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I am hoping to teach an Irish class for foreign beginners. I am hoping to include aspects/parts of the language that will grab their attention, either because they are different/interesting/funny.
I think what I am looking for is quite abstract and hard to describe, e.g. sayings that don’t really mean much (or anything) when translated literally but that show the outlook of the language. In the case of Irish topics such as religion, farming, sea life, poverty etc. would have major influences on sayings, proverbs etc and how their take on life shapes our language.
The differenence between ‘slán leat/slán agat’ where there is only goodbye in English.
Dia (is Muire) duit – translated literally means May God (and Mary) be with you
Cé leis thú – who owns you i.e. who are your parents
That there is no specific word for ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
ciotóg – an awkward person/a leftie
cá bhfuil an gadhar á rósadh anocht? lit. where is the goat being roasted tonight – where is everyone going to tonight?Comparison between Irish and English would also be a great help…
Does anyone know of other such points that I could research/include in my classes?
The counting system is also very different. I don’t know if you’ve seen the TV programme on Des Bishop’s efforts to learn Irish in the Connemara Gaeltacht, but his joke about how “a dó” (“two”) changes to “dhá” when counting things and “beirt” when counting people, is quite funny.
Another thing is the absence of the verb “to have”. In Irish, you don’t own things, they are just “at you”. The same is true for Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages, but for speakers of most Western-European languages, this might be unsettling.
Another thing is the absence of the verb “to have”. In Irish, you don’t own things, they are just “at you”. The same is true for Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages, but for speakers of most Western-European languages, this might be unsettling.(Just a small detail, if I may. Many Slavic languages do have the verb “to have”, though it is true that Russian (the largest and the best known) doesn’t.)
Cé leis thú – who owns you i.e. who are your parentsI think “Who do you belong to?” might be a better (literal) translation, “belong” having a wider meaning than “own”.
I haven’t yet seen the piece by Des Bishop on counting – might give it a look.
I written this thread in English, in case some learner’s who are still more confident in English know of things they have been taught by other teachers.The idea about no verb for ‘to have’ is also a good point.
@Hugo: Fair point, but it’s still one that I find interesting.
Things like – an chloch is mó ar do phaidrín – where the piety of Ireland comes shining through!
I don’t know how to really describe it and so it’s hard to research/make a collection! I don’t think even Google could organise my thoughts and keywords into one (or even two) decent searches!
Another thing is the absence of the verb “to have”. In Irish, you don’t own things, they are just “at you”. The same is true for Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages, but for speakers of most Western-European languages, this might be unsettling.(Just a small detail, if I may. Many Slavic languages do have the verb “to have”, though it is true that Russian (the largest and the best known) doesn’t.)
Sorry, you’re right.
Most of the points I would make have already been made. The other obvious one is initial consonant mutation itself – you have to travel to West Africa to find the nearest linguistic example of that. No other European language has it (aside from the other Celtic languages of course), even though they have other kinds of consonant mutations.
Irish is one of the few European languages to still have traces of the “dual” number (Slovenian is one of the other ones that I know about that has it still).
Vocative case might be worth talking about, as it’s also pretty rare in modern European languages.
Verb-subject-object might be worth talking about as well, since this is another area in which Irish is not typical in the European family.
Autonomous verb forms are also a relative oddity.
These are all, of course, grammatical things and I’m not sure if you were asking for more abstract things. One thing I can think to mention are certain phrases which have words that don’t really mean anything by themselves or at least you never really see them by themselves but mean something in the context of a certain phrase – I’m talking about things like “tar éis”, “go dtí”, “i ndiaidh”. Obviously they do mean something and those words come from somewhere but I’ve never seen “éis” or “diaidh” by itself to mean anything.
There are also, like English, a lot of phrases that seem made-up or onomotopoetic in some way and, like the above examples, probably derive from something but at this point they are phrases with their own meaning – “futa fata”, “speig meig”, etc.
Most of the points I would make have already been made. The other obvious one is initial consonant mutation itself – you have to travel to West Africa to find the nearest linguistic example of that. No other European language has it (aside from the other Celtic languages of course), even though they have other kinds of consonant mutations.
Corsican, Hebrew, Japanese (in compound words)… 🙂
Irish is one of the few European languages to still have traces of the “dual” number (Slovenian is one of the other ones that I know about that has it still).
Breton, Welsh, Cornish and Sc Gaelic also have (but in the case of the Brythonic language it’s not the same system in the Gaelic ones)
Vocative case might be worth talking about, as it’s also pretty rare in modern European languages.
Corsican, Greek (?), Czech, Polish…
Autonomous verb forms are also a relative oddity.
they exist in all Celtic languages 🙂
Obviously they do mean something and those words come from somewhere but I’ve never seen “éis” or “diaidh” by itself to mean anything.
not in Modern Irish 🙂
But such things must exist in most languages ; grammatical words like that are often made up of elements that are out of use now.Corsican, Hebrew, Japanese (in compound words)… 🙂
Only one of those that violates my statement is Corsican, and mutation in compound words is debatably initial mutation, isn’t it?
Breton, Welsh, Cornish and Sc Gaelic also have (but in the case of the Brythonic language it’s not the same system in the Gaelic ones)
Note I said “few”.
Corsican, Greek (?), Czech, Polish…
Note I said “rare”.
they exist in all Celtic languages 🙂
I believe I previously implied that some of these things are also true of the other Celtic languages. I didn’t see the need to do so explicitly in every case.
not in Modern Irish 🙂
But such things must exist in most languages ; grammatical words like that are often made up of elements that are out of use now.Note I said that they obviously come from somewhere, i.e. an older version of the language.
And if you can provide some examples of words in English that is like that, I’d be interested to hear them.
Corsican, Hebrew, Japanese (in compound words)… 🙂
Only one of those that violates my statement is Corsican, and mutation in compound words is debatably initial mutation, isn’t it?
Without being an expert, I believe Lughaidh said that both Corsian and Hebrew have initial mutation, while Japanese has it in compound words. Initial mutation is very widespread in Corsican. It’s one of the reasons we who speak Italian usually can read it without problems but have a much harder time understanding it. To give a example
/korsiga/ (Corsica( but /a gorsiga/ after the article.
/be/ (well) but /tut:i ve/ (all well)
/du’me:nika/ /Sunday) but /a umenika/ after the article.Of course initial mutations function very differently in Corsican, they are more automatic than in Celtic languages and primarily about phonology, not grammar. But still, they are very much a part of the language.
Only one of those that violates my statement is Corsican, and mutation in compound words is debatably initial mutation, isn’t it?
why Hebrew wouldn’t fit here? Its initial (occlusive) consonants become fricatives (k > kh, p > ph, etc) after vowels.
In Japanese, the initial consonant of a word changes when you prefix another word, so it’s a “kind of” initial mutation 🙂And if you can provide some examples of words in English that is like that, I’d be interested to hear them.
I’m not an expert at English, but I could find at least “behalf”, not used apart from in the preposition “on behalf of”, and “lieu”, not used apart from in “in lieu (of)”.
There must be others…Because Hebrew isn’t a European language……. Read my sentence again.
I’m not saying, nor did I ever say, any of these things are unique. The OP was asking for interesting points to research and I gave some. They didn’t specifically ask other posters to nitpick the points brought up.
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