(le Róislín)

Bratacha: Na Stáit Aontaithe agus Éire

As those of us sna Stáit Aontaithe transition from Lá na Brataí (14 Meitheamh) go Lá na Saoirse (i Meiriceá; 4 Iúil), this might be an apt time to try the American National Anthem in Irish.  It was translated long before the ongoing row as to whether “The Star-Spangled Banner” should be sung in any language other than English.

Just how old is the translation?  1898.  Who was the translator?  An tAth. Eoghan Ó Gramhnaigh, pronounced “OH-wen oh GROW-nee.”  That’s “grow” to rhyme with “cow” or “now,” not the actual English word “grow,” which I would transcribe as “groh” in this series.  The “an tAth.” part is “un TAH-hirzh” (Father, as a religious title).  Even though the written form is abbreviated, the full word is pronounced if we’re reading aloud, just as “Fr.” is pronounced as “Father.”

This blogpost will address the first verse, and perhaps we’ll continue with the remaining verses in future posts, as time permits.   We’ll look at pronunciation and vocabulary, and perhaps add some nótaí tráchta breise.   In the interests of space for the columns, each line is divided in half (1a, 1b, etc.) and a close examination will show that parts of the text do not match up line by line, in sequence, which is par for the course when translating, especially when trying to maintain both rhyme and meter.

For the pronunciation guide, I’ve made one concession here, compared to my usual rough guides to the sounds of Irish, since some people may want to plunge right into singing the song, not laboring over pronunciation.  For the broad “dh” sound, best represented by the IPA symbol /ɣ/, I’ve simply used “h.”  Experienced Irish speakers will know that this is really a guttural (throaty) sound not found in English but it’s better to lean toward softening the sound further than to ending up with too much of a “d” sound.  The consonant cluster “dh” has no “d” sound to it whatsoever.  For details on this sound, see the nóta thíos, marked by a réiltín.

And by the way, the very literal translation in the right-hand column is not meant to be singable; it’s about as word for word as one can get.  The regular English text appears below each cell, also on the right side, in italics.

*Nóta: You can hear the broad “dh” sound at the following site, but you’ll have to listen to four other velar sounds first: http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/flash.html (Click on “velar” and listen for the 5th example, marked as /ɣ/).  The sounds are recorded in columns and rows, so you have to listen to all the sounds in that particular column or row.  Alternately, you could click on the “fricative” row, but then there are 15 fricatives ahead of the one we want.  Which, in Irish, is called the … <tormáil drumaí> … “cuimilteach glórach coguasach.”   Or, más fearr leat i mBéarla é, “voiced velar fricative.”   That sound, which doesn’t occur in English, has been pretty thoroughly discussed in previous blogs in this series, like the following:

a) Saying “I love you” in Irish and Minding Your Velar Fricatives, https://blogs.transparent.com/irish/saying-i-love-you-in-irish/

b) Fools on Hills, and Otherwise, with Irish Pronunciation Tips,  https://blogs.transparent.com/irish/fools-on-hills-and-otherwise-with-irish-pronunciation-tips/

c) Pronunciation Follow-up to the “Cúig Fhocal gan Mhaith” Series https://blogs.transparent.com/irish/pronunciation-follow-up-to-the-cuig-fhocal-gan-mhaith-series/

And, well, to wrap up, maybe sometime I’ll check out “O’zog , kenstu sehn?”  But that won’t really pertain to an Irish blog, unless, of course, I back-translate the Yiddish literally into Irish, but even I would say … bhuel, maybe not.  SGF, and happy vocal-cord stretching, Róislín

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