Why Do The Irish Never Say "No" or "Yes"?
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[flash=480,390:2x5od8vg]http://www.youtube.com/v/hcepgXwWbjI?fs=1&hl=en_US[/flash:2x5od8vg]
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Sometimes
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that's funny...
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I can back that claim. No Irish woman has ever said yes to me at any rate.
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That would make a good language tutorial though.
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Maybe
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For sure
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The Irish language has no simple words for "yes" and "no".
The answer to a question contains a repetition (the same as in Latin) of the original verb, either with or without a negative particle.
For analytic forms, only the verb is given and the subject is not repeated.
If a verb has different dependent and independent forms, the dependent form follows the interrogative or negative particle.
The independent form is used where there is no particle.An éisteann Seán lena mháthair ariamh? "Does Seán ever listen to his mother?" —Éisteann. (not: *Éisteann sé) "Yes." —Ní éisteann. (not: *Ní éisteann sé) "No." Nach bhfuil tú ag éisteacht liom? "Aren't you listening to me?" —Tá. "Yes, I am." —Níl. "No.(I am not)"
So they don't say "yes" or "no",,, because their linguistic brains aren't wired that way - interestingly, in just the same way as an ancient Roman speaking Latin !!!
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Is ea [sha] = Yes
Ni hea [nee ha] = No
Poig mo thoin [pogue mo hone] = kiss my ass
dun do bheal [doon da vale] = shut your mouth
here's one to figure out.....
An bhfuil cad agam dul amach mas e do thoil e?
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'Is ea' and 'Ni hea'
'THE yes' [the 'yeah!'] and '[the] NOT no' [the double-negative ~ 'not nothing'] ?
But still no simple 'yes' and 'no' !?English: Are you going? - Yes | No.
Irish: Are you going? - I am going | I am not going.Labhraíonn mo shean-mháthair na hÉireann - tá sí as Maigh Eo.
[My old grandmother speaks Irish - she's from Mayo]She still can't see the difference between 'bring' and 'take' in English...
'Bring it with you...' and 'Take it with you...' ...
when the first is something to do in the immediate future and involves moving 'it' towards where I am/we are [or I/we will be when you do the moving], the second, might apply now or in the immediate future and involves moving 'it' away from where I am [we are] now and having 'it' with 'you' as you go away from 'here'.
But...
'Leat é [a thabhairt]' [='You [bring it].' [but tangled up with 'giving' ??]]
'Tóg é go bhfuil tú ag' [=Take it with you] - used in the sense of bringing it tooConfusing or what!
Gaelic really is 'obscure' - having few counterparts in other commonly spoken languages - and of course when they reinvented the spelling into the 'Roman' alphabet they couldn't have simply used common vowel/consonant sounds [the Welsh were the same!] ... so English speakers could perhaps pronounce it...
Cobh = Cove
Siobhan = 'Sheevaun'
Sheelagh = Sheila
Baile Átha Cliath = DublinGaelic might not be spoken daily by most Irishmen but the obscure 'syntax' lives on in Irish English...
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Well there are 4 regional types of Irish. So your grandmother would speak a slightly different Irish than me. In fact in school you spend time learning your local Irish until your final exams before college(if you go). Then in that exam they expect you to understand another region's Irish
Also not all of the alphabet is used. so 'V' is replaced by 'BH' etc....
And remember that our Anglo-French cohorts did alot of damage whereby villages/towns got renamed and the originals lost to history. Hence the you'll see signs that will say 'Lahinch 3km' then 'Lehinch' 1km and so on....
But 'Tiocfaidh ar la' [Chuck-egg err law]....
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ken?
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An other interesting thing about Ireland are the place names. Most of them were totally bastardized by our English occupiers.
For example my town's name is Ennis, in Gaelic its Inis, meaning Island. The town was build around a monastery located on an island. Dublin, our capital was Dubh Linn meaning black pool!
The english place names mean little or nothing in most cases and you have to look at the Gaelic name to get an idea of what the place was named after.
Much the same thing happened to surnames! My surname in Gaelic is O'Luasaigh (O lu sig) or O'Lusa (O lu sa). I suppose some British landlord's agent was was unable or to lazy write down the proper surname and the O'Luasaigh ended up being called the Luceys!
I ofte thought of reverting to my proper Gaelic name, Micheál O'Lúasaigh ..... now I'm the lazy one
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House = 'An Tighe' - is usually pronounced 'Teeg' or 'Tick' or 'Tig' , but in the NW of Eire it's often heard as 'Tchock' [as in 'match'], 'Chock' or even 'Jock' !
So I know that even the Irish can't agree how to say a word let alone spell it 'logically' !It's not unusual... In the south of the UK they'd say 'shee warked daan-d parth, avin a-larf af-fings...' while here in the north it'd be 'shee wukd doon-th p'th, havin a-laf ut-thins...' [==She walked down the path, having a laugh at things...] and as ever the English spelling is ignored completely by everyone involved - until the 1800s everyone said 'path' [or something very like it] - that's why Americans do because they took it with them ages ago - but then it became fashionable for toffs to stretch their vowels [sounds painful ] and so 'parth' it became [paarth in extremis] - but the spelling stuck at 'path'. In the north the 'a' sound is still very common in most words, although by now for some reason 'father' is pronounced 'farther' by almost everyone, except the 'old-timers' who can be heard saying the quaint "mi fa'th'" == 'my father'...
The current Romanized Irish spelling came in around the late 1940s [after which the Irish uncial alphabet was abandoned except for 'road-signs' etc and other special writing trying to look proper 'Irish' - certificates, trad-pub etc]... BUT whoever 'invented' it didn't have to omit the 'V' and use 'BH', that was just a choice that was made after all [it was made up to show 'lenition' of some consonants as explained below because the 'dot-mark' was lost***]. I know in English we use V, PH, F etc all as a 'vee' sound anyway - as has long been pointed out [others + George Bernard Shaw] the English word 'FISH' could/should be spelled 'GHOTI' [rouGH..wOmen..naTIon] Also they 'forgot' to include a lot of other letters too - J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y and Z, but these do sometimes appear in 'loanwords', for example 'jab' (=job) and 'veain' (=van) i.e. it's NOT 'bheain' ! When uncial 'went' Irish lost the 'lenition' dot-marking [and also the confusing 'agus' where '7' = '&' ? which is now used somewhat less too]. Accented vowels [+'sheenoo' or [síneadh] fada = 'long[-sign]'] still persist, as - a á - e é - i í - o ó - u ú - used to show longer vowel-sounds, as do the more complex vowel-combos. ***Unfortunately loosing 'lenition' dot-marks [séimhithe='dot of lenition'] over some consonants, like Ḃ, ċ, ḋ, ḟ, ġ, ṁ, ṗ and ṡ, meant they then had to be written when Romanized as bh, ch, dh, fh, gh, mh, ph and sh - so that the B=Bee and BH=vee sounds etc could be differentiated in writing/reading once again!
That's much like Esperanto when written on the Internet using only ASCII characters - Esperanto has lots of accented letters to differentiate pronunciation like Ĉ=CH or Ŝ=SH in English, but to write it in ASCII they'll often use CX, SX etc [used because there is no X used in Esperanto; there is an H but it's already taken!]... This makes Esperanto look harder to pronounce when written like that [CXU MI ESTAS? - where CXU==choo - 'Am I?'], when in fact the whole idea of Esperanto was its logical and simple spelling! You could never accuse Irish of making their spelling 'simple' - logical maybe, but simple NO
At least we can count our blessings that the Irish uncial script had replaced the much earlier Ogham's 'runic' script long ago - otherwise trad' road-signs/street-names etc would be very awkward...Mé ag dul ar scor anois as an díospóireacht...
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Staying off-topic; we have an Ince not 2 miles down the road. Same origin as Mike's home town (and the modern Welsh Ynys). In fact English place names are rather thin on the ground around here. England has been overrun several times too and most of the names around here are Viking....like the venue for the Grand National, Aintree (solitary tree); or my own town Formby ( from Forni byr, Forni's farm) which has exactly the same origin as Fornebu, a western suburb of Oslo.
Adding to TIG; the REALLY posh people here don't even say "parth" they say "peth"; and they take a beth instead of a shower...as in the old chestnut "What is sex?". "It's what the Queen has her coal delivered in." And have you ever noticed how Prince Charles says "hyce" instead of house? Some people dunno 'ow to speak proper.
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That was a good read. It reminded me of having to sing the Irish alphabet in school.....
A á
B bé
C cé
D dé
E é
F eif
G eif
H héis
I í
L eil
M eim
N eim
O ó
P pé
R ear
S eas
T té
U ú
Which when sung to the tune of the alphabet song (which we did) it sounds completely disjointed and ends rather abruptly.Lenition does add to the confusion in pronunciation but coupled with our use of broad/slender consonants not to mention eclipsis [mp, nd, gc].
Anyway, do we say yes or no? Is ea
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