Swear words in Irish?

Sin mar a phreabtar an cíoch = thats the way the diddy bounces

pog it wrote: »

That doesn't match what her Irish sounds like. Her Irish on that one programme I heard her on was not natural sounding at all- it was very much learned school-Irish with very little colloquial blas so that leads me to make the educated guess that her parents are not native Irish speakers.

I don't want to speak ill of her standard of Irish but I don't get how she is held up to be a Gaeilgeoir role model.. I watch and listen to so much Irish and she isn't ever on anything. Just turns up at a photoshoot :rolleyes:

I completely agree with you... I don't think she (or anyone else who can't pronounce Irish correctly) should be held up as a role model. Most non-native speakers don't seem to realise that you can't just pronounce Irish with English sounds. It's incredible how many Irish "speakers" don't realise that the Irish rs are completely different to the English r, for example. It's upsetting to think that that's the direction in which Irish seems to be heading.

"Mionna móra" is the phrase I use to express "swear words". Can't remember where I got it from, it's pretty common IMO.

My way of saying "f*ck off" would be "feisigh leat", but you would also get the more traditional "scrios Dé ort" which would be said with equal venom.

I'd known the term "féintruailliú" since way back in school days, but these days if I want to call someone a w*nker I say "buailteoir", as in "buailteoir feola" - beater of meat!! Similarly, shaggin is "bualadh craicinn" - skin slapping!

Enkidu wrote: »

"having a hand party",

I'm in work and started roaring laughing at that! I couldn't help myself! That's brilliant!

Raic wrote: »

It's incredible how many Irish "speakers" don't realise that the Irish rs are completely different to the English r, for example. It's upsetting to think that that's the direction in which Irish seems to be heading.

I never knew that, and I feel bad that you used the quotation marks around speaker implying that I don't count. I'm doing my best with what I have! Which is 12 years of dreadful teaching, and now a book designed for people who've already learned in school which is actually teaching me more than I learned in school!

Anyway, rant over, apologies about that , but languages evolve. English didn't get to where it is now by not being flexible.

Also, this is a brilliant thread. I'm so sick of having schoolbook phrases and want just more relaxed Irish.

Asry wrote: »

I never knew that, and I feel bad that you used the quotation marks around speaker implying that I don't count. I'm doing my best with what I have! Which is 12 years of dreadful teaching, and now a book designed for people who've already learned in school which is actually teaching me more than I learned in school!

Please excuse me for being rude here but I feel very strongly about this issue so I'm afraid I have to hurt people's feelings now and again to make a point. I don't want to derail the thread but I think this issue is important enough to deserve some airtime. Imagine going to France and pronouncing French using only sounds that exist in English... it'd be an appalling bastardisation of the language! As far as I'm concerned, Irish spoken with weak phonological approximations using only sounds present in English isn't true Irish at all, so I urge you to learn how all the letters in Irish are actually supposed to be pronounced (even ones like "t" which are not the same as English).

The broad/slender system is there for a reason, it has existed for hundreds of years and without it Irish wouldn't have the flow it does; poetry and song wouldn't work as beautifully as they do. Without the system there would be no distinction between certain words and different grammatical cases... the fact that certain sounds are completely disregarded by learners (whether intentionally or not) is a final dagger in the heart of the language... it's becoming a pidgin. If you listen to a good native speaker it's impossible not to notice that they sound completely different to most (not all) people who have learned Irish.

http://www.forvo.com/word/abair/#ga <--- Here is an example of a slender r. If you watch TG4 you'll notice the presenters pronouncing "ceathair" with this sound.
http://www.forvo.com/word/conamara/ <--- Here is a broad r, it is tapped, unlike in English. A double broad r can be rolled.

Now, I commend you for wanting to learn Irish after "12 years of dreadful teaching". It's the fault of this dismal teaching, not yours, that you didn't know about these sounds... but if you want to speak pure and natural Irish then you need to use them. Judging by your post I'm sure you'll be more than willing.

I don't know your dialectical preferences but if you want to speak good native Irish in the Conamara dialect then I suggest you get "Learning Irish" by Micheál Ó Siadhail with the audio CDs and if you want to speak in the Munster dialect (which is what I speak) then I suggest you get "Teach Yourself Irish" by Myles Dillon. Be careful with the latter, it is not the same as the modern "Teach Yourself Irish" in shops which is standardised. Luckily you can download (legally) the TYI book with mp3 audio here -> http://bit.ly/oBDM4p Be sure to replace the TeachYourselfIrish.pdf file in the Teach_Yourself_Irish.zip with the other TeachYourselfIrish.pdf at that link as it's more up to date (corrections of typos, and so on). If you listen carefully to the audio you'll definitely catch on to the sounds and your Irish will become more beautiful than ever before.

Feel free to PM me for more information (that goes to anyone reading this).

Asry wrote: »

Anyway, rant over, apologies about that , but languages evolve. English didn't get to where it is now by not being flexible.

If we were talking about English I'd completely agree (if you look in my recent post history you'll see that), however, we're talking about Irish. The difference is that English has had a native speaker continuum constantly guiding the language from point A to point B. Whilst accepting outside influences it has always been the native speakers who have been in control of the evolution of the language. Not so with Irish where it's now the learners who are guiding the language... and of course they're using (I'm generalising here) English pronunciation and idiom. I don't think this can be compared to the natural evolution of a language over time... it's entirely artificial and relies heavily on English. You don't just have the defining features of a language (lenition, eclipsis, cases and broad/slender distinction) disappear so quickly (or at all) in natural language evolution.

"When a language surrenders itself to foreign idiom, and when all its speakers become bilingual, the penalty is death." - T. F. O'Rahilly

Here (http://bit.ly/ntHXuj) is a recent letter in Gaelscéal written by a native speaker from Donegal lamenting the Irish spoken in places such as Dublin ("Gwalegguh na kathruk"). As you can see the guttural "ch" sound is replaced by a k, which is common among anglophone speakers.

This bit sums up his point:
"Guh jee an law go may dyereh leis an bpidgin dothuigthe ataw aw lowert go forelachan i mBÁC, “kanoonch” a nyennen nowaird den toosil ginnydyuk uggus deh shayvoo air-ayn, nee vayg Gwaleguh is Gaeilge air ayn graddum leh cayleh ih mo hoorimseh, roysh?"
which I've converted to actual Irish:
"Go dtí an lá go mbeidh deireadh leis an bpidgin dothuigthe atá á labhairt go forleathan i mBÁC, "canúint" a ndéanann neamhaird den tuiseal ginideach agus de séimhiú araon, ní bheidh Gwaleguh is Gaeilge ar aon ghradam le chéile i mo thuairimse, roysh (right)?"
and to English:
‎"Until the day that there is an end to the incomprehensible pidgin that is widely spoken in Dublin, a "dialect" that ignores both the genitive case and lenition, "Gwaleguh" (the pidgin Irish) and (true) Irish won't be of the same standing as each other in my opinion, right?"

---

Apologies for making this so long... perhaps the ideas expressed here deserve a thread of their own? I apologise for any feathers I may have ruffled and I wouldn't be averse to some debate on this topic if anyone disagrees with me.

Raic wrote: »

If we were talking about English I'd completely agree (if you look in my recent post history you'll see that), however, we're talking about Irish. The difference is that English has had a native speaker continuum constantly guiding the language from point A to point B. Whilst accepting outside influences it has always been the native speakers who have been in control of the evolution of the language. Not so with Irish where it's now the learners who are guiding the language... and of course they're using (I'm generalising here) English pronunciation and idiom. I don't think this can be compared to the natural evolution of a language over time... it's entirely artificial and relies heavily on English. You don't just have the defining features of a language (lenition, eclipsis, cases and broad/slender distinction) disappear so quickly (or at all) in natural language evolution.

"When a language surrenders itself to foreign idiom, and when all its speakers become bilingual, the penalty is death." - T. F. O'Rahilly

I've often thought about this particular issue Raic, without being able to pin down the source of my own misgivings when people say "it's natural for a language to evolve, just accept that it's happening to Irish as well" and you've absolutely hit the nail on the head for me - however I do think that it's the learners from outside the Gaeltacht who will be the greater Gaeilge-speaking majority before long.

Native speakers have been burdened with the "life-support" of the language for many decades and inevitably many have resented the responsibility thrust upon them. Whether as a direct consequence or a side-effect, the use of English as a first language is becoming or has become the norm in many (most?) Gaeltacht areas. The inevitable result will be the loss of idiomatic and phonetic richness in the language as the true native speaker becomes an ever rarer creature. I don't know whether this is a phenomenon which can be changed/reversed, or if it's a question by now of simply managing the decline (and I do see it as a decline, rather than a mere transition) as best as possible.

Asry wrote: »

I'm in work and started roaring laughing at that! I couldn't help myself! That's brilliant!

Asry wrote: »

I never knew that, and I feel bad that you used the quotation marks around speaker implying that I don't count. I'm doing my best with what I have! Which is 12 years of dreadful teaching, and now a book designed for people who've already learned in school which is actually teaching me more than I learned in school!

No need to worry Asry, believe or not it's not too hard to learn the new sounds. The basic idea is that any consonant is pronounced one way when i,e are next to it and another way when a,o,u are next to it. I think if you download the Teach Yourself Irish that Raic linked to you'll be on the right path, it's where I started. (Of course you might prefer Connemara Irish, then definitely get Ó Siadhail.)

Maybe we should make a pronounciation guide thread, possibly?

Enkidu wrote: »

Yes you're right! Thanks! Apparently it has something to do with feis originally meaning "evening entertainment" which lead to it having the meanings festival/party and sex. So if anybody wants to have a "Feis Láimhe" you can be confident that you now have a firm grasp (:pac:) on this sticky (:pac:) etymological issue (:pac:).

Of course, I should have remembered this one!! Feisigh leat being "f*ck off" and of course, the "entertainment" you have with a woman is a bean fheis - later evolving to bainis!!

um. off topic but this will probably be the last interruption, and if it isn't, I suggest an entirely new thread come up.

About the posts earlier about how people like me are butchering and bastardising the language. I actually got really pretty upset when I read that, and ashamed of myself and embarrassed as well.

I know that there are many in the country with that opinion, but really, I don't want to put on someone else's accent to speak my own language. What I mean is that I don't come from Connemara. An opinion like that is generally seen by people like me who encounter it to be elitist and snobbish, but that would generally be from Dubliners who have been entirely educated through Irish, and seen as still not good enough (like the poet Nuala Ní Chonchúir, for example).

But for me, I feel ostracised and unworthy. Or unwanted. I'm afraid to speak French to French people in case I mispronounce something and they always correct me immediately, which is rude (and another story). This is exactly the same.

My (and most Dubliners) Irish teachers were never from Dublin. We speak Irish with their accents because that's the way we were taught. Like the way my French teacher was from Provence, and that's the French I speak.

Thank you for the links though. But I don't expect to be around here again. I'd prefer to study alone than feel the way those posts made me feel.

Cathaoirleach wrote: »

Why? If a non-native speaker moves to Connemara and picks up the accent (like I did), is there something wrong with that?

I speak Spanish fluently in the local accent where I live, should I drop this and speak Spanish in a different accent?

Doesn't make sense.

You misunderstood me slightly - I was addressing Asry specifically, rather than attempting to establish a general principle. I meant that if someone like him/her isn't from Connemara and isn't living there, it would be inauthentic for them to arbitrarily decide "henceforth, I shall speak as one from Connemara would". For someone like yourself, whose language acquisition has been heavily influenced by that area, of course it's perfectly natural to have picked up the accent/dialect. Same happened to me with German - 17 years after living in Westfalia, I was recently told that I still had that accent when conversing with a German person! Back to Irish - it should still be perfectly possible to speak according to the norms of the various rules of the language, e.g. using lenition etc, without discarding one's local accent and adopting one that has nothing to do with either the way you learned the language or where you're from.

It's an interesting discussion, this. I'm used to the Ulster dialect and to my ears, certain people's pronunciation can be "jarring", as it were. Sometimes that's because I'm simply unaccustomed to their dialect and while it may sound "wrong" to me, I know & accept that it's right for them as it's the dialect/pronunciation appropriate for their native area. This can apply to either native speakers or learners.

Sometimes though, it can be clear that the pronunciation has been poorly taught in the first place - like making a recording with shoddy equipment, or taking a photo with a cracked lens. This obviously will only apply to learners (or perhaps I should say to their teachers!), and - speaking generally, not aimed at anyone here - it's probably unfair and unhelpful to blame them or make them feel like "terrible" speakers of the language.

Having said that, it's also reasonable to expect that if people are serious about wanting to learn to speak any language fluently, then surely they would strive to speak it in a way that adheres to its phonetic norms. I think it's perfectly possible to correct someone's grammar/pronunciation etc without getting their back up, if it's done in such a way as to be helpful for that person's efforts as a learner, as opposed to taking the condescending/patronising "where in god's name did you learn to say it like that?!" option (again, I'm speaking generally, not about anyone on here!!).

Enkidu wrote: »

You don't have to get rid your accent or anything Asry. All that's going on is that Irish has two sets of consonants, so two versions of b for example. The differences between the two sets of consonants is a lot of the time the only difference between two words. It's also a large part of forming the genitive (the 's in English like "the train's door").

You just have to learn to distinguish those sounds for this reason, nothing to do with being inadequate, just like learning verb tenses doesn't make you inadequate. We all have to learn this stuff in every language, I use to make a balls of some sounds at the beginning, but it doesn't mean you have to sound like you're from Connemara, no more than learning the subjunctive does.

It's not a Dublin accent that means you're bastardising the language, bastardising the language, it's people like Manchán Magan who appear on TV as "fluent speakers" and yet use one set of English derived consonants.

Hmmm. I think I might be speaking it properly, actually, you know, after all this.

In fairness to my teacher in school, she was doing her best with what she had, but those limitations were coupled with a boring teaching style that didn't help anything However, if anything, she taught me to pronounce things properly, perhaps, because those differences in sounds like the 'b' in different words sounding different seems familiar.

I mean, of course they do. That's how you say the word, after all. It's not English, as I keep insisting to my English boyfriend who mocks our lack of a 'v' - but that's a whole other ballgame

Perhaps someone listening to me on Skype could ascertain for sure, and then my pronunciation can be mocked in a thread with my full blessing


As regards the Feis láimhe, I've been telling everyone! People now on the Continent know how to em...express themselves in that way...as gaeilge.