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translation of a blog post

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  • 24-07-2012 1:02am
    #1
    mmasny
    Registered Users Posts: 2 ✭


    This is my first post on these forums, and I feel a bit lost. Is it OK to ask you to translate or explain a short blog post in Irish for me? I'm sorry if I'm doing something wrong.

    The blog post is here: http://nimill.blogspot.com/2009/10/slaod-agus-slaghdan.html

    I'm interested in the etymology of the word "slaghdán", and for some strange reason someone seems to have posted a blog post about it. But I speak no Irish at all, so I can't understand it. Even with Google Translate and a dictionary, I still have a lot of trouble making sense of it.


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    #2
    sallywin
    Registered Users Posts: 177 ✭✭sallywin


    *rough translation.

    In English you can say that a form of disease, for example swine flu, will cut 'a swath through the population'. I never heard that cliché in Irish before. Clearly, though, this metaphor was alive in the minds of our ancestors hundreds of years ago. They had the word 'slaet' for a swath of grass or corn.

    We still have that word 'slaod'. But it's not grass or corn that it refers to anymore. Something completely different altogether. "Slaodanna sneachta" and "slaodanna gruaige" are used as well as "slaod gibirise" (in the poem "An tEach Uisce" by Nuala Rua) and " slaod meala anuas ar lochán leáite ime ar chanta aráin" in a short story by Biddy Jenkinson.

    But there was another meaning of "slaet", as in disease, that is something that would take people down just as the scytheman would uproot the corn. They usually added án to the word. I don't know why. Slaetán, slaedán, slaodán, and finally slaghdán was how it came to be spelt. It's not often a person is killed by the flu but it is still a scytheman that leaves many people by the wayside.


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    #3
    mmasny
    Registered Users Posts: 2 ✭mmasny


    Thanks a lot, Sallywin! Could you explain to me what "slaodanna sneachta", "slaodanna gruaige", "slaod gibirise" and "slaod meala anuas ar lochán leáite ime ar chanta aráin" mean? I know "slaodanna" is the plural of "slaod", "sneachta" is snow, "gruaige" is hair and "gibirise" is gibberish. (The long expression is totally above me.) But what does "slaod" mean in these expressions? And what do these expressions mean?


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    #4
    sallywin
    Registered Users Posts: 177 ✭✭sallywin


    Not totally sure myself, and I don't have the Ó Dónaill dictionary to hand which would be a big help if you have it.

    I presume slaodanna sneachta would just mean layers of snow, then long strands of hair, a bout of gibberish, (maybe) and then the long one is obviously poetic language but the poet is talking about slather of honey dripping onto melted butter on chunks of bread.


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