h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

1 Feb is the traditional first day of Spring in Ireland. True to form, the weather was mild and wet yesterday. The really cold weather seems to have gone.

1 Feb was the feast of Imbolc. The 'bolc' in this looks suspiciously like 'bolg', a swollen stomach, so I assume that this was the feast of pregnancy and new life. The Christians converted it into the Feast of St Brigid. Brigid herself may have been a genuine Irish holy woman named after the ancient Goddess Brigid (Bríghid, Brede, Bríd), or she may have been just a story made up to subsume the attributes of the goddess into the new Christian religion.

The feast was renamed Feabhra, from the Roman Februarius.

May be it was the feast of eating too much????

Mind you, February in ancient Ireland... not a huge amount to eat I'd guess.

1st Feb's early for Spring. You lucky things. We have to wait until 21st March -

How many Romans made it to Ireland? Ooh err...what an admission - no idea about Irish history...


Fb

No Romans ever reached Ireland. Someone spread a malicious rumour that Ireland was the land of perpetual winter, where the sun never rose, so the Romans named it Hibernia (Winter Land) and kept away. The Irish have always been good at self promotion.

So how did the feast get >renamed Feabhra, from the Roman Februarius<, if there were no Romans there?

Is Hibernia the same root as to hibernate? I guess it must be.

That's what I'd like to do through the Scottish winter. Do the Irish?


F/b

Now Brigid was a deity
Before St Patrick came
And sold the modern verity
That all gods are the same
And only three -- the Trinity --
Deserving of the name . . .

Read more about Brigid at F19585?thread=283765&skip=287

Yes . . . it's the Ballad of Grimley Moer. It contains all lore since the creation of the universe, and more . . .

I love Gnomon journals.

The monks brought Christianity to Ireland. They were all brought up in the Roman traditions, including speaking Latin and practicing Christianity. So I suppose they could be considered to be Romans! They were the ones who introduced the Roman names for some of the months (January, February, March, April and July). The months May, June, August, September, October and November kept their pre-Christian names. December is called Nollaig in Irish, which may be a form of Noel. I don't know.

Nollaig is also a name in Irish, and is translated as (guess what) Noel.

A large proportion of the Irish language is Latin-derived. A cow is Bó (bos, bovis) and a horse is Capall (caballus); a house is Teach, pronounced tyoch, from the same root as archi-Tect. And so on; a book is Leabhar (liber), a road is Bóthar (bos+trans: cow track) and a boy is Buachall (bos+custos: cow keeper).

There are P Celts and Q Celts; the Irish kind are Q Celts, shown by the Gaelic word for Easter: Cáisc. P Celts like the French say Pâques; both come from the Latin Pascha.

Just because the word bó in Ireland is similar to the Latin word bos does not mean that the Irish word came from the Latin word. Both languages are descended from the same Indo-European root language which is known as Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Bó might be an imported word from Latin, but it might also be an original Celtic word which came directly from PIE. Some words in Irish are closer to the original (conjectured) PIE words than the Latin equivalent, showing that Irish hasn't changed much for centuries in some respects.

For example, brother is reckoned to be *bhrater- in PIE. The * means that it is conjectural, since there are no written records. The - means that there would be word endings tagged on, since PIE, like Latin and Irish, was an inflected language. THe Irish for brother was bráthair, a word which still survives in referring to religious brothers. The Latin, frater, is about the same distance from PIE as the Irish.

Ha! The plot thickens! I'd always assumed that the influence of Christianity was such as to reshape the Irish language, but it ain't necessarily so.

Certainly the number four in Irish (Ceathair) looks closer to Chatur than to Quattuor. The Indian name for chess is "Chaturanga" -- the four armies.

to Irish dictionary to see what if anything does Anga mean in Irish . . . well, there are two entries: it means both "notch, gusset, net", and "corruption, venom".

The Irish numbers from 1 to 10 are all obviously Latin derived. Aon, dó, trí, ceathair, cúig, sé, seacht, ocht, naoi, de. It's very similar to French, Spanish and Italian. It's even more similar to Latin than most other languages including English, German, Czech, Turkish, Arabic etc. Why would ceathair *not* be latin-based, when it sounds so similar to quart, quarter, quattro, etc?

Woodpigeon

Because it was ceathair before the Romans were ever heard of. The Proto-Indo-European for four was *kwetwo:r so the Celtic word descended from that, long before any of the Celts ever met a Latin.

Interestingly, the PIE for cow was *gweh3us which is obviously related to cow but not to bó and bos, so Recumbentman is most probably right that the Irish word for cow does in fact come from Latin.

This is totally non-sequitur but I'm finding a lot of gaps filled since I've started learning Polish.

For example the word "the same" : I can see no relationship between that and anything I know in French, Spanish, Italian or German. Or the word "left" for the opposite of "right". There are great similarities in the Slavic words. So how do Slavic words infiltrate the English - if this is what has happened - for such basic and abstract concepts.

Same:

French - pareil, même
Spanish - mismo
German - das gleiche, dasselbe
Polish - to samo (not sure of spelling - book is at home, I'm at work!)


Left:

French: gauche
German: links
Italian: sinistra
Polish - er... well it sounds the same - again I'd have to check my book for the spelling. I do all my Polish learning on my bike on the way to work.

In Czech, which is slightly similar to Polish I guess, left is "vlevo", but right is "vpravo". So there is a slight connection with the word "left", but no similarity with "right".

Woodpigeon

Except that Pravda (the Russian newspaper) means "truth", which is, by definition right!!!!! QED!!!

Oh yes and Czech is very similar to Polish, as I am discovering as I go along. The guy who sits right next to me at work has a girlfriend in Prag and we have compared notes occasionally. Although I don't think he's too bothered about learning Czech. They converse in English - at least in the e-mails he gets at work. He asks me some English sometimes. His girlfriend seems to be in London at the moment, au pairing.

Sorry Gnomon - trespassing on your space.

I'll let the intelligent people carry on this conversation now, if they're still interested. I am. In the Irish/Latin question, I mean.

Don't apologise for having a linguistic discussion in my journal!

Sorry, German spelling - Prague not Prag

That's an ego-booster! He called my atrocious Anglo-Russian pun a "linguistic discussion"

I shall be *walking on air* tonight.

Must dash.

Choir practice