{"id":2227,"date":"2018-07-11T09:04:23","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T13:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/?p=2227"},"modified":"2018-07-15T06:57:47","modified_gmt":"2018-07-15T10:57:47","slug":"macaronics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/2018\/07\/11\/macaronics\/","title":{"rendered":"Macaronics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every week at Oideas Gael, we have a night of fil\u00edocht \u2014 poetry. I was particularly struck by a poem that our instructor read this week called \u201cCainteoir D\u00fachais,\u201d or \u201cNative Speaker.\u201d The poet Cathal \u00d3 Searcaigh pokes fun at the number of English words that have crept into the Irish language over the years. The poem begins:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBh\u00ed s\u00e9 flat-out<\/i>, a d\u00fairt s\u00e9<\/p>\n

i gcaitheamh na maidine.<\/p>\n

Rinne s\u00e9 an t-\u00e1ras\u00e1n a hoover<\/i>\u00e1il,<\/p>\n

na bosca\u00ed bruscair a jeyes-fluid<\/i>e\u00e1il,<\/p>\n

an loo<\/i> a harpick<\/i>\u00e1il, an bath<\/i> a vim<\/i>e\u00e1il.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The rest of the poem continues in a similar fashion, inserting Gaelicized English words in nearly all of the lines. Such a poem is called a macaronic \u2014 or bilingual \u2014 poem. I heard another macaronic poem recited last night at the local pub by one of the Oideas Gael students. He began reciting the poem \u201cMiche\u00e1l Bocht\u201d (\u201cPoor Michael\u201d):<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI heard this story \u00f3 mo athair <\/i>(from my father)<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t Gaelic it doesn\u2019t matter<\/p>\n

This rural Ireland tragic tale<\/p>\n

Narrates a sad seductive sc\u00e9al <\/i>(story)<\/p>\n

Concerning lust without discretion<\/p>\n

Agus beagnach ruda\u00ed eile freisin<\/i> (and almost everything else).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These poems are witty and entertaining, and I enjoyed listening to them. But they also bring up a rather serious issue that affects many Irish speakers. The instructor who read this poem aloud at Oideas Gael explained that he has mixed feelings about the proliferation of English words in the Irish language. On the one hand, a changing language signifies a living language. English itself gains a number of new words every year, and like nearly all languages, its syntax and grammatical structures are derived from other languages, both living and dead. On the other hand, however, the influx of Anglicisms into the Irish language can be a sensitive issue. English was originally a colonial language in Ireland, and since Irish speakers constitute a minority in the country, people worry that what may seem to be harmless word-borrowing may eventually contribute to the further decline of the language.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In my class on Irish Song and Spoken Word last semester, I learned about different Irish-language poets\u2019 attitudes toward English. Some of them choose to write macaronic poems, or to have their poems translated into English. Others refuse to allow their poems to be translated and write exclusively in Irish. Since I am not from Ireland and did not grow up speaking Irish, I am not quite sure what I think about the matter. But it is interesting to compare different Irish-language poets\u2019 work and attitudes toward the language.<\/p>\n

To finish off, here are a couple of pictures from the last few days:<\/p>\n

\"\"
A map of Ireland by the local beach. Each county is made of some kind of rock or stone local to that particular area.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
The ocean at low tide.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every week at Oideas Gael, we have a night of fil\u00edocht \u2014 poetry. I was particularly struck by a poem that our instructor read this week called \u201cCainteoir D\u00fachais,\u201d or \u201cNative Speaker.\u201d The poet Cathal \u00d3 Searcaigh pokes fun at the number of English words that have crept into the Irish language over the years. … Continue reading Macaronics<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3007,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290963],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sla-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3007"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2227"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2371,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2227\/revisions\/2371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}