quick question [Irish lyrics]

[bluebeard]

You must go where I can not,

Pangur Bán, Pangur Bán...

Nil sa saol seo ach ceo,
Is ni bheimid beo,
ach seal beag gearr.

Pangur Bán, Pangur Bán...

Nil sa saol seo ach ceo,
Is ni bheimid beo,
ach seal beag gearr.
Hi! Can anyone tell me if these lyrics are correct? The Irish ones, that is. Some people treat accents/diacritics like they're there for

Comments

[muckefuck]

Níl sa saol seo ach ceo
Is ní bheimid beo,
ach seal beag gearr.
With beimid "we shall", I think there's dialectal variation. The form I learned has a long vowel (beimíd), but that could be specific to Munster.

I'm kind of surprised "Pangur Bán" isn't in the vocative, since this is a proper name being used in direct address (even if it is to a cat).

Finally, the word is fada, without a síneadh fada. (The word itself simply means "long", so saying "are any fada missing?" is exactly like asking "are any aigu missing?")

[bluebeard]

Irish á, é, í, ó, ú are the long equivalents of the vowels a, e, i, o, u. The accent is known as a síneadh fada (length accent), usually abbreviated to fada.

*shrug* I was under the impression it could just be called "fada" (not sure why I thought the 'a' was accented, lol), since I've seen people use that (I don't study Irish, but a couple of my friends do). Do you know if actual Irish speakers ever call it just "fada", or is it just the Irish learners?

Anyways, thanks for the correction. :D I truly appreciate it.

[embryomystic]

Plenty of people use 'fada' as a noun in English, and I wouldn't say it's incorrect (English does like to use identical forms as different parts of speech), but it's definitely not used that way in Irish.

The Secret of Kells... I love that movie.

[catsidhe]

The movie is for Anglophone, with Irish for flavour (although it is accurate and appropriate, where they use it -- there's a scene where Brendan is scared in the fog, and starts to say quietly (“Ár nAthair, atá ar neamh...”)

I imagine they knew very well about the vocative, but decided that a Phangúr Bhán would be too hard for Anglophones to decipher, so they had the address to the cat as one of the English parts.

(Actually, there's a question: does the vocative lenition carry over to the adjective? Or is it a Phangúr Bán?)