Pionta pórtair, le do thoil...

[khiemtran]

One of the most interesting aspects of the Irish language is the concept of "initial mutation", in which the start of a word changes based on certain rules.



There are two different types of mutation: lenition (séimhiú or "softening") and eclipsis (urú). The effects can be seen in the table below.

Original	Lenited	Pronounced	Eclipsed	Pronounced
b	bh	"v"	mb	"m"
c	ch	"as in loch"	gc	"g"
d	dh	"gh"	nd	"n"
f	fh	silent	bhf	"v"
g	gh	"gh"	ng	"ng"
m	mh	"v"
p	ph	"f"	bp	"b"
s	sh	"h"
t	th	"h"	dt	"d"

There are a great many rules around when to use which mutation. For example, an, meaning "the", causes lenition on female nouns; while if you want to use an to say "of the", you need to lenite male nouns instead. (To say "of the" with feminine nouns, you replace with an with na.)

One of the easiest rules to remember is that personal names in the genitive are always lenited. The most famous example of this is in the name of the legendary Irish, Cúchulainn, who was the hound (Cú) of Culann. As you can see, the "c" in Culann has been lenited to a "ch".

Have a look at the sign in the next photo, and see if you can spot where this rule has been applied.



As you can see, it's the Ardeaglas of Pádraig, so Pádraig has been lenited to Phádraig. On the other hand, an Ardeaspaig Marsh (the Archbishop Marsh) hasn't been lenited; I'm guessing it's because it starts with a vowel, and if it had simply been "Marsh's Library" (as the English version claims), it would have been Leabharlann Mharsh.

A common example of eclipsis is caused by the preposition i, meaning "in". So, if you wanted to say Cork in Irish, you'd say Corcaigh; but if you wanted to say "in Cork", you'd say i gCorcaigh. And if you wanted to say "in the city (cathair) of Cork", you'd say i gcathair Chorcai. (Cathair gets eclipsed because of i, Corcaigh gets lenited because it's in the genitive, i.e. the city of Cork. At least I think that's how it works.)

As you can see, it all gets quite complex very quickly, and, unless you've had a lot of immersion, it's difficult to predict just which mutation will happen when. And, as a beginner, I'm pretty much guaranteed to get things wrong.

On the bright side, as you walk around Ireland, there are plenty of opportunities to pick up new vocabulary.

Comments

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of papersky's comment about initial consonant mutation normally taking place over the course of centuries, but Welsh (a related language) doing it before you've closed your mouth.

I'm also reminded of a post on Usenet in the 1990s, which I cannot quote you exactly (it's probably in my paper quotefile at home) about the Romans conquering the Celtic-speaking Gauls and forcing them to speak Latin, which they did by treating it as if it were a Celtic language and ignoring one third of the letters in every word. Utter nonsense, but it looks so right as an explanation!

There's a similar phenomenon in Hebrew, whereby the letters B, G, D, K, P and T are lenited (though it's not called that in Hebrew) in certain circumstances, not all of which I understand. Having read my way through (almost all of) ewtikins's copy of Weingreen's Biblical Hebrew Grammar in search of an answer to this and various other subtle points of Hebrew grammar, and not finding it; I'm wondering if the way to find out is to send you to ancient Israel—or failing that, maybe it's modern successor.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

There are a surprising number of Latin derived words in Welsh and I believe that they actually came via the Latin rather than (as they did in English) via Norman French. You can also create new verbs in Welsh by what is jokingly referred to as "the Italian method" by simply adding "o" or "io" on the end of the English word. So for example the Welsh for "to google" would be "googlio".

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I guess the Latin words would have come via the Romans in Britain then?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Have you come across Brithenig? It's "a thought-experiment to create a Romance language that might have evolved if Latin speakers had been a sufficient number to displace Old Celtic as the spoken language of the people in Great Britain." The front page has the subtitle Yn nediwn seint yn llinghedig, yn nediwn seint yn cor, which should give a fair idea of it, and be readable if you have any grasp of Romance languages.

Brithenig then inspired a Q-Celtic equivalent, Breathanach, the original website of which has long gone, but there still seem to be a few pages about around, such as this one.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I hadn't seen either of them, so thanks for the link. I had to laugh at this:

"If you are visiting this web site because you have seen Lord of the Rings and want to know more about elvish languages, then I'm sorry but Brithenig is not an elvish language."

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

My suspicion is church latin, since a lot of the latinate words seem to coincide with medieval building phases - pont, porth...

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

That's interesting! So those terms wouldn't have been used in older latin?

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Well, they would have been used by Romans, but it's unlikely they would have been used in Wales - the building of stone bridges is a medieval thing. I don't know when harbours - as opposed to simply beaching your boats in a sheltered cove - came up, but I would suspect at a similar time when building skills advanced sufficiently.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I'm also reminded of a post on Usenet in the 1990s, which I cannot quote you exactly (it's probably in my paper quotefile at home) about the Romans conquering the Celtic-speaking Gauls and forcing them to speak Latin, which they did by treating it as if it were a Celtic language and ignoring one third of the letters in every word. Utter nonsense, but it looks so right as an explanation!

:) It certainly makes sense of French pronunciation!

[athgarvan.livejournal.com]

As an Irish speaker myself I appreciate your fine exposition of certain quirks of the language.
One thing I've never been clear about myself is the lenition in the male genitive. The lenition indicates 'possession' or 'ownership' as in Cú Chulainn. Culann owned the dog. Or hata Sheáin (Sean owns the hata). But does one use it when referring to something which is not strictly belonging to the person e.g. should it be Cruach Pádraig or Cruach Phádraig. St. Patrick does not 'own' the mountain?

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't know about Irish, but in other languages, the genitive can be used whenever a noun modifies another noun, so it doesn't have to be strictly about possession. So if I said "the men of Dublin", Dublin wouldn't actually possess the men, but I'd still expect it to be in the genitive. Irish could be completely different, of course!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Irish only has two kinds of lenition? That's nothing! Welsh has three! :) Except we call them "mutations" or "treigladau" in the Welsh. They are soft, nasal and aspirate. (The "C" to "Ch" would be what we'd call an "aspirate mutation".)

However, from what you've said above, learning Irish would be a nightmare for a Welsh speaker because the rules seem pretty similar but also completely different. For example the rule about the word for "the" causing female nouns to mutate is exactly the same in Welsh, but not the part about "of the" altering masculine nouns. Trying to sort it out would, as my daughter used to say, "do my head in." :)

Just out of interest, did you actually hear anyone speaking Irish while you were there?

[athgarvan.livejournal.com]

O yes.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I overheard just one conversation the whole week, if you exclude all the times people would explain place names by referring to the Irish words. But then, I did spend most of my time in various hotel meeting rooms. I also got to watch some Irish programmes on TG4, but, tellingly, the ads and subtitles were all in English.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I think I overheard one conversation in Irish the week I was there (three years ago) too. But Irish has been displaced by English in most of Ireland; although it's taught to everyone in school, there's only a limited area, known as the Gaeltacht, where it's still natively spoken.