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From a book 1890
brave – treun
steadfast – fiorbhuanand many more.
are these words still used in most dialects?Never seen “treun”, but it’s just another spelling of “tréan”, I believe. Fíorbhuan is still a word I think, although not one often used. Google pulls up only one result. That’s a decent way of gauging (very very approximately!) how “in use” a word is today – frequency of use on the internet should tell you at least something. Fíorbhuan is just fíor-bhuan, anyways. You can pretty much make any adjective more severe by adding “fíor-” to it and leniting the subsequent consonant the way you would most compound words.
Well, frequency on the internet tends mostly to show the frequency of a word’s use among learners of Irish, to be fair 😛
But yeah, in a book from 1890 you’ll be coming across all manner of spellings that were changed post-standardization, so the spellings might no longer be in use, but the words themselves very well could be.
Note “very very approximately”.
In any case, I wouldn’t expect learners to use obsolete words with any great frequency.
The corpas used by Foras na Gaeilge (http://corpas.focloir.ie) as a repository underneath its dictionaries is a good resource for word usage. It only returns two hits for “treun”. Here are the texts in which that word is found, dated 2002 and 2004:
“Ach bha i treun is smiorail agus chum i s mhach .” from the newspaper Lá. And the other:
“Gidheadh tar cheann go luaidheann Policronicon agus Monomotensis agus drong eile do Nua-Ghallaibh an Giolla Már so do bheith ‘ na rígh Éireann a shlán fa aon d’ á lorgairidhibh go bhfuil laoidh nó litir a seanchus Éireann i n-a bhfuil luadh nó iomrádh ar Ghiolla Már do bheith ‘ na rígh Éireann riamh : acht munab do Mhuircheartach mór mac Earca fá rí Éireann agus fá fear comhaimsire do rígh Artúr ghairmid é ; agus níor bh ‘ fhéidir Muircheartach do bheith fa chíoscháin ag an rígh Artúr , do bhrígh go raibhe sé féin treun i n-Éirinn agus i n- Albain , agus gurab é do chuir a sheisear dearbhrathar i n- Albain , agus…” from a webpage with the title UCC – Welcome to the Bachelor of Social Work Course.
With only two hits, it certainly doesn’t fall into the category of frequently used terms. 😉
As Héilics Órbhuí suggested, ⟨treun⟩ is just a pre-standard variant spelling of ⟨tréan⟩. The digraph ⟨eu⟩ was a common alternative to ⟨éa⟩ in the old spelling system (e.g., ⟨sgeul⟩ = ⟨scéal⟩, âŠrl.), and it is still used in Scottish Gaelic, which is what your first example there is written in, a Sheáinín 😛
I would say nowadays “cróga” is the most common word for “brave”. But of course, “tréan” still exists, though perhaps not in that particular sense. As for “steadfast”, this is maybe not such a fashionable trait of character any more. 🙂 What about “seasmhach”?
“Tréan” is a word that means any number of things, because it’s one of those words that is highly context dependent. I can’t say I’ve specifically heard it use to mean “brave” but I don’t doubt for a second it still could be. The more authentic Irish one reads, the more one realizes how certain words especially have meanings that can accommodate any number of different situations or meanings.
tréan [aidiacht den chéad díochlaonadh]
láidir, fórsúil (gaiscíoch tréan; teas tréan; stoirm thréan).tréan [ainmfhocal firinscneach den chéad díochlaonadh]
duine láidir, gaiscíoch, laoch; neart, cumhacht (le tréan na gaoithe); neart, flúirse (tá tréan airgid aige).What I meant to say is that “tréan” wouldn’t be my first choice for “brave”. But yes, “tréan” can have lots of different meanings depending on the context. In West Connemara, it is even used in the sense of “fast” (sciobtha). At the same time, I wouldn’t be surprised if the usage of words like “brave” and “steadfast” itself had also somewhat changed in English since 1890.
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