At this time of year, we slip from one holiday to another, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and mostly in June, all kinds of graduations from ciondargairdín (kindergarten) up through ollscoil (university).  For now, let’s just consider some of the basic terminology for “mother,” “father,” and “grad.”   Unfortunately, even racking my brains (or what’s left of them after they’ve been racked so frequently!), I can’t come up with a catchy rhyming phrase in Irish like the English “Dads and Grads,” which pervades American marketing at this time of year.  But at least we can get the words down!

To quickly review Lá na Máithreacha, the phrase literally means “the day of the mothers.”  It seems to be agreed upon as being plural in Irish.  And, in fact, the handful of other languages I’ve checked follow the same approach: Fête des Mères, Día de las Madres, and Dia das Mães.  In German, it looks like singular/plural isn’t so much the issue, since “Mutter” fits more of an adjectival prefix slot (der Muttertag).  But let’s save any more on that for Mother’s Day, 2011, when it would be cool to list the phrase in many languages.

The word “mother” in Irish is an irregular noun, so it might not hurt to review all its forms:

máthair, mother; an mháthair [un WAW-hirzh], the mother

máthar, of a mother, as in the phrase “aire máthar” (mothering, lit. care of, i.e. by, a mother, a mother’s care)

na máthar, of the mother.  This is the definite form (with the definite article “na” in its own possessive feminine singular form, that is, “na” not “an”).  It’s probably more typical to use the possessive in definite phrases, like “the health of the mother” or “the house of my mother” than in phrases that just mean “of a mother” (simply “máthar) in Irish. 

sláinte na máthar, the health of the mother; note also, especially if you’re new to Irish, that there’s no definite article in the front of phrases like this.  The “na” in the middle covers both nouns. 

teach mo mháthar, the house of my mother, my mother’s house.  Again. no “the” at the front of the phrase.  The word “mo” (my) makes the whole phrase definite and also triggers the lenition (mháthar, not máthar).

máithreacha, mothers

na máithreacha, the mothers

na máithreacha (same as above), of the mothers; ex. Lá na Máithreacha (Mother’s Day), lónta na máithreacha (the lunches of the mothers)

A bit of good news about this irregular noun is that the forms for “athair” (father) are fairly parallel.  That is to say, two of the main things to notice for both words are the loss of the “i” to make the possessive singular form and the contraction of a syllable mid-word, so the “r” directly follows the “th.”  For mother, these showed up as “máthar” and “máithreacha.” 

And now, the same work-up for “athair”:

athair [AH-hirzh, note the “t” is silent], father;

an t-athair [un TAH-hirzh], the father.  Here we prefix a “t-“ (which is pronounced).  Historically, this “t” was part of the definite article, but that’s a saga in and of itself and ábhar blag eile!

athar, of a father, as in the phrase “aire athar” (care by a father)

an athar, of the father.  Two changes: we lose the prefixed “t-“ and we lose the “i.”

sláinte an athar, the health of the father

teach m’athar, the house of my father, my father’s house.  And one more change, since “mo” ends with a vowel and “athar” begins with one, this phrase is generally contracted to be written as one word, “m’athar” (of my father).

aithreacha, fathers

na haithreacha, the fathers.  Yet another rule: prefix “h” before plural nouns beginning with a vowel.  These days, the dash (-) after the “h” is no longer generally included.

na n-aithreacha, of the fathers.  And yet another rule: prefix “n-“ before plural nouns beginning with vowels when the nouns are in the possessive form.  Gender doesn’t matter for this rule!  The dash is included. 

You’ve probably been seeing this last rule since you first saw the Irish language, since it’s also in widely-used phrases like “Tír na nÓg.” That’s often translated as “the Land of Youth,” but literally is “the Land of the Young People” — so it truly is an example of possessive plural.  If you’re wondering where the “dash” went, well, another wee bit of a rule creeps in here.  If the noun that’s possessive and plural and starts with a vowel is capitalized, then no dash!  This is more a rule of punctuation style than grammar per se.  And that brings us back to “of the fathers” …

Lá na nAithreacha, Father’s Day, the day of the fathers.  Here we include the initial “n” but no dash since the phrase is a proper noun and therefore capitalized (unless you’re ag téacsáil, in which case you probably don’t capitalize the phrase).

lónta na n-aithreacha, the lunches of the fathers

As for “grads, much simpler!  Hurá!  The word “céimí” (a grad, a graduate) is just a nice, straightforward, fourth-declension noun, with no separate possessive ending, a regular plural ending, and just the normal run-of-the-mill initial consonant mutations.  Hmm, they don’t sound so run-of-the-mill when said that way, but the initial mutations really do become second nature after you work with them enough.  Here goes:

céimí, a grad; an céimí, the grad

céimí, of a grad (See! Like I said, no special ending!).

clárchaipín céimi, a grad’s mortarboard (indefinite)

an chéimí, of the grad (definite)

clárchaipín an chéimí, the mortarboard of the graduate (definite).  OK, so there is lenition (c -> ch), but you rarely have an Irish phrase where some part of some word isn’t changing!  I’d count my blessings if it’s just lenition, with no inflected ending and no internal vowel change)

na céimithe, the grads (routine plural for an “-í” ending, like rúnaí / rúnaithe (-í -> -ithe)

na gcéimithe, of the grads (Aw! That’s just a little eclipsis!  Routine mutation for possessive plural, c –> gc, so céimithe -> gcéimithe)

clárchaipíní na gcéimithe, the mortarboards of the grads, the grads’ mortarboards

Nóta: I included the term “kindergarten” primarily for the North American readers.  Although the word obviously exists in Irish, I’m striking out trying to remember hearing it in any typical context in Irish, except maybe Irish-speaking parents in this leathsféar.  How ‘bout ya, a Thomáis, do bharúil?  (Sin cara de mo chuid nach labhraíonn ach Gaeilge lena pháistí, anseo i Meiriceá).  Mostly for kids that age, in Irish, one refers to the naíonáin (infants), who can be “naíonáin shóisearacha” (junior infants) or “naíonáin shinsearacha” (senior infants).  Dear old Google confirms the trend with a total of 14 actual hits for “ciondargairdín” but approximately 6300 each for “naíonáin shinsearacha” and “naíonáin shóisearacha.”  Not that Google hits are bun agus barr an scéil as far as real-world usage goes, but it’s something of a guide.         

So we could get into a discussion, i mblag eile, about ciondargairdín vs. naíscoil, and “naíonáin” who are four or five years old vs. naíonáin nuabheirithe and naíonáin réamhaibí (newborn infants, premature infants), but like I said, blag éigin eile.