“Don’t worry about this when you get started. Most Irish speakers won’t snap your head off for stumbling over a few intricacies as a learner”.
“No one speaks Irish anyway, what’s the point in learning it”. I also look at my encounters gender and I encounter the seemingly terrifying síneadh fada.
Many of the reactions to me saying that I’m trying to learn Irish have been on the spectrum of “Why bother?”. Not surprisingly this tends to come from the English position of monolingualism. However, I’ve also heard it from Irishmen and women along the way. The ‘fact’ that many of these people hang on to for dear, negative life is:
“Almost no one actually speaks Irish in Ireland”
Leaving aside that the weight of numbers should never be a bar to anybody learning anything, this argument is not even true.
1.9million people seems to be a reasonable number to have a chat with over the garden fence with. As if this wasn’t enough there are also Irish language speakers worldwide. There are books, there are podcasts, entire TV channels, there are even get togethers.
Burgess Meredith from the Twilight Zone episode Time Enough at Last. He is alone at last now everybody else in the world is gone. He can learn and read as much as he likes. Until he breaks his glasses that is.
Numbers aside, the statements and questions, and their cohorts, including, “There’s no point, it’s a dead language”, “It’s regressive, go forward not back” all avoid human elements such as curiosity and in my case respect for my newly gained citizenship, passport, history and culture.
In short, I’m learning the language because I want to learn the language. All the retarding niggles can be set aside like Séamus Ó Duilearga, (James Hamilton Delargy) might set aside a poorly derived folk hero’s tale.
Now, as promised, gender
The English language doesn’t bother with gender when it comes to nouns, verbs, grammar. This leads to generations of people, well me for sure, being confounded as teenagers in French and German classes.
Irish, on the other hand, enjoys getting down and dirty when it comes to gender. The Geeky Gaeilgeoir site has a decent summation. Take nouns for example.
“Masculine nouns with a consonant, the consonant is unaffected by the article:
Masculine nouns beginning with a vowel, “t-” is prefixed to the beginning of the word.
Feminine nouns beginning with a lenitable consonant other than “s,” it is lenited.
Feminine nouns beginning with a vowel, the vowel is unaffected by the article.
Feminine nouns beginning with an “s,” “t” (without a hyphen) are prefixed to the beginning of the word.
I received some excellent advice after I left aghast by these gendering confabulations. “Don’t worry about this when you get started. Most Irish speakers won’t snap your head off for stumbling over a few intricacies as a learner”.
Generally, I’ve found this to be a widespread opinion and a welcome one. This laid back attitude, however, doesn’t extend to the ‘Fada’.
Fada of the nation
Gaeilge has a diacritic (think é as in ‘cliché’) that makes the words that take it seem crazed to my English-language drenched mind and sense of ‘how language should work’ training.
You have to forget whatever language is your native one when contending with Gaeilge. This, I’ve found, can be a little stressful – after all that’s how your inner voice communicates with you. I’ve also found it to be immensely enjoyable. Just immersing myself in a language construction that is so different has opened my ways of seeing the world to wonderfully new perspectives.
The fada, or in this case the Síneadh fada, has a variation of examples that you’ll see used a lot. Try this one.
“Cáca makes a nice dessert, but you don’t want ‘caca’ icing!”
Cáca, you see, means ‘chocolate’. Whereas ‘caca’ means the end result of digesting chocolate or anything else really.
I’m not going to go into the intricacies of the fada here. There are language experts out there who are far more qualified than I am at my foetal stage of Gaeilge development. When it comes to the way you pronounce words blessed with a fada, rather than listen to me massacring the language, I’d highly recommend visiting the Teanglann site as a good starting place for you and your tongue.
Next time: We’ll look at my fear of speaking Irish, and how I’m preparing to do so at a wedding in Ireland.
A continuing series about how I’m learning to speak and read Irish (Gaeilge). Brexit changed everything. It charged me up enough to get Irish citizenship and then contend with the language. Laughs and tears galore.
Their laughter isn’t loud. It is a lovely, moving event. They are gone quickly.
There’s an attractive man in the carriage of the train next to mine, stopped like mine. We’re both waiting to move in opposite directions out of a station, away from each other. I am willing my train to move. Maybe he’s doing the same with his. I want him to move away, silently, rapidly and definitely because I don’t want to fall in love.
I am no longer appreciative of love.
I lived for many years with a man who I loved and who loved me back. Our relationship was equitable and beautiful. It feels so long ago now.
He died in the summer.
In the middle of the summer after a long illness. He died at home because that’s what he wanted and because we could afford it. Strange that. We could afford not to have him die in a hospital.
He died facing the window that looked across the apple and pear trees in the orchard. Full branches reaching up and hanging down. It seemed right.
He died in the morning as the sun was coming up in a clear sky over those trees. An already warm morning like the morning we first met.
At a train station.
He really did die. This is not one of those stories in which I pretend that the fact that he stopped loving me means that he died. No, not that. He actually died. It was terrible. I cried violently at his funeral. I still cry about him.
I wore one of his coats to his funeral, he would have liked that. It was an elegant, beautiful black coat. Classy. Classier than anything I owned or had the taste to want to own. I was lucky to wear it. It was so comforting, a quality I needed so badly.
The day after the funeral I gave his coat to a suitable charity because that is also what he would have done if he’d had to mourn my passing.
I have myself regularly checked despite my caution about the illness. Not because I want to check. I don’t want an answer but I do it because he asked me to.
Surely it’s time for my train or his train to move on. The attractive man is gazing back at me. Of course, he might just be gazing at his own reflection, it’s a bright day after all. A bright summer’s day. Anyway, his gaze is making me feel uncomfortable. He looks to be in his late forties but it’s difficult to tell through the filthy windows on both our trains.
His train is moving, at last.
“The two standard class passengers who approached me outside the dining car, can they kindly and immediately join me in the dining car.”
This is an order masquerading as a request from the voice of authority on my train. The guard.
Two young people walk past me. They’re laughing and trying to hold hands despite the narrowness of the passage between the seats. The taller one is in front. Their laughter isn’t loud. It is a lovely, moving event. They are gone quickly. I like them immensely.
The southbound train stops before it can exit the station. Something must have gone wrong. I can’t see the attractive man now. There’s another man in the same spot relative to me but further back on that southbound train. He is in First Class. He is looking at a tablet computer. From what I can make out, he is grey haired, square jawed and well dressed.
I’m attracted to conventionally attractive people. It’s just the way I am. Shallow I suppose. Normal.
“You were late. You were fucking late and you have all this foreign money and it’s all bullshit and I’m sick of it,” says a woman on a phone somewhere in my carriage.
“I don’t care if it’s Euros or Francs or Dollars,” she continues. A smell of synthetically fresh flowers drifts down the carriage and reaches me.
“Thank you so very much,” she says, sarcastically.
Another woman in my carriage is dozing, I can hear her mumbling and snoring.
The man across the table from me is full of a sandwich made with a regularly squared brown bread: cost-effective, artisan-made and sustainably grown according to the packet. It smells of nothing except synthetic flowers now.
I am on this train to travel from one airport to another and to a new place to live. The idea is to fly, stop over in Singapore, buy things, fly again, land, relax, start afresh. I don’t really consider this train to be part of that larger journey.
I’d like the authority to turn the heating down. There’s no need for it. I feel like I might start to doze but I don’t want to in case I make the same noises as that woman. People will become aware of me.
The southbound train with the grey-fox man and the attractive man on it pulls away. I can see the southbound platform. It’s full of people keeping their distance from each other.
There is an excited family of two parents and three children all talking to each other and pushing and pulling each other and laughing. I think the sight of them and all their kinetic and emotional energy should make me feel immensely sad at my own loss. Instead I feel joy.
He would have wanted that. He asked me to try and feel reformed after the decimation of his death. He held my hand as tightly as he could and asked me calmly.
I had broken a nail and I was worried that its sharp ragged edge might hurt him. He told me not to change the subject. We smiled at each other. All his energy went into my muscles. He smiled and I smiled. Soon I had to hold onto his hand because he was unable to hold onto mine any more.
I am going to read my newspaper now.
My train moves on. My memory of our love moves on and stays with me. I am still in love no matter what goes on around me. After all, love lives in the freedom from the need for love.
“Imagine a place full of people making laws who have no idea what it’s like to be hungry or cold? That would be stupid.”
We touched down on the surface of the planet we’d named, ‘Zangerlünd’ with no problems and, as usual we all pressed our noses to the portholes to get the first view of the new place. It was yellow, sandy but there were trees and flowing water.
On it stood two of what I assumed must be indigenous creatures. Both were dressed in flowing fabrics. One was tall, maybe two and half metres, and was wearing red. The other was about a metre tall and wearing green. They each had two eyes, one mouth, two arm limbs, two leg limbs and flowing white hair that emerged from beneath their tall caps. They were waving at us, and smiling.
“Well, crew, let’s do what we came here to do”, I said with the confidence and brightness that I’d been taught at Star Discovery Leadership School. Frankly, after the previous first contact shit show on Agragra II where we’d spent two weeks trying to communicate with two very mossy and not at all sentient rocks, I felt neither confident nor bright.
I ordered my science officer and my chief diplomatic officer to accompany me, gave the usual order about regular communications between ship and advance party to the remaining crew, donned the regulation gear, including the universal translator and off we went planet-side.
As it turned out, the tall one was called ‘Barnyor’ and the short one, ‘Yarnyor’ and both were extremely fine guides and, as it turned out, wonderful company. They represented the Harkumstun race who inhabited this part of the planet in what you and I would call a Country or State.
Barnyor spoke first, in a high and quite beautiful voice saying, “Look, rather than mess about with information overload, why don’t we go to this bar we know and get acquainted?” Yarnyor smiled even more widely, nodded his or her head, taking the science officer’s hand and leading the way.
Within a few minutes we were all sitting on very high stools at a long, polished metal bar kicking our feet on the brass footrest. Yarnyor had bought a round of what smelt like aged vodka with a hint of lemon. It was called ‘Speetzi’ and it was the most refreshing drink I had ever tasted. We fell into conversation and soon discovered a deep and mutual love of sports. They have a game which seems at first to be very much like our soccer: eleven players per side, there is an offside rule, there are netted goals and the game is played over two equal halves. However, ‘Pleelnit’ as their game was called was played with two spherical balls.
Yarnyor explained, “One ball is for the left side of the goal and one ball is for the right side of the goal”.
I looked at him or her quizzically.
“You see, you see if the left ball goes into the right side of the goal or vice versa…”.
“Or is saved by the keeper”, Barnyor interrupted.
“Yes, yes, or is saved by the keeper, then the goalie’s side scores a point. However,” and here Yarnyor stood on their stool, “if the right side ball goes into the right side goal, or vice versa, then the scoring side scores one and a half points. It’s all very exciting as I am sure your soccer must be in its way”.
Their form of cricket also used two balls, with bowlers coming in from both ends of the crease simultaneously. As a wicketkeeper myself, I questioned how the keepers were supposed to deal with bowlers charging in.
“With great skill and courage, as is the case for all sports folks”, replied a clearly tipsy Yarnyor.
We continued to drink, answering our communications devices every fifteen minutes as per protocol until eventually the conversation turned away from sport and onto politics.
“We too are a democracy”, said Barnyor struggling a little with pronunciation. “We also have two elected chambers of government: an upper house called ‘The Shatf’ and a lower one called ‘Leibstanglethrum’.
Yarnyor turned to me and as solemnly as he or she could asked, “How long do you leave yours without food or light or heat for?”
I startled at this as did my shipmates. If anything, our elected representatives back on Earth were the best fed and people on the planet. As for being deprived of light, the whole thing sounded like a form of torture not of government.
“You deprive your parliamentarians of food and light? And water”
It was Yarnyor and Barnyor’s turn to look shocked.
“We are not monsters!” cried the taller one.
“Of course they are allowed to drink, how else can they debate if their throats are parched”, said Yarnyor.
I asked for an explanation and my Science Officer disappeared off to the heads and to make our call back to the ship.
Barnyor took up the narrative, “Well, first thing’s first: candidates for government sit general and local knowledge quizzes at a local level. They also stand for local election. Their combined scores are then totted up, and the ones with the most votes and points go forward to the nationally broadcast quizzes with questions relating to general knowledge as well as the knowledge required for them to sit on the committees, select committees and sub-committees of their choice. Once everybody is elected, the real work starts.”
“Drinks? Same again?” my chief diplomatic officer had been playing three-tier pinball with a couple of Yarnyor looking beings, she appeared to be having a lovely time. We all nodded, a new round of drinks was presented, and Barnyor continued with the Civics lesson.
“Members of each house are there to check on each other’s work and this, like the original work in committee and the floor of the Houses, is done in pitch black rooms with only Lfpsis (water) and toilet breaks allowed.”
“Why is there no light or heat?” asked my Science Officer? How can they read anything or make notes?
Yarnyor looked surprised, an expression he or she achieved by raising their eyelids to the point where the headgear nearly toppled off. “Everybody had personal recorders and anything requiring playback is played back in a calm and measured tone.”
“Many are auditioned for this narration work, only a few are chosen”, said Barnyor proudly.
“Yes, yes, yes, luck of the draw. Anyway, this way they must concentrate on what is being said and not on anything extraneous like dress or painted faces or badges or gesticulations”, croaked Yarnyor.
“Why do you not allow them to eat?” I asked.
“Because all of what they do, most of the legislation and committee work, relates to keeping the people who elected and quizzed them safe and fed. Imagine a place full of people making laws who have no idea what it’s like to be hungry or cold? That would be stupid. How would they be able to do their best work?”
My officers and I fell silent to consider this for a long while, both Barnyor and Yarnyor were immersed in a tight game of Pleelnit that finished 2.5 to 1.5 much to their chagrin. My communication device vibrated and I realised it had been doing so for at least three minutes. This was dangerous, because after five minutes of no-response, the ship was ordered to deploy marines in order to find us.
“Calm down, Janssen!” I barked, “Everything is ok here, we’re learning a lot. Stand down”, I could hear Commander Janssen swearing and telling the other marines to stand down. She was the least subtle of any of the crew members. I turned back to Barnyor and asked, “When do they get to eat?”
“Once they’ve done the work of the day and agreed on corrections to the other house; when they’ve passed or not passed legislation, amendments to Bills and such like Parliamentary activity. Then the doors are opened and everybody goes to a nice warm restaurant.”
“What if there are things they can’t agree on?”
“Then they stay where they are”, said Yarnyor smiling.
“What if they come to a sticking point and can’t agree?”
“Well no, yes, yes, yes. In that case there are two options: option one is the Compromise Box. The problem in question is recorded and the recording is placed in the Compromise Box to be reviewed next year.”
I considered this and took a sip of the Speetzi. My Science Officer prompted our hosts for option two.
“Option Two, yes, yes, they stay where they are until they can come to an agreement.”
“But what if that means starving to death! Or going insane with the lack of light? Or freezing to death?” I was appalled.
Both Yarnyor and Barnyor looked concerned by my reaction and patted my arms and head gently. The taller one spoke, “Why would you want to elect anybody who wasn’t prepared to sacrifice everything for their beliefs?”
“Or to come to a compromise?” said Yarnyor.
My Diplomatic Officer then spoke, “Friends, what kind of person stands for election when they know these are the circumstances in which they will have to work?”
Again, our hosts seemed bemused, “Why, the kind of person who wants to represent the best interests of their communities and is prepared to do so at the highest of costs, obviously”, said Barnyor.
“To be honest, they’re mostly in and out in time for lunch anyway. Most people know how this works. It’s not rocket science really, just politics”, said Yarnyor.
We chatted some more about popular culture (sing-a-long shows were big, reality shows were marginal); food (they liked food, a lot); intergalactic travel (tried it, didn’t really take to it) and relationships (yes please, lots of those) before we headed back off to the ship as firm friends.
We are now heading for the planet Xergis before we finally return home to Earth. Commander Janssen is looking forward to making planetfall as she had heard bad things about the local inhabitants.
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