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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25511 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024

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Follow-up news to the recent referenda in Ireland; after the St Patrick's Day visit to the White House and now he's back home, Leo Varadkar has announced his resignation as Taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael.

Very unexpected news, and it does make one question if it's down to the abysmal failure of the recent referenda. Of course, he mentions "personal reasons" and that's also going to generate speculation as to what or why these may be.

And everybody said nothing would happen when I asked if a defeat so dire it would topple any government would do so in Ireland. You're slipping nothing-ever-happens gang!

I have no illusion he'll be replaced by someone that's any different, but at least the Irish political class still has the sense to prey on that big a sign of weakness.

To be pedantic it hasn't toppled the government (yet), assuming they can find a successor he or she will have a year before the next general election.

Fair enough. How do the Irish say again? "Don't say 'here chick chick' to the bird until he's hatched from the egg" or something to that effect.

I've never heard of this expression or anything like it.

I confess my Gaelic is very rusty, how would you literally translate "na h-abair diug a choidhche ris an eun gus an dig e às an ugh"?

That's more Irish than I expect any of us here know! For example using Google Translate I discovered that 'ugh' is a valid way to spell 'ubh' and the same for 'eun' and 'éan', if you have the source I wonder if it's an old Irish text (the spelling has changed a lot over the years)?

That's more Irish than I expect any of us here know

Labhair don tú féin!

An bhfuil ceannaigh mé dul go dtí an leithreas! (I checked after I wrote this and it was even worse than I thought).

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I think this mystery made me learn something new about my own library.

On my travels to Ireland I once brought back this Gaelic dictionary as a souvenir, felt appropriate you know? And that's what I just reached for. It's an old edition of Edward Dwelly's The Illustrated Gaelic-English Dictionary, and it has this proverb in it as an equivalent to "don’t count your chickens before they come home to roost".

The definitions looked right from my cursory knowledge of Gaelic, spellings have changed a lot over the years and it is an old book, I never thought to look into the background of the author. But it turns out he's a scholar of Scottish Gaelic. Close enough at a glance, but definitely wrong and in particular about idioms.

So in my hubris I have committed the ultimate insult of confusing the Irish and the Scots. That's what I get for trying to look worldly. I guess at least I just got a free funny story with that souvenir. Maybe next time I'll go to Scotland and buy a proper Irish dictionary.

Ah well maybe that's why we just call it Irish, 'Scottish-Gaelic' and 'Irish-Gaelic' can get confusing.

Maybe next time I'll go to Scotland and buy a proper Irish dictionary.

One of the best books I've read on Irish culture (the one that died in the 17th century) was originally written in Welsh (excerpts 1, 2, 1000 years of the poets being on icy terms with the Irish kings and then the English), I'd imagine any Scots-Gaelic or Welsh scholar will have some good books on Ireland too.

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And going by Google Translate it's "Do not tell the bird to sleep before it hatches from the egg".

"Na h-abhair" is clear enough "don't say/don't tell". "an eun" is "an éan" in Irish, "the bird". "Ugh" and "ubh" is "egg". But yeah, grammar is different.

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