(le Róislín)

There’s a lot to cover with the word “after” in Irish, and this mionsraith will just be able to give some key examples.  “Ina dhiaidh sin” (after that), you’re on your own.  Well, maybe not entirely.  We might revisit the idea “tar éis tamaill” (after a while), but I’m going allow time for at least a few blogs about Oíche Shamhna and Samhain, both of which are coming up.  Tagann an tSamhain (November 1) go díreach tar éis Oíche Shamhna (ar ndóigh), so that will keep us busy for a while.  I ndiaidh na Samhna, maybe we’ll come back to the topic of “after,” at least as an iarfhocal (afterword).  Just so long as we stop “roimh Lá an Altaithe” (before Thanksgiving) so we can talk turcaí for a while.

You probably noticed that in addition to the prefix “-iar” (after-, past, etc.), I packed that paragraph with two basic ways to say “after.”  The difference is basically a matter of dialect, with the “i ndiaidh” forms most widely used in the North (Gaeilge Thír Chonaill, Gaeilge Bhéal Feirste, srl.).  “Tar éis” and its variants, covered in the last blog, are mostly used in Connacht and Munster Irish and in standard teaching materials.

So there’s no semantic difference in the phrases above.  No varying notions of afterness, or aftericity, or afterhood, or whatever one might want to call it.  I could have said: “Tar éis sin,” “i ndiaidh tamaill,” “i ndiaidh Oíche Shamhna,” or “tar éis na Samhna.”  You might have also noticed the various forms of the word “Samhain” that appear in the discussion, but I’ll mostly leave that as the sanasaíocht bhíse (etymological cliffhanger), in other words, yet to come.

Generally speaking, how many ways are there to say “after” in Irish?  Well, let me count the contexts, and then I’ll count the ways.  There are four categories of parts of speech for the word “after” (adverb, preposition, conjunction, and prefix), and within those, there’s lots of variety.  I count at least twenty different Irish words translated as “after,” ranging from typical uses of “after” (like telling time, indicating sequence, etc.) to one-off uses like “lár” in “lárbhord” and “clap-“ in “clapsholas”.  For examples like the latter, which won’t be our main focus, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that “lár” actually means “after,” it’s just used with “bord” to mean “after-deck.”  In fact, “lár” normally means “middle” or “center” (or “floor”).   Likewise, I wouldn’t say that “clap-“ means “after;” it’s just used with “solas” to mean “afterglow” (or “twilight,” as I see many Irish-speaking fans of Stephenie Meyer have discovered).  But in this era of machine translation, we frequently find that any part of a compound word is matched to any likely candidate in the target language, often generating “seafóid” (nonsense).  So, that’s my “nod don eolach.”  One can’t take “tar éis,” for example, and combine it with “bord,” and expect it to mean the weather deck abaft the midship house, aka after-deck.

Well, I promised a few concrete examples, so let’s wrap up this blog with a few phrases for telling time.  Dialect variation accounts for the use of both “tar éis” and “i ndiaidh.”  Most individual speakers would probably stick to one or the other.

a haon a chlog (one o’clock); ceathrú tar éis a haon (1:15); leathuair tar éis a haon (1:30)

a dó a chlog (two o’clock); ceathrú i ndiaidh a dó; leathuair i ndiaidh a dó

seacht nóiméad déag tar éis a ceathair – and if anyone recalls why that particular hour is significant, please write in.  I’ll wait till a future blog to reveal the answer, or at least an answer.  Leid a hAon, that’s EDT (Eastern Daylight Time).  Leid a Dó: smaoinigh ar an mbliain naoi déag, seasca a naoi. 

And that should keep your ordóga from casadh till next time.  Slán!