Quick Gaelic Question

[sangi39]

Would "is beatha sin" be a good translation of "c'est la vie" (that/such is life)? Or would "tá beatha sin" be better?

[Declan]

I've heard "Sin mar atá an saol" before, but it could, depending on context, be "sin mar a bhíonn an saol" if it's continuous. Beatha is life as opposed to death, more than vie. Saol is the word you're probably looking for.

Why you can't say "tá saol sin" I don't know, but it sounds wrong. I don't think you can ever use that construction. Even "that's it" is "Sin é é".

[sangi39]

I've been online trying to find translations and coming up with them as well and these are the ones I've found:

Sin (é) an saol
Sin agat an saol
Sin an saol agat
Sin mar atá an saol
Sin mar a bhíonn an saol

I'm still at the stage where all my attempts at Irish come out as VSO. Although AFAICT the last two would fit the direct relative construction. So they'd come across as what, "such is the life that it is"? Would "sin mar" mean "such" or a similar concept since I just see at as the two words "that as"? And the first one looks like it might be "that's it, the life".

[linguoboy]

Why you can't say "tá saol sin" I don't know, but it sounds wrong. I don't think you can ever use that construction. Even "that's it" is "Sin é é".

Because tá isn't a copula and can't link two nominals. You have to use workarounds incorporating PPs like tá sé ina mhac léinn or níl ann ach mac léinn which--as far as I know--are only possible with animate nouns.

I've been online trying to find translations and coming up with them as well and these are the ones I've found:

Sin (é) an saol
Sin agat an saol
Sin an saol agat
Sin mar atá an saol
Sin mar a bhíonn an saol

I'm still at the stage where all my attempts at Irish come out as VSO.

These are all VSO (at least, to the extent that the copula is a verb in Irish, but that's a different discussion). Ó Siadhail argues that in this case sin should be analysed as is in (which I think may be attested historically). Alternatively, you can see a copula-deletion rule as operating in sentence-initial position.

Although AFAICT the last two would fit the direct relative construction. So they'd come across as what, "such is the life that it is"? Would "sin mar" mean "such" or a similar concept since I just see at as the two words "that as"? And the first one looks like it might be "that's it, the life".

Those last two look a bit odd to me. I wonder if they're Donegal forms. Sin é an saol is what I would say.

[Declan]

Why you can't say "tá saol sin" I don't know, but it sounds wrong. I don't think you can ever use that construction. Even "that's it" is "Sin é é".

Thanks for that. I'm only now starting to learn why things "sound right" to me in Irish!

Those last two look a bit odd to me. I wonder if they're Donegal forms. Sin é an saol is what I would say.

Could be. I know it from a song, but I (with a bit of a mix of Conemara and Muster) wouldn't say it either.

[linguoboy]

Thanks for that. I'm only now starting to learn why things "sound right" to me in Irish!

Yeah, I get the impression that in Ireland Irish is taught with minimal overt reference to grammatical concepts. A couple months back I had a discussion with a student over the correct use of the word caillte and she defended her usage by saying "but I'm using it in the free tense....". To this day, I have no idea what she meant by that. (Later she used the Irish term saorbhriathar, but this was only more mystifying as there were no instances of the autonomous form in the sentence under discussion.)

[Declan]

Thanks for that. I'm only now starting to learn why things "sound right" to me in Irish!

Yeah, I get the impression that in Ireland Irish is taught with minimal overt reference to grammatical concepts.

That's for sure, except for the Aimsir Chaite, Láithreach, Fhaistineach and the Modh Coinniollach. The Gnáthchaite falls by the wayside, as does the subjunctive (I can't think of the Irish at the moment, foshuiteach or something?), but I can understand that seeing as it isn't really very important in Irish. I think it stems from the fact that we learn Irish from about four years old. It's almost presumed that we have been taught it already, or will be. I think the best example is masculine and feminine nouns, a survey of Leaving Cert. students would turn up a blank, they will never have known of their existence. It's almost a double-edged sword, it makes the Irish of the interested students quite natural, but inaccurate.

[marconatrix]

Speaking of which are you sure it's "an saol" and not "an t-saol", or am I just thinking of the genitive? (btw your Irish grammatical terms faze me completely).
The simplist translation in SG is "sin mar a tha e" -- 'that's how it is, that's the way it goes'. I've always thought of 'sin' in this sort of construstion as short for 'is sin' or 's'e sin', i.e. with an assumed copula. The gaelic copula starts off as an only slightly defective verb in OI with various tenses, moods and persons, and by the time you reach spoken SG it's just a fixed emphatic particle used to indicate that a phrase has been fronted. Usually "s'e" before an noun and "is" before adjectives, although the relative form "as" still turns up in comparison of adjectives -- "Tha duine nas motha na cu`" 'a man is bigger than a dog'. "Am fear as motha" 'The biggest one (m.)". In Manx the copula doesn't even exist as an independent word.
As the domain of the copula has contracted, the use of 'tha' originally 'stand' has expanded. It was originally locative, then I imagine expanded to all prepositional phrases, including progressive 'tenses' which are formed with a verbal noun plus preposition, "Tha e ag radh" 'he speaks, he is speaking (at speech)'. It can be used directly with adjectives, "Tha an t-ugh beag" 'The egg is small' (but in proverbs you still see, "Is beag an t-ugh ..." Interestingly with nouns you still have to use a preposition, "Tha e 'na dhuine" 'He is a man' lit. 'in his man'.
There are traces of this form of the copula in Middle Welsh, "ys glud a beth" etc. but afaik in Modern Welsh you only have it fossilised in "sef" 'namely, to wit' from "ys ef" 'it is'. Cornish has an emphatic particle "ass" which I wonder might be from "ys", however it need to be reinforced by a newer copula (the so called "short form of 'bos'"), e.g. "ass yw henna da" 'that's good, isn't that good!'.
Here endeth the lecture

[Declan]

Speaking of which are you sure it's "an saol" and not "an t-saol", or am I just thinking of the genitive?

I'm proud of myself, I can answer with certainty!
Saol is masculine, so it's an saol (Nom. Sin.), na saolta (Nom. Plur.), rud éigean an tsaoil (Gen. Sin.), rudaí na saol (Gen. Plur.).

In modern Irish, the dative (tabharthach), accusative (cunspóireach) and nominative (aimneach) have basically all collapsed into one case, along with the Genitive and Vocative.

[Yng]

In modern Irish, the dative (tabharthach), accusative (cunspóireach) and nominative (aimneach) have basically all collapsed into one case, along with the Genitive and Vocative.

Apart from some dialects where the prepositional is still happily alive and the silly exceptions in standard Irish, right?

[alice]

This raises an interesting question. How much overlap is there, outside of academic study of the language, between:

1. People who speak Irish more or less natively, having learnt it in school or from family

and

2. People who know what "lenition", "eclipsis", "palatalisation", "copula", "dative", "conjugated preposition", "preterite", "VSO", and so on (i.e. linguistic terms we conlangers are likely to know or have read about) refer to in Irish

?

[Declan]

This raises an interesting question. How much overlap is there, outside of academic study of the language, between:

1. People who speak Irish more or less natively, having learnt it in school or from family

and

2. People who know what "lenition", "eclipsis", "palatalisation", "copula", "dative", "conjugated preposition", "preterite", "VSO", and so on (i.e. linguistic terms we conlangers are likely to know or have read about) refer to in Irish

?

I would say nearly 0! They would probably know them in Irish (séimhiú for lenition, urú for eclipsis, caolú for palatalisation, copula is the same, tabhartach for dative though that's basically gone from modern Irish, forainmeacha réamhfhochala for conjugated preposition, and I'd have to look up preterite to be sure but I presume it's the non-imperfect past?) but I would say there is little chance they would know them in English, particularly the first couple that relate to (relatively speaking) Irish-only phenomena. Particularly in the Gaeltacht, for some reason, their written Irish tends to be quite poor, misspelled and full of grammatical errors which they obviously don't have in speech.

That reminds me of a story, we had an sub Irish teacher for a class once, and she, in the course of the class, said something along the lines of "well that's the Tuiseal Guinideach (genitive) that it too complicated for you to need to know about". I was gobsmacked, but it's sort of epitomises the attitude to teaching Irish grammar, it's too complicated. She was talking to a class who could (or should have been able to in any case) say "am Ende des langen Briefs" after six years of study, a much more complicated situation than the equivalent Irish phrase that would apparently be too complicated for someone who has been hearing this language for 14 years! It is changing I believe, the Irish curriculum is being reformed, a grammar question added to the Junior Cert. (approx. 15 years old), and the oral will in a year or two, be worth 40% (or 60%, I'm not sure actually) of the Leaving Cert. instead of the present 25%.

EDIT: Interestingly, the verbal noun was a new concept to me. I obviously knew how to use it, but I would never refer to it as such in Irish.

[Yng]

It's funny you should say that - Welsh teaching is less comprehensive, I think, than Irish is, but begins at a similar age - and even though I was applying mutations semi-regularly to feminine nouns after 'y' naturally when I started teaching myself properly, I didn't even realise that Welsh had genders, and when someone told me, I was like 'whut? I thought that was restricted to French and other stupid foreign languages'

[linguoboy]

In modern Irish, the dative (tabharthach), accusative (cunspóireach) and nominative (aimneach) have basically all collapsed into one case, along with the Genitive and Vocative.

Apart from some dialects where the prepositional is still happily alive and the silly exceptions in standard Irish, right? :P

What do you mean by "prepositional"? Definite nouns undergo initial mutations after most prepositions in all dialects (generally lenition in Ulster and eclipsis elsewhere, though the details are more complicated than that) but don't otherwise change form outside of fixed expressions. So you'll see the dative form of ceann, namely cionn in phrases like de chionn "for [the sake of]; because" or ar chionn "at the end of; before". But de cheann and ar cheann are also used, and I don't think there's a living dialect left where ná lig as do chionn é ("Don't let it out of your head") would not sound stilted. I wouldn't expect to see a plural form like ina gceannaibh (lit. "in their heads") outside of poetry. And I learned Munster Irish, which is the only dialect in which the dative plural hangs on at all!

[Yng]

What do you mean by "prepositional"? Definite nouns undergo initial mutations after most prepositions in all dialects (generally lenition in Ulster and eclipsis elsewhere, though the details are more complicated than that) but don't otherwise change form outside of fixed expressions. So you'll see the dative form of ceann, namely cionn in phrases like de chionn "for [the sake of]; because" or ar chionn "at the end of; before". But de cheann and ar cheann are also used, and I don't think there's a living dialect left where ná lig as do chionn é ("Don't let it out of your head") would not sound stilted. I wouldn't expect to see a plural form like ina gceannaibh (lit. "in their heads") outside of poetry. And I learned Munster Irish, which is the only dialect in which the dative plural hangs on at all!

According to wikipedia (but I think I read this in a book), some dialects have more distinct datives (in certain declensions I think?) than the standard, which has only has Eirinn and possibly a couple of others.

[linguoboy]

According to wikipedia (but I think I read this in a book), some dialects have more distinct datives (in certain declensions I think?) than the standard, which has only has Eirinn and possibly a couple of others.

There are still distinct dative forms in the second and fifth declensions and for few nouns in the first (like the aforementioned ceann). They're not common outside of Munster. In Connacht, historical datives frequent usurp the nominative-accusative forms. In Cois Fhairrge, for instance, I believe the dative has become the unmarked form for all second declension nouns (e.g. fuinneoig "window"; cf. Munster/Standard fuinneog). The only case I can think of where this happens in Munster is tigh "house" (Standard Irish teach--but tigh is used with the meaning of "chez".)

[alice]

This raises an interesting question. How much overlap is there, outside of academic study of the language, between:

1. People who speak Irish more or less natively, having learnt it in school or from family

and

2. People who know what "lenition", "eclipsis", "palatalisation", "copula", "dative", "conjugated preposition", "preterite", "VSO", and so on (i.e. linguistic terms we conlangers are likely to know or have read about) refer to in Irish

?

I would say nearly 0! They would probably know them in Irish (séimhiú for lenition, urú for eclipsis, caolú for palatalisation, copula is the same, tabhartach for dative though that's basically gone from modern Irish, forainmeacha réamhfhochala for conjugated preposition, and I'd have to look up preterite to be sure but I presume it's the non-imperfect past?) but I would say there is little chance they would know them in English, particularly the first couple that relate to (relatively speaking) Irish-only phenomena. Particularly in the Gaeltacht, for some reason, their written Irish tends to be quite poor, misspelled and full of grammatical errors which they obviously don't have in speech.

I should have said "people who know what .. or their Irish equivalents mean"; i.e. "how much awareness is there among speakers of Irish of phenomena we as conlangers find interesting?".

[Declan]

I should have said "people who know what .. or their Irish equivalents mean"; i.e. "how much awareness is there among speakers of Irish of phenomena we as conlangers find interesting?".

Ah, ok!

Well, that I can't answer as well, and I'll have to be much more vague and I will talk about just the people who learned Irish at school or college. Native speakers obviously wouldn't find any of these things unusual. I would say the majority of Irish speakers don't realise that the difference between bó and beo is the consonant, not the vowel. They will know the term caolú, but think that it means to add an i (the most common way of writing it, bád -> báid etc.) not palatalize the consonant. Lenition and eclipsis they will obviously know about, but mightn't always know when. The copula isn't treated as anything special, it just is if you know what I mean, the dative is virtually dead. Conjugated prepositions (I would normally call them prepositional pronouns and the same in Irish) everyone knows, everyone at school has learned the lists (liom, leat, leis, léi, linn, libh, leo etc.). But they probably won't think about Irish not having a verb "to have", and they won't think of "Tá rud éigean agam" as "I have something at me", but as "I have something". In other words, they won't think of the literal meaning of the pronouns, but just what the constructions mean in English. The four best known tenses or moods (is their a general term for that?) are the perfect past, present, future and conditional. For some reason, the continuous past is often untaught, I really don't know why. The subjunctive is never mentioned, but will be recognized from prayers which the vast majority of Irish students will have learned off-by-heart in Irish and English at primary school.

[corcaighist]

Sorry that this post is a little off-topic, but anyway...

The subjunctive is never mentioned, but will be recognized from prayers which the vast majority of Irish students will have learned off-by-heart in Irish and English at primary school.

I agree. It's present in such such expressions as:

Go raibh maith agat 'Thanks' (lit. That there be goodness at you)

Nár éirí sin leat 'That it will not come to pass for you!

Fan go dtaga mé 'Wait, until I come'

...sula bhfeice sé ...before he sees

go dtaga do ríocht 'thy kingdom come'

that students just learn off but are never taught or told to analyse.

According to Genee [PDF] the subjunctive in modern Irish is only obligatory in 'main clause wishes'. Anywhere else it is optional.

[AnTeallach]

I would say the majority of Irish speakers don't realise that the difference between bó and beo is the consonant, not the vowel. They will know the term caolú, but think that it means to add an i (the most common way of writing it, bád -> báid etc.) not palatalize the consonant.

Would this still apply even in cases where the broad/slender distinction can be mapped to an English distinction (most obviously s, but also t and d in some dialects)?

[sangi39]

I would say the majority of Irish speakers don't realise that the difference between bó and beo is the consonant, not the vowel. They will know the term caolú, but think that it means to add an i (the most common way of writing it, bád -> báid etc.) not palatalize the consonant.

Would this still apply even in cases where the broad/slender distinction can be mapped to an English distinction (most obviously s, but also t and d in some dialects)?

I was going to ask about this. The most obvious slender-broad distinction that someone who wouldn't pronounce it right would be in <s> ([s] vs. [S]). IIRC, some people pronounce broad and slender <v> [w] and [v] respectively and some with broad and slender <t> and <d> as [t] vs. [tS] and [d] vs. [dZ].

[linguoboy]

IIRC, some people pronounce broad and slender <v> [w] and [v] respectively and some with broad and slender <t> and <d> as [t] vs. [tS] and [d] vs. [dZ].

This affricate pronunciation has always struck me as very non-native. West Cork speakers used to realise broad coronal stops as dental when velarised (which would map them to common Irish English values for the interdentals) and alveolar when palatalised, but that's a regressive distinction. Several sources (including Wikipedia) phoneticise slender velars stops as [c] and [J\], which would I think more likely to be perceived respectively as [tS] and [dZ] than palatalised alveolars.

[Declan]

I was going to ask about this. The most obvious slender-broad distinction that someone who wouldn't pronounce it right would be in <s> ([s] vs. [S]). IIRC, some people pronounce broad and slender <v> [w] and [v] respectively and some with broad and slender <t> and <d> as [t] vs. [tS] and [d] vs. [dZ].

I think so anyway. I certainly never noticed until I started reading about linguistics, and I think most people are the same.

that students just learn off but are never taught or told to analyse.

That's what happened to me anyway, even though I use some of them unconsciously.

[AnTeallach]

IIRC, some people pronounce broad and slender <v> [w] and [v] respectively and some with broad and slender <t> and <d> as [t] vs. [tS] and [d] vs. [dZ].

This affricate pronunciation has always struck me as very non-native. West Cork speakers used to realise broad coronal stops as dental when velarised (which would map them to common Irish English values for the interdentals) and alveolar when palatalised, but that's a regressive distinction. Several sources (including Wikipedia) phoneticise slender velars stops as [c] and [J\], which would I think more likely to be perceived respectively as [tS] and [dZ] than palatalised alveolars.

I thought the affricates were common in some other dialects though, in particular Donegal (and Wikipedia also mentions [ts\] and [dz\] in Mayo). They also occur to some extent in Scottish Gaelic and Manx, and in the latter case this is reflected in the orthography.

[linguoboy]

I thought the affricates were common in some other dialects though, in particular Donegal (and Wikipedia also mentions [ts\] and [dz\] in Mayo). They also occur to some extent in Scottish Gaelic and Manx, and in the latter case this is reflected in the orthography.

Could well be; I don't hear much Donegal or Mayo dialect. I should've suspected that given the values in Scottish Gaelic.