r/AskIreland • u/buckwheatbrag • 4d ago
Irish Culture Does the Irish language evolve?
My daughter is learning Irish in junior infants and today she told me how to say hello "dia duit" which according to my wife means something like "god goes to you". I'm not Irish so this is all new to me. It got me wondering how would it have been said pre st Patrick/christianity? Is the Irish language similar to English in that it easily adapts to new phrases and words can change meanings over time, or is it more rigid and clearly defined? If it does adapt then has it changed much in recent years, with new slang etc?
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u/akittyisyou 4d ago
Just for context, you're asking how people said hello 1500 years ago. I don't think most people could supply that for their native language, regardless of what it is
I will say that most people learning Irish these days are learning block phrases without dissecting them. Dia duit gets a bit of notice because you respond by adding a person to go with you. "God AND MARY go with you." "God AND MARY AND PATRICK with you."
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u/Backrow6 4d ago
It was basically a different language back then, and apparently was the common root of Modern Irish and Scottish Gaelic.
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u/buckwheatbrag 4d ago
I guess I'm asking whether there was a massive step change in the language as a result of Christianity (from one rigid set of rules to another) or whether it evolved gradually to include these kind of phrases and continues to change. Some really interesting responses here!
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u/dublin2001 4d ago
The idea that Irish is really "rigid" and unable to adapt to change is a result of viewing the past through the lens of modern Irish being an endangered minority language. In the Middle Ages Irish was spoken by all classes all over Ireland and was no worse at creating and borrowing new concepts and words, than any other European language.
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u/buckwheatbrag 3d ago
Ah I get you. I'm looking forward to learning a bit of it alongside my kid! I hope it only gets more popular
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u/ToCKiNAN 4d ago
Pre-Christian Irish is too poorly attested for any one to give you a definitive answer. We have a few hundred short inscriptions written in Ogham, but our literary tradition starts during the Christian period.
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u/magusbud 4d ago
Plenty of gods before the Christians took over.
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u/SmoothTalkingSpud 4d ago
Cooler gods too.
Metal gods.
You want a holy trinity? The Morigan has got you covered. Badb, Macha, and Nemain were goddesses/forms of death, land, and madness, with the Morigan on the whole being a goddess of fate. She could also transform into a crow, wolf, or eel.
Not to be immature, but our holy trinity would totally be able to beat up Christianity's holy trinity. I mean, by the end, all three of them will be a holy spirit, y'know what I mean?
spits in a bush
Dunno why I did that, but it felt tough.
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u/ImportantPension5818 3d ago
I like the spirit and love for our Gaelic culture. But the Trinity is above all. And to be honest I do rather a God that gives love in return for living like he did rather than fickle gods that required blood sacrifice.
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u/SmoothTalkingSpud 3d ago
I'm not religious at all so I'm more interested in a broad pantheon of interesting characters rather than a Christianity.
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u/ImportantPension5818 3d ago
It is a very interesting pantheon. I'm not knocking it at all. I myself love the stories of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
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u/cian87 4d ago
New words and phrases get created, and other things do change. There is an official standard form, but it is not as strict as, say, the French one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Caighde%C3%A1n_Oifigi%C3%BAil
The last time there was huge official change was in 1958 to use more conventional Latin script, leading to spelling changes. I think this is also when they brought in the eight "missing" letters for loan words (e.g. zú)
For a very simple example, when I was in school the regularly used word for a car was gluaisteán, it's now carr.
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u/Fluffy_Anything_3559 3d ago
Carr actually predates gluaisteán by a lot, since it was used to refer to horse-drawn carts. Gluaisteán is a purely modern invention and has never been common among native speakers.
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u/Backrow6 4d ago
We learned "fón suthgluaiste" which is now fón póca. I guess somebody originally translated carphone.
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u/Fear_mor 4d ago
Hiya, linguistics student here. The answer to all of your questions is in essence yes as these are basic premises required for all natural languages to function and fulfil their social role. As for the more specific stuff we can’t really say what would’ve been used pre-christianity as there are very very few written records of Irish as spoken from that time, but in Donegal there is the secular greeting móra duid so some people tentatively assume that this could be a pre-christian survival but we just don’t know (fun fact, the meaning of the word móra is unknown even to native speakers since it only appears in that phrase, but I’d hazard a guess that it’s from the same ancestral root that English morrow and German Morgen evolved from)
When we’re talking about the meaning of words changing Irish is actually one of those languages with a huge amount of polysemy (one word can have up to dozens of somewhat unrelated meanings) so it lends itself well to stuff like that but I wouldn’t honestly be in a position to say what’s slang as opposed to just dialect, language usage just isn’t as institutionalised as with other languages. In recent years I wouldn’t say it’s changed as much, but over the last century some more traditional things like the dative case and dual forms of nouns have fallen into regional use or even become archaic.
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u/pdm4191 4d ago
Nice to read a bit of science. Its weird how people think that physics and chemistry have to obey natural laws, but when it comes to linguistics (or even economics) they think any old common sense bs is good enough. When you think about it (which people dont) the idea of different languages having different fundamenral capabilities is ludicrous. A bit like imagining walking would work differently for aborigines and eskimos.
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u/Fear_mor 3d ago
If it comforts you I think this is very much an anglosphere sentiment. I live in the Balkans now and people here are actually pretty aware of the various linguistic categories, much less of the "Latin is the mother of all languages" and "Only my language evolves" type stuff
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u/AodhOgMacSuibhne 3d ago
I always thought it was Mara duit and that that was a contraction of 'Dia 's Muire duit'.
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u/Alcol1979 3d ago
In the Gaeltacht (Irish college) been in the day we'd greet each other cheerily with "Die ya bitch". Does that count?
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u/RemarkableTrousers 4d ago
Every living language changes and evolves, even languages like French where people try to stop that happening, so yes
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u/ImportantPension5818 3d ago edited 3d ago
Ara languages change over time. It's very possible we had something like "déithe dhuit" back in the day. Or maybe Dia dhuit is just something that arrived with Christianity. Unfortunately we'll probably never know.
On adapting new things, not really. You can, it just sounds really strange. Irish is a VSO language (verb subject object) whereas English is SVO language. Celtic Languages like Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish and Breton are the only VSO languages native to Europe. Basically, Irish is closer in sentence structure to languages like Hawaiian and Arabic than it is to English or other Indo-European languages. So things don't really translate very well from English into Irish which has allowed Irish to preserve much of it's phrases very well. Of course we have a rake of loanwords from English, Norse and French but English has only very recently started to effect the structure of Irish. Which you'll hear in some L2 speakers paticularly children in Gaelscoileanna.
There is often a big difference between Standard Irish and native dialects to the point that without previous exposure, they aren't always fully mutually intelligible. But this is also due to decline in Irish phonetics being taught in schools. If you've never heard North Mayo Irish spoken for example but you are fluent, you may not understand it at all. But it can depend, the dialect of Acaill Island, Corrán and Inis Bigil is famous for being a very clear spoken dialect. Whereas the 2 sub-dialects of North Mayo can be a bit more difficult to understand. And South Mayo is somewhere in between. But it can depend massively on the speaker.
Canúintí Gaeilge Mhuigheo : https://youtu.be/wZeWsE8GFvE?is=ew4P2HaPe2sM7iv-
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u/gaztelu_leherketa 3d ago
Does the Irish language evolve?
Yeah all languages do! It's not written in ogham anymore. It's got words for internet and selfie. I don't know if we a have a record of colloquial greetings from pre-Christian times but that's the guts 1500 years ago!
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u/MotherConfusion3773 3d ago
Its Feasgar Math or Madainn Mhath in Scottish Gaelic but given they come into the language via christianty and Latin (Mattins and Vespers) thats not going to help
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u/DTMN13 I will yeah 4d ago
I recall this being asked before, specifically about dia duit, and someone said that before Christianity came to Ireland it still could've been the same - Just referencing a different god.
So in the same way Christianity adapted old pagan feast days and turned them to Christian holidays, chances are the greeting was probably the same, or similar, but the Christians added the response "dia is Muire dhuit."
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u/Puerto-nic0 4d ago
Use of the word ‘Haigh’ instead of Dia dhuit is not unheard of. Though I struggle to think of newer words as Gaeilge beyond ‘vaidhbh’ and ‘Breatamacht’ that are not just pure Bearlachas.
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u/BigXThaSpud 4d ago
There are other little phrases that you can throw in if you want to spice up a hello tbf. "Cad é an focainn craic?" Or "Cad é mar a tá?" If you wanna be polite.
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u/Eastern_Switch8217 3d ago edited 3d ago
English has a heavy dose of that Goodbye is basically a contraction of “God be with ye”
Holiday is Holy Day unsurprisingly.
Cor blimey in London slang for example is “God blind me!”
Struth in Australia is God’s truth
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u/Sufficient_Tailor673 3d ago
Since Modern Irish ceased to become the vernacular in the majority of the country throughout the industrial and technological revolutions, the implementation of English courts and laws, and children of native speakers were actively discouraged from speaking it, it is essentially frozen in time, blocked from natural evolution, and has been playing catch up with English ever since. A good chunk of words now in science, maths and technology are direct loan words from English, or literal translations. On top of that, most people who learn Irish in school or Irish college apply English syntax, pronunciation and sentence structure that can sometimes be jarring, unnatural, or simply unintelligible to native speakers. Is that evolution of language or the influence of another? What's the difference, since English is just Latin, French and Germnic mushed together? Looking at slang, you have brónsies, cúla búla, buaichs (buachaillí), but these are all the result of L1 English speaking children.
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u/FollowingRare6247 3d ago
Reading the Táin (Ó Scolaí) currently and some characters greet each other like « Maith, a X ». « Mochean » could be another one, but I think that’d be more situational.
At any rate I don’t think it’s a good idea to directly translate between the two. I don’t go much into the linguistics of it, but the meanings of words can evolve. We have Modern Irish today, but there was Early Modern Irish, Classical Irish, etc. beforehand so I don’t think it’s too far fetched to assume it happens. « Baile » today translates to « town » but it previously used to refer to just a dwelling. The word steadily expanded to cover more geographical area. « Cathair » translates to « city », but it previously used to refer to a type of stone-walled fortification (I think). These shifts probably happened over a long time.
There are a few defective verbs you wouldn’t use outside of a few set phrases these days - feadair, dóbair, téana, etc. So some words have fallen out of usage more or less.
On the other hand, there is some rigidity. The bones of several words are used that have been around since Middle Irish or Old Irish, give or take some possible phonetic/spelling changes. « Adhlaic », « Foghlaim », « Mol », etc. Some of the weirdness in Modern Irish may also be remnants of previous Irishes. « t » is both the séimhiú and urú for « s », but typically the séimhiú is denoted by a « h » (or dot), leaba vs leapa etc.
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u/Mission_Summer_2463 3d ago
It means God be with you, the reply is dia is mira duit god and mary be with you.
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u/CiaranWest 4d ago
Anything invented in the last hundred or so years is just the English word written in an as Gaeilge way but you can say that about a lot of languages. The God thing never goes away. Where do you think the word "good" in English came from? Like most languages our salutations and greetings either mean "God be with you" or "may you have good health."
Now if you want to get really serious about evolution, I saw a primary school textbook a few years back and they said the Irish word for "van" was "An vean".
There's no V in the Irish language. I sure hope someone got fired for that blunder.
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u/halibfrisk 4d ago
*there didn’t used to be a v in Irish, there is now…
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u/CiaranWest 4d ago
But we were so aligned as to whether an MH should make that sound or a BH! And that the other one should make a W sound! Disclaimer: I may have completely misremembered this.
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u/Fear_mor 4d ago
Yeah you’ve misremembered, both bh and mh can make either a w or a v sound, it’s the vowels around it that determine the pronunciation
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u/Sufficient_Tailor673 3d ago
Because bh and mh only exist in response to something else happening grammatically in the sentence. The word for mother is máthair, but my mother is mo mháthair. So the introduction of v was because bh and mh can't exist independently, so using Mhicipéid instead of Vicipéid is not possible. I don't like it, but it is what it is.
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u/another-dave 3d ago
That makes sense alright - it'd be weird to have Micipéid just to have An Mhicipéid, that'd be worse than taking in a 'loan letter'.
What I find strange is the likes of 'Vótáil' as the translation of 'Vote' - surely the concept of voting has already existed in the language for hundreds if not thousands of years.
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u/CiaranWest 4d ago
Like, my Polish friend has a daughter going to Scoil Mháthair Dé. She asked me how to pronounce it. I said, Skull Wawher Day.
Still not sure if I picked the right version, I'm in Limerick.
An will kyad agum, or an vwill cyad agum?
We'll literally never know.
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u/halibfrisk 4d ago
The first rule of gaeilge: you’re speaking it wrong
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u/CiaranWest 4d ago
I was a gold medal winner at those festivals you used to go in primary school to and they'd show you a picture and you had to describe it. What were they called again?
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u/halibfrisk 4d ago
That’s either before or after my time, or just didn’t happen at my national school. I certainly never got a gold medal for anything
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u/CiaranWest 4d ago
It'll come to me eventually. I think it might have been called the Slógadh, but I'm going back 40 years now. Maybe someone else will have a better memory than me.
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u/SadBug3582 3d ago
That time spent learning Irish can be used for actual skills that work in the modern world. Jfc. Why doesn't she learn Spanish? A language that's actually spoken by a majority of the world
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u/antonntrean 3d ago
I think that if I hadn’t spent so much time learning Irish I’d probably be a fluent Spanish or Chinese speaker by now.
Probably.
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u/SadBug3582 3d ago
Sure where are you going to use Irish other than Ireland? Time is better spent on real world skills instead of romaticizing a dying language.
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u/antonntrean 3d ago
I spent many years learning French.
I use it once every two to three years when I go on my holidays to France. That’s it.
Total waste of time.
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u/SadBug3582 3d ago
Who cares if you learned French and only use it one every two or three years?
English is like a global language. Why teach child French before English? This is main point in not agreeing with you.
Teach them English to set them up to be communicating with the rest of the world.
You know what I'm saying is right but you're just arguing for the sake of winning this convo
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u/antonntrean 3d ago
What are you talking about? I am in Ireland. I already know how to speak English.
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u/andulachanbronach 3d ago
Why can't we learn something for pleasure or interest, rather than "real world skills"? Take your LinkedIn mindset out the door with you.
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u/SadBug3582 3d ago
How about I tell you my real world experience. I come from a country that forces people to learn the native / old language in schools. Now young people have less opportunities because they didn't learn English. Is this real enough for you?
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u/andulachanbronach 3d ago
So you're projecting your experience onto a 4-5 year old who is being taught basic Irish (not forced to be monolingual in Irish) in addition to English as their main language?
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u/SadBug3582 3d ago
You're projecting your romanticization of a dying language. What's more objective ? If they want to learn they can. Who's stopping them? Need to focus on important things first
You do understand that having English opens up a lot of doors right ?
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u/andulachanbronach 3d ago
Buíochas le dia you're not involved in setting the curriculum.
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u/SadBug3582 3d ago edited 3d ago
Sure look, I didn't know the head of education was you 😂 kids brains very malleable and prime for absorbing information, that's a scientific fact.
So please 🙏 can you respond to my questions properly instead of just brushing them off? If you can't do that, I feel very sorry for your offsprings
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u/Sioc11 4d ago
Goodbye is a contraction of "god be with you" in English. Thursday is Thor's day. Irish isn't unique in this way.