Re: A beautiful Gaelic song by Wiliam Ross

On 18 mai, 08:33, The Highlander <mich...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On 17 May 2007 09:32:40 -0700, Ian <ian.gro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 17 May, 12:02, The Highlander <mich...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

And as I am still teaching myself to read and write Gaelic properly,

Glad to see you admit that, at last. It's nothing to be ashamed of.

Ian

I've mentioned it before in SCS and I don't understand why I would be
ashamed. Many Gaels would say the same thing, espeicially after having
tediously learned how to write and spell, before the orthography was
completely overhauled and we all had to start from scratch again!

There is a Gael who posts here on occasion who has been extremely
vocal in his reaction to the "New Gaelic" orthography. I wasn't happy
about it either, but at least today, apart from a few apparently
insoluable words, the language is now phonetic and often very cleverly
so.

A good example of an insoluable word is "rinn" which means "made" or
"did". It's pronounced "Rine".

Unfortunately, all the other words ending in "-inn" are pronounced
"-eeng", like "binn"; sweet; and Glinn(e), the genitive case of
Gleann, a valley.

What was good about the reforms was that words like "Tigh" in
Tighnabruthaich (house of the brae) should have been pronounced "chee"
as in "cheer" according to the old spelling and it was clear that to
someone learning Gaelic who had never heard of Tighnabruthaich, this
could have been a serious flaw. ("Tigh" is now spelled "Taigh".)

The one major problem still not resolved is that in order to
differentiate Scots Gaelic from Irish Gaelic, which is often almost
identical in word and spelling, especially the Irish of Donegal, it
was decided to do away with the acute acent in Scots Gaelic and retain
only the grave accent - Irish uses only the acute accent.

Thus that familiar vulgar phrase, "kiss my arse!" is Pog mo thon in
both languages.

If it looks like this (acute accents) - Póg mo thón - it's Irish
Gaelic.

If it looks like this (grave accents) - Pòg mo thòn - it's Scots
Gaelic.

Unfortunately from the point of view of a phonetic orthography, the
acute accent once told you that not only should a word like mór
(big/great) in Scots Gaelic be drawled out, but also pronounced "more"
and not "mawr" which was the acute accent's original dual function.

Now all the grave accent tells you is to drawl the word "mòr". You
have to discover independently that it is actually pronounced "more",
and not "mawr". Not very satisfactory, especially as when spoken it
sounds just like Mathair (mother - "Mawr") in many local dialects.

I do hope I haven't bored you, but I regard all this as a form of a
rather interesting acrostic puzzle which so far has defied solution.

The advantage of a phonetic language is of course beyond rubies, as
anyone who had had to learn English spelling will testify.

In that respect England's inability make its language phonetic, and
Chinese Mandarin's inability to create an alphabet at all for various
complex reasons, is interesting, in that both are perfect examples of
languages which have reached the outer limit of linguistic
sophistication combined with considerable simplicity.

When speaking English the only rule is that to be understood, you must
observe word order. Unlike most languages with their declensions,
etc., English's great contribution is that you can start speaking it
understandably without knowing much about grammar. To an English ear,
"me hit he" is clearly the opposite of "he hit me". Most languages
require much more explanation than that for either statement to make
any sense. With a vocabulary of about 800 words, you can discuss any
subject in English and be pefectly understood, except in matters where
specialized language is required, like law, and medicine.

You may have read my story in the past of lecturing an auditorium-ful
of students on the subject of English's power as a means of
communication, and, sensing that I was losing their attention, chose
an example which so shocked than they never blinked for the rest of
the allocated hour; namely the story of what the soldier said when he
dropped his rile from the back of the truck and it shattered...?

To wit, "Fuck it, the fucking fucker's fucked!" As I explained to the
startled and howling-with-laughter students once the uproar died down,
it was a precise, almost surgical description of a real-time event
which no one listening could fail to understand. Yet it was all
accomplished with three small words, "It, "The" and "***!" (and its
variations.)

To be honest I was wondering what to do to retain their attention and
when this idea floated into my head, I was unable to resist using it!
Years later some young men I bumped into on the street insisted on
taking me for a drink; they had been present at the lecture and had
never forgotten its opening example! I must say that from that moment
on during my lecture, I had a rapt audience, which scarcely breathed
in case they missed another example like the first. They didn't; it
was a one-shot inspiration.

I then went on to explain that I spoke several languages but could not
think of one in which the English version of what I had said could be
so radically compressed and still make sense. A tribute to the
extraordinary power of the English language.

The Chinese languages, of which there are many, with variations spoken
in many Asian countries from Tibet to Thailand, let along the 50 or so
versions spoken within China's borders, are efficient for an entirely
different reason; they have been honed down to the ultimate in
simplicity. The Chinese languages have no tenses, no genders, no
plurals, no unnecessary words like "a", "the", "and", "he", "she",
"it" and a host of other words we would be tongue-tied without. Many
nouns are simply compounds of other words and some have crept into
English, like "Tai Fung (or feng, in Mandarin), meaning Big Wind and
pronounced by us as "typhoon". Sam pan (lit. three planks); and once
in a while, some delightful concepts like the word for a child, "Sai
Maan Jai", literally, "Little flying pest"!

It's fairly easy to learn Chinese grammar as such by simply listening
to how Chinese people speak English,as they usually use pure Chinese
grammar translated to express their thoughts.

Thus, "Tomorrow, me go Edinburgh" is a Chinese declarative sentence
employing the local version of the future tense. "Yesterday me go
Edinburgh!" is a past tense event. "Three piece no money man come see
you" is a statement letting you know that three beggers are hoping to
hit you up for a donation. "You want not want eat smoke" means "would
you care for a cigarette?" The "You (verb) "not" (verb)" formulas is a
very common way to ask question in Chinese. "You eat, not eat" means,
would you like to eat? and you say "Eat" or "Not eat" instead of
saying yes or no, for which there are bo words in Chinese. In
mitigation, Gaelic also has no words for yes and no, instead you
repeat the verb back using the positive or negative form. "Are you
Scottish?" "Am" (yes); "Not am" (no).

Naturally, there is a drawback. Chinese has far fewer sounds than
English and all words are composed of a single word made up of three
letters when written in English. Chinese uses characters to write the
sounds, some of the more basic being actual scribbled pictures; the
bulk being invented scribbles.

To differentiate between the different meanings of the same word, each
has a specific "tone", roughly akin to the old Tonic sol fa; that is,
Doh, ray me, etc. This what gives Chinese languages their sing-song
sound and the range can run from Doh to Fa. Get the tone wrong and you
are saying a different word; in my experience usually an obscene one,
which always causes horror as the Chinese are extremely prim in formal
company. I will admit that I have sometime deliberately used the wring
tone to give the Chinese person a bit of a jolt; usually dismissed as
an example of the inability of foreign devils to speak a civilized
language correctly; a commonly held Chinese belief.

Some of my mistakes have been hilarious/ghastly, such as the day I
expressed a hope to do business with a company president in the near
future, but having got the tone wrong, I actually said that I hoped to
have a *** (sic!) with him in the near future. This caused some
scarcely suppressed sniggering among the younger Chinese present and
frozen shock among the older ones and I was carefully and swiftly
escorted to the street door, presumably in case I suddenly decided to
get started in on our mutual defecation right away.

God only knows what they thought about me - I don't as I never heard
from them again, hardly surprisingly... It wasn't until I was standing
in the street that I suddenly realized what I had said and I felt I
could hardly fight my way back in to explain my mistake.

Very interesting your analysis of Chinese language. Thanks jpturcaud

.

Loading