Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
This the latest dispatch from our columnist Darach Ó Séaghdha, author of the award-winning and bestselling Motherfoclóir. Every Sunday morning, Darach will be regaling (re-Gaeling?) us with insights on what the Irish language says about Ireland, our society, our past and our present. Enjoy.
‘HELLO’, IT IS said, was chosen from a number of prospective candidates including ‘ahoy hoy’ as the greeting to be used by people when answering the telephone. That decision is often credited to Alexander Graham Bell.
However, I suspect that an individual person decided that ‘can I tap?’ should become the accepted phrase for when you want to make a contactless payment.
Nor indeed was it ever officially decided that the noun ‘text’ could become the verb ‘to text’.
Usually language evolves naturally as people experience a new technology at the same time. But naming of new technologies in Irish can be a bit more controversial.
A catch 22 situation can emerge – if the word sounds too close to the English word, such as fón for the phone, it is mocked for being unimaginative or derivative. But other, more defiantly Irish terms, such as guthán for the phone, are condemned for being wilfully obscure and not true to language use in Gaeltacht areas.
So what words do we use when we talk about technology in Irish?
Iarnród: In the 1840s, many Irish people blamed the introduction of the railroad to Ireland for causing the Great Famine.
Whatever about the logical basis of that theory, the railroad was the last major invention to be introduced, while Irish was still the most widely spoken language on this island.
Iarnród translates literally as iron roadstead – a roadstead being the pathway of a ship rather than bóthar (road).
Citeal: Perhaps you think the Irish word for a kettle should sound very different from the English word, and you think that a word like citeal reflects badly on Irish. If so it is worth pointing out that this word is virtually the same in many Germanic and Latin languages.
You may have even seen the word túlán and wondered why we don’t just use that. But since túlán is an old word, it typically refers to kettle in its pre-electric sense, when water was boiled on the fire. Given how different that is from the yoke you make your tea with today, a distinct term is hardly unwarranted.
Grianghraf: The Irish word for photograph follows the literal meaning of the compound Greek term. Photo, meaning light and graph, meaning image.
A pleasant alliteration is achieved by using grian, the word for the sun, rather than solas or another term for light.
The longest word in the Irish language is the word for aerial photography - aerghrianghrafadóireacht.
Féinín: Continuing on a photographic theme, féinín is the officially recognised Irish word for a selfie. There was some competition for that one, the word feinphic was noted by DCU, in their terminology database in 2015.
Riomhaire: In medieval monasteries, the riomhaire was the monk who calculated the date on which Easter would fall each year. He literally was the computer, and that is where the Irish word for a computer comes from.
Perhaps unsurprisingly then Luch riomhaire is a computer mouse.
Riomhphost: The Irish for email. R-phost will do if you’re in a hurry.
Turscar: This is one of the many words in Irish for seaweed, but it refers specifically to the useless, dead seaweed that is abandoned on the shore by the receding tide.
So it is very fitting that this should be used as the Irish word for spam emails.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
The Czech language was almost dead (at one stage almost everyone was speaking German) and it was revived. Now everyone there speaks Czech, which is about as difficult to learn as Irish.
@SC: The thing is Irish was only revived as a cultural identity to show our different ness to English. Once we got our independence from England this relevant different ness was no longer useful. Except of course in Northern Ireland. The language lacked another usefulness as a commonly spoken language except in the diminishing Gaeltacht areas which gave an impression that it was in some way the language of the poor.
@SC: I agree. Many people deem the language as useless, but when I hear my Catalan friends converse in their native language, it makes me wish we had the same. Being bi-lingual is a great perk and the teaching of Irish needs a strong looking at
@Micheal S. O’ Ceilleachair:
We should all be speaking cant.
@Micheal S. O’ Ceilleachair: we all spoke Irish up to the time of the great hunger.
Seeing as we Irish were banned from entering towns We had to speak English to enter them.
@dublincomments: Native Irish were never banned from entering towns. Towns were set up by the Anglo-Normans and later English as places to live and administer the county. No Irish person at the time would have wanted to live in a town.
@Dee: The town of Bandon is notorious for not allowing Native and Papist enter. A stone carving over the town gate stated as much.
It was so rigidly enforced it gave rise to the Cork sawing “In Bandon even the pigs are Prodestant”
@Micheal S. O’ Ceilleachair: Seriously Micheál, what are you on about?
@SC: taught awfully in school, learning off summaries about an old irish play or poem doesnt exactly entice young people, nor does it function to help their grasp of the language. I’ve studied Irish for 14 years yet I can speak more French having studied it for 6.
Caithfidh mé a rá, tá sé ar fheabhas gach seachtain.
The value of Irish could be more that it distinguishes future generations of Irish people as “actually Irish” and not just a portion of some Americanized global blob of Anglophones who learn English language from software. I hated Irish in school, but occasionally the Irish word is even more capable of expressing what we Irish people actually want to say than English. Definitely worth keeping the language alive.
Ná beathaítear na troill!
I look forward to never having to use these words and phrases ever.
@Jesus Christ: why would you, you’re from the middle East.
@Leadóg: freagra iontach.
@Leadóg: …and if he were here in Galway and said that he’d be crucified.
@Jesus Christ: What’s the Aramaic word for selfie?
To the Irish speakers, did fón póca ever take off instead of mobile in spoken Irish? I remember being told that this was going to be the term for mobile in school in the late 90′s. At the time I thought it wasn’t the best, a mobile isn’t a pocket phone and two words aren’t going to be more popular than one to describe an everyday item.
@Ronan McKeon: I weirdly enough would never say “fón póca” rather “guthán”!
@Ronan McKeon: I like fón póca, it’s quicker to say.
@Ronan McKeon: Yes, fón póca is probably the more used phrase though guthán is common too.
I propose that Facebook should be called pusleabhar.
@John Considine:
Its where a lot of folk show their pusses alright!
Here here Dave from the pale. God save the queen. Out! Out! they said!
@minorproblem: It’s “Hear, hear” as in short for “Hear him”, not “here here” which is meaningless.
@minorproblem: I count ten spelling and grammatical errors in a 14-word comment.
Many native speakers in the Gaeltacht would say ”mobile” instead of fón póca etc, but they have accepted the word ”ríomhaire” and is one of the few words for modern technology used by native Gaeltacht speakers
these Irish articles are pointless every Sunday.
They could write something interesting instead that the other 99.7% of the population might enjoy?
@Artur Gurta: you mean it’s pointless to you .others find it interesting !.Amadán ..
@Artur Gurta:
They are anything but pointless to me – and a fair few others here.
Nobody is forcing you to read them, yet alone comment on them.
@Artur Gurta: judging by the comments, s lot more than .3% of TheJournal.ie.ie readership enjoy this article every week and this particular media outlet has not even made a big impression in Gaeltacht areas yet. Ignorant comment!
@Artur Gurta: not as pointless as your comment
@Artur Gurta: Speak for yourself; the book is great too.
@Artur Gurta: Do you really have such a pathetic life? You come here every Sunday in an “obvious troll is obvious” way and spout nonsense about Irish. We get it. You are too brain-dead to learn a second language. You like to lash out at others because you’re too stupid, ignorant and lack confidence.
@Artur Gurta: Seriously, join the four million plus people who are learning Irish on DuoLingo. It’s fun and only a few minutes a day.
@Artur Gurta: It’s a good thing that they exist in a virtual space and as such can exist without limiting the space available for other things. If you don’t want to read them, why on earth did you click on the article?
Pearls to swine, I’m afraid, Daragh ( what’s t’Irish for ‘pearl’?)
@Muiris de Bhulbh: péarla.
Who comes up with these stupid words. use English please. Thats whats spoken.
@Dave Barrett: You think Irish isn’t spoken as well?
@Dave Barrett: However, some of the new words some randomers in an office come up with, then claim are the new official Irish word, are stupid.
@Dave Barrett: You need to go back to school and learn English punctuation and capitalisation. In a thirteen word comment, you literally made four mistakes in your beloved English. Amadán.
@Dave Barrett: bet there is a special word to describe you
@Sea Graham: No doubt there is. We might have a lot in common then.
@Dave Barrett: Anyone who thinks a language, any language is stupid is an fool.
@Dave Barrett: Fear Grinn
@Sea Graham: Duine atá ag fulaingt ó shionndróm Stócólm.
@Dave Barrett: colonists , self haters and the uneducated say things like that.
@dublincomments: It’s more a monolingual thing, I’d say. People who only have one language get frightened by the notion of learning something new. You would think that they’d at least like to know what our place-names mean. As the maths teacher said, it’s always easier when you understand what you’re writing about. Memorising doesn’t teach us much.
@Mark Joyce: please don’t criticise someone’s grammar while using the word “literally” like a 14-year-old Californian girl.
I’m a bit confused about ‘Roadstead’ given by Darach to mean a pathway of a ship. A pathway of a ship is also known as a gangway, along each side of a ship’s deck outer rails. I always thought ‘Roadstead’ meant a place of shelter for ships at anchor in a quiet water estuary but not actually in a harbour – as “a ship resting in the lee”? I stand to be corrected.
I was taught that Railway was “Bóthar Iarann” or “Slí Iarann”?? Iarnród only came into use after Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ) split into Bus Éireann and Iarnród Éireann. There’s no Irish word I know of for ‘bus’ or ‘taxi’, except for Irish spellings given to equivalent English pronunciations (‘bus’ nó teacsaí).
I love these articles by Darach, learning something new every Sunday. Buíochas leis.
@Canny Jem:
Is there an English language equivalent for ‘bus’ and ‘taxi’? :)
@Clíodhna Ní Mhurchú: No, the word ‘bus’ is a shortened version of the Latin word ‘Omnibus’ – meaning a “carriage for all”. But the short word ‘bus’ could from the old Irish/Celtic word ‘Buss’, which means ‘kiss’, a meeting of lips, a meeting of people; hence “bussing” together.
The current Irish word for ‘Taxi’ is ‘teacsaí’ – which is too familiar with “Teach a suí’ – ‘Take a seat in the house’ – a welcome greeting to an Irish home.
I did a lot of “bussing” with girlfriends on buses and on the ‘Iarnród’. I won’t tell what my ‘teacsaí’ meant to my girlfriends in the backseat of a taxi, or of a cinema…
Nite-nite, oíche mhaith, *buss buss* a Chlíodhna *L*
The Irish for taxi is tacsaí, not teacsaí, which would, to an Irish speaker, have a completely different initial consonant and medial vowel sound. Secondly, iarnród is quite a valid word and has indeed been around for as long as Darach said. It is a combination of iarann and ród, itself stemming from Old Irish rót and cognate with Manx “raad” and Scottish Gaelic “rathad”.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: Thanks for enlightenment. I’ve seen ‘teacsaí’ and ‘tacsaí’ on taxis. Wish they’d make up their minds!
I don’t speak the language personally but I put my child in an Irish speaking school and has thought me so much already in their first year. Love it and why can’t we speak it (or at least embrace it) Like the rest of Europe along with English
@gavin doyle: Would be cool if everyone had your attitude – fair play Gavin :)
Not having been taught Irish and having an interest in (but not a talent for) languages, I find these articles very interesting. I occasionally ask Irish friends and colleagues the meaning or origin of words and phrases, but usually all I get is raised eyebrows. I’m just not sure about the need for an Irish equivalent for every new word.
Fón póca is used, guthán, guthán póca too… Depends on the person… I use fón or guthán more often… same way nobody really says mobile phone in English except in certain contexts…
In my experience, Irish is useful when skiing in the Rocky Mountains.
When sexy American women stood beside us in the bar, my brother and I spoke candidly about them. They heard our voices without knowing the subject of our conversation.
have your say