{"id":7295,"date":"2012-07-12T10:20:41","date_gmt":"2012-07-12T10:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=7295"},"modified":"2012-07-12T10:20:41","modified_gmt":"2012-07-12T10:20:41","slug":"true-sisters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=7295","title":{"rendered":"True sisters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The word for sister in Irish is <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/deirfi%C3%BAr\">deirfi\u00far<\/a> \/d\u02b2\u027e\u02b2\u0259\u02c8f\u02e0u\u02d0\u027e\u02e0\/, and it has always puzzled me why this word is so different from the words for sister in the other Gaelic languages: <em>piuthar<\/em> \/pju.\u0259r\/ in Scottish Gaelic and <em>shuyr<\/em> \/\u0283u\u02d0r\/ in Manx. <\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I discovered that <em>deirfi\u00far<\/em> is in fact a combination of <em>deirbh<\/em> \/d\u02b2\u027e\u02b2\u0259v\/ (true) and <em>si\u00far<\/em> \/\u0283u\u02d0\u027e\u02e0\/ (sister). The word <em>si\u00far<\/em> originally meant sister in Old Irish, but came to mean kinswoman. To distinguish sisters from other female relations, <em>deirb<\/em> (true) was added to it, so the Old Irish word for sister was <em>derb\u1e61iur<\/em>, which eventually became the Modern Irish <em>deirfi\u00far<\/em> &#8211; the s at the beginning of <em>siur<\/em> became f after <em>mo<\/em> (my), <em>do<\/em> (your) and <em>a<\/em> (his), and this mutation became fixed.<\/p>\n<p>In Scottish Gaelic the word for sister came from Old Irish as <em>fiur<\/em>, which became <em>piur<\/em> and eventually <em>piuthar<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The Old Irish word <em>siur<\/em> (sister) comes from the Proto-Celtic <em>*swes\u016br<\/em>, from the Proto-Indo-European <em>*sw\u00e9s\u014dr<\/em>, which is the root for the word for sister in many European languages.<\/p>\n<p>The Irish word for brother, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/dearth%C3%A1ir#Irish\">dearth\u00e1ir<\/a> \/d\u02b2\u027e\u02b2\u0259\u02c8ha\u02d0\u027e\u02b2\/,  has a similar history: it is a combination of <em>deirbh<\/em> (true) and <em>br\u00e1thair<\/em> (brother) and used to be written <em>dearbh-bhr\u00e1thair<\/em> or <em>dearbhr\u00e1thair<\/em>. It comes from the Old Irish <em>derbr\u00e1thair<\/em>, from the Proto-Celtic <em>*br\u0101t\u012br<\/em>, from the Proto-Indo-European <em>*b\u02b0r\u00e9h\u2082t\u0113r<\/em>. In Modern Irish <em>br\u00e1thair<\/em> means brother as in a male member of a religious community or monk. In Old Irish it meant brother, kinsman or cousin.<\/p>\n<p><em>Sources: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1907165002\/omniglot-21\">Blas na G\u00e0idhlig: The Practical Guide to Scottish Gaelic Pronunciation<\/a>, by Michael Bauer<br \/>\nand <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/dearth%C3%A1ir#Irish\">Wiktionary<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The word for sister in Irish is deirfi\u00far \/d\u02b2\u027e\u02b2\u0259\u02c8f\u02e0u\u02d0\u027e\u02e0\/, and it has always puzzled me why this word is so different from the words for sister in the other Gaelic languages: piuthar \/pju.\u0259r\/ in Scottish Gaelic and shuyr \/\u0283u\u02d0r\/ in Manx. Yesterday I discovered that deirfi\u00far is in fact a combination of deirbh \/d\u02b2\u027e\u02b2\u0259v\/ (true) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,127,10,45,56,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-irish","category-language","category-proto-indo-european","category-scottish-gaelic","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}