Mala or Marla!!!

NAGGIE03 · 29-09-2008 3:55pm #1

Hi Not sure if this is the right forum but sure ill give it a go!!

Ya know that stuff that we used to play with in primary school,the plastercine stuff that we would make worms and snails out of and always ended up brown by then end of the day!!!
Well was it called MALA or MARLA!!!!
Big debate going on here bout it!!!
Cheers!!:D

javaboy · 29-09-2008 3:57pm

Mala definitely.

20goto10 · 29-09-2008 3:58pm

Mala (pronounced Maula). And its plasticine not plastercine :-D

Ruu_Old · 29-09-2008 3:58pm

Mala (pronounced 'maw-la').

javaboy · 29-09-2008 3:59pm

Ruu wrote: »

Mala (pronounced 'maw-la').

We should really Irish it up with a fada. Mála ftw!

Ruu_Old · 29-09-2008 4:01pm

Maith an fear, as my primary school teacher used to say.

calex71 · 29-09-2008 4:03pm

i wonder how many kids would know what that is these days ?
do they still call it mala in schools now?

NAGGIE03 · 29-09-2008 4:03pm

Thanks!!! I Knew it!! i was saying Mala and two others said MARLA!!!
Thought i was losing it!

lynnog81 · 29-09-2008 4:15pm

Oh I am one of the two people who said it was Marla, majority rules i suppose :eek:

Stargal · 29-09-2008 4:56pm

Mala ftw

miles teg · 29-09-2008 5:00pm

always said mala in my school but technically the word actually is marla

angelika · 29-09-2008 9:24pm

From here http://www.irishdictionary.ie/dictionary

>>plasticine<<
TRANSLATION:
plasticine = n marla m4

bullets · 29-09-2008 9:49pm

MARLA it to me was always pronounced MARLA with the "R"
to me.

I remember getting white flat cardboard packets of it
with different colours of strips back in the 80's
that always ended up a kinda multi coloured brownish or
purple colour when all mashed up together, and it always
went hard.

Growing up in Primary school the Teachers managed to get
bricks of plasticine of one colour which was slightly harder than what we called Marla.

Roll on a decade or two and you hear of this thing
called play dough which was no comparassion and could
be made by any house wife with flour lots of salt and food colouring by boiling in a sauspan.

for the mmore mature you could buy model clay in Easons that was like Marla with the added
advantage of being able to cook it in the oven to may clay

~B

Ann22 · 01-10-2008 8:09pm

I called it mala-pronounced 'mawla' too. On first day at school my teacher wrote my name on a piece of card and gave me a ball of it. I used to either make a snail,a bird's nest with eggs in or a snake. I'm quite deadly with it now, can make quite impressive faces like those on Mt Rushmore. The pound shops usually have it. Playdough isn't near as good.

tk123 · 01-10-2008 9:15pm

God Ann22's post has brought up a repressed memory - we were given a ball of it in school and the teacher wrote words up on the board and we had to make them with the marla - what was the point in that when you could make something cool?! This is when 5 year old TK realised school was crap!

rainbowtrout · 01-10-2008 10:19pm

marla. it must have been a department directive for junior infants to play with marla for a certain amount of time per day:pac:

if we were good we got to choose a lump out of a biscuit tin and maybe got about 15 minutes to play with it. most of it was green and there were a few coveted lumps of red and blue.... the simple pleasures...

Deedsie · 02-10-2008 11:53am

Its Márla. There was an argument in a pub at home when some gob ****e decided to reminisce about playing with playdoh. An Irish man calling it playdoh. Needless to say the lad was ridiculed for the night.

mental07 · 02-10-2008 11:58am

I always called it 'maw-la' too. As did my teacher, but she spelt it 'marla', which used to confuse me greatly...

Rosita · 02-10-2008 12:12pm

NAGGIE03 wrote: »

Hi Not sure if this is the right forum but sure ill give it a go!!

Ya know that stuff that we used to play with in primary school,the plastercine stuff that we would make worms and snails out of and always ended up brown by then end of the day!!!
Well was it called MALA or MARLA!!!!
Big debate going on here bout it!!!
Cheers!!:D

There is no correct answer to this. It depends on the dialect of Irish how many words are pronounced.

For example, 'Cnoc' will be pronounced 'kunuk' by a Munster speaker and 'cruk' by a Connacht/Ulster speaker. Both are equally acceptable as there is no standard spoken Irish, only a written standard which would not accept anything other than the standard spelling of the word as 'correct'. There are countless examples of this and presumably 'marla' is just another.

I think 'mawla' tends to be the Munster version and perhaps 'marla' elsewhere. But there is not correct or incorrect version and both claims are equally legitimate. (There is no fada in the word by the way)

4zn76tysfajdxp · 04-10-2008 7:46pm

We used to call it márla back in the day too. Great stuff to play with.

Firetrap · 04-10-2008 8:42pm

God, this brings back memories. We called it Márla in school. Isn't Mála the Irish for bag? The amazing thing about it was that it always turned a dull greeny grey colour, no matter what colours were used.

This was standard baby infants fare, along with those chubby crayons that always had black bits stuck to them.

bullets · 04-10-2008 10:17pm

While were mentioning baby infants etc.............
Do people remember Unit Cubes!

~B

lord lucan · 05-10-2008 12:14am

didn't bosco have 'magic' mala?:D

rainbowtrout · 05-10-2008 5:16pm

bullets wrote: »

While were mentioning baby infants etc.............
Do people remember Unit Cubes!

~B

now there's a blast from the past!

mental07 · 05-10-2008 6:38pm

rainbowtrout wrote: »

now there's a blast from the past!

Not to mention the abacus!
linkage

rainbowtrout · 05-10-2008 7:01pm

i can't say i've ever had a use for crepe paper either outside junior infants. :pac: I remember making hundreds of little balls of crepe paper to glue onto cardboard cutouts of chickens for easter. it must have kept us busy for hours

shoelaceface · 05-10-2008 7:04pm

mala.... the nicest smell in the world...

WindSock · 06-10-2008 1:52pm

One kid in my class used to mix all the colours up to make it brown then stab it with his pencil and call it his pooooo which he'd chase us around the classroom with.

NAGGIE03 · 06-10-2008 3:53pm

what bout stikle bricks and straws! They were deadly!

monkeyfudge · 06-10-2008 4:02pm

Yep... always loved them.

tk123 · 06-10-2008 4:06pm

we didn't have new-age sticklebricks - it was staws, unit cubes, marla/mala, abacus and treads& spools.

Ann22 · 06-10-2008 5:05pm

There was a Mormon girl in our class who got to play with an abacus (woohoo!!!) when we were doing religion. Remember the thick Noddy crayons? Cool-I can remember the smell of wax crayons in my little hot hand after colouring for ages.:)

GeturGun · 06-10-2008 10:57pm

WindSock wrote: »

One kid in my class used to mix all the colours up to make it brown then stab it with his pencil and call it his pooooo which he'd chase us around the classroom with.

LOL. little boys eh?

Reku · 09-10-2008 3:02pm

I remember I used to love Transformers but they were expensive whereas my mum would regularly buy us mala so I used to make my own transformers with it, little spindly legs and arms, god they were terrible attempts but they kept me entertained.

Gang of Gin · 27-07-2009 4:37pm

javaboy wrote: »

We should really Irish it up with a fada. Mála ftw!

But would that not just mean "Bag"?:)

Nanook32 · 27-07-2009 5:37pm

It was totally MALA.... Marla is something you say when you're scarlet

"Oh jesus, I was only marla!!"

Ah no, i think my teacher used to call it marla... It made me cringe! Mala ftw

starflake · 28-07-2009 12:36pm

Maulla

Monkeybonkers · 28-07-2009 2:22pm

angelika wrote: »

From here http://www.irishdictionary.ie/dictionary

>>plasticine<<
TRANSLATION:
plasticine = n marla m4

We called it marla too. Gaeltacht area (don't know how relevant that is!)

pow wow · 29-07-2009 12:45pm

morla

Milesoneill · 02-11-2009 5:10pm

We used to call it Márla. Used to love how after a while all the colours used to get mixed up and turn into a sickly grey colour. Great memories of National School when I'd roll out snakes on a wooden craft board witha pattern of holes in it.

kelle · 05-11-2009 9:43pm

Definitely Marla. Gaeltacht school too. Thinking of the smell brings back memories - I loved it.

Mála is bag.

salamander27 · 05-11-2009 9:56pm

kelle wrote: »

Definitely Marla. Gaeltacht school too. Thinking of the smell brings back memories - I loved it.

Mála is bag.

Was just about to say that. I made that mistake when i was in high infant or first class. Teacher asks me "Taispeain dom an Mála?" I go to the press to get the Marla! Never made that mistake again! Still scarred 26 years later!

Speaking of irish, did anyone else ever do "Buntús" where comic style irish stories were shown on the projector?

3hn2givr7mx1sc · 05-11-2009 10:28pm

In my school all the students called it 'mawla' whereas all the teachers called it márla. One of the teachers called it 'moyrla' it souded like a disease.

Holmer · 07-11-2009 5:13pm

MÁRLA! MÁLA MEANS BAG!

LeSageMignon · 08-12-2009 12:23am

I always said Mála, and thought it was just the culchie teachers who said Marla, but a couple of years ago a lecturer from St. Pat's teacher-training college told me that it is in fact Marla. It still sounds wrong to me though.

BluesBerry · 08-12-2009 12:57am

Its Marla pronounced M A R L A

Mars Bar · 08-12-2009 1:15am

We called it Mála, don't ever remember our teacher(s) writing it on the board so never really wondered how it was spelt.

In saying that, the minute we were given the márla we were entranced by it, so if it was written on the board, we were too occupied to take notice!

Fabio · 10-12-2009 7:07pm

Mawla ftw!

bellitum · 29-03-2010 7:48pm

All my primary teachers (1950's!) said 'marla' quite clearly. I never heard 'mala' until I came to Dublin. I assumed it was just another Dublin malapropism (e.g.I got it in the Agros catalogue). The connection with the English word 'marl' seems obvious.
De Bhaldraithe's dictionary (p.532) gives two words for plasticine -Plaistisin (should be a fada on that last 'i'. Can't manage that) agus marla.
Dineen's Focloir Gaeilge agus Bearla (p.717) translates marla as 'marl, a kind of rich clay; marla buidhe, yellow subsoil'. I don't think they played with marla in 1927 when that dictionary was published.

remembering · 06-04-2010 11:16pm

this thread made me laugh so much today at work when i was dossing!!
used to make the basket to and put the handle on top with the little eggs!! hilarious!!! must check out my old national school and see if the still have the marla!!!

StandardAngel · 12-04-2010 12:34am

I always called it mala but my friend is a primary school teacher and she reckons its called marla!

Mala or Marla!!!

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