourse
  • suivre comme un mouton (to follow like a sheep) = to act like everyone else; gregarious

Sources
http://www.anglo-norman.net/
http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/mb04.html
http://www.indo-european.nl/
http://www.le-dictionnaire.com/
http://www.etymonline.com/
http://indoeuro.bizland.com/project/phonetics/word28.html

Eastáit na Sí

By Simon

Eastáit na Sí

An interesting Irish expression I came across recently is Eastáit na Sí (“Fairy Estates”), which are known as Ghost Estates in English. These are housing estates full of empty houses that nobody can afford thanks to the disappearance of the Celtic Tiger.

The Irish version refers to the Sí (fairies or little people) from Irish folklore. The writer of the article suggests a solution to this problem – making the empty estates into new Gaeltachtaí [source].

The old spelling of sí is sídhe; in Old Irish it’s síde; in Scottish Gaelic it’s sìth, and in Manx it’s shee, and the English word banshee comes from the Irish bean sí (fairy woman).

The fairy folk are often referred to be other names and it is consider unlucky to call them fairies. Instead they might be known as wee folk, good folk, people of peace, fair folk, good neighbours or little people in English. In Welsh they’re known as the tylwyth teg (fair tribe), in Manx they’re the mooinjer veggey (little people), and in Cornwall they’re known as piskies or the pobel vean (little people).

The word fairy comes from the Late Latin fata (one of the Fates) via the Old French faerie, which means the land, realm, or characteristic activity (i.e. enchantment) of the people of folklore called faie or fee [source].

Lá Fhéile Pádraig Shona Daoibh / Happy St Patrick’s Day!