{"id":10732,"date":"2018-07-31T13:15:20","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T13:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/?p=10732"},"modified":"2018-08-03T18:51:53","modified_gmt":"2018-08-03T18:51:53","slug":"three-ways-to-spell-august-in-irish-historic-dated-and-modern-lunasa-et-al","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/three-ways-to-spell-august-in-irish-historic-dated-and-modern-lunasa-et-al\/","title":{"rendered":"Three ways to spell ‘August’ in Irish: historic, dated, and modern (L\u00fanasa et al.)"},"content":{"rendered":"

(le R\u00f3isl\u00edn)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Three ways to spell \u201cAugust\u201d in Irish: historic, dated, and modern T\u00e9acs agus dearadh le R\u00f3isl\u00edn, 2018, ar son Transparent Language Irish Blog.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>N.B. \u201cmodern\u201d is in the middle<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

As you can see from the graphic above, there are three different ways to spell \u201cAugust\u201d in Irish:<\/p>\n

the modern way: L\u00fanasa<\/strong><\/p>\n

a dated way, mostly found before 1960-ish: Lughnasa<\/strong><\/p>\n

a historic way, going back to the Middle Ages: Lughnasadh<\/strong>.\u00a0 Even that is somewhat of an adaptation, as it originally would have been: Lugnasad<\/strong>. \u00a0The \u201cg\u201d and the \u201cd\u201d were probably initially pronounced but, over time, became silent or softened. \u00a0Eventually dots were added over the \u201cg\u201d and the \u201cd\u201d (Lu\u0121nasa\u1e0b<\/strong>), and even more recently (1950s), the letter \u201ch\u201d was used to substitute for the dots. Adding the h\u2019s made this word, and thousands of others, look even longer than their older spelling.\u00a0 But another compromise was made during the spelling reform of the 1950s.\u00a0 Some of the silent letters were removed, and in some cases, the vowel was marked long instead.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the modern spelling has a long \u201c\u00fa<\/strong>\u201d (or \u201c\u00fa-fada<\/strong>\u201d).\u00a0 The long mark (the \u201cs\u00edneadh fada<\/strong>\u201d) indicates that the \u201cgh\u201d was silent and has been removed.<\/p>\n

In addition to talking about \u201cL\u00fanasa<\/strong>\u201d in general, we can also say \u201cL\u00e1 L\u00fanasa<\/strong>,\u201d which is specifically August 1st<\/sup>, and \u201cM\u00ed L\u00fanasa<\/strong>,\u201d the month of August.<\/p>\n

\u201cL\u00e1 L\u00fanasa<\/strong>\u201d was a harvest festival, in recent centuries welcoming in the new potatoes, following the \u201cHungry Month\u201d of July, when the previous season\u2019s supply of \u201cpr\u00e1ta\u00ed<\/strong>\u201d (or \u201cfata\u00ed<\/strong>\u201d or \u201cpr\u00e9ata\u00ed”<\/strong>) might be growing scarce. In earlier centuries, prior to the introduction of potatoes to Ireland (about 400 years ago), it would have been other crops.\u00a0 One of the traditional activities for L\u00fanasa<\/strong> was dancing around bonfires on the hillsides, probably a descendant of some pre-Christian ritual honoring the Celtic god \u201cLugh.\u201d\u00a0 Another traditional activity for L\u00e1 L\u00fanasa<\/strong> was gathering fraoch\u00e1in<\/strong> (bilberries aka whortleberries or blaeberries, that\u2019s \u201cblae-\u201c, not \u201cblue-\u201c, although the fruit is similar; the Latin taxonomic name is Vaccinium myrtillus<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Speaking of blueberries, and a scrumptious topic at that, Irish distinguishes the American blueberry from the bilberry with the following term: an fraoch\u00e1n gorm Meirice\u00e1nach<\/strong> (Vaccinium corymbosum<\/em>), which in and of itself has at least seven names in English (the blue, tall, or swamp huckleberry, and the highbush, northern highbush, high, or swamp blueberry).\u00a0 And in case you weren\u2019t aware, there is also a lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium<\/em>), which in Irish is called \u201cfraoch\u00e1n caolduilleach<\/strong>,\u201d lit. \u201cnarrow-leaved bilberry.\u201d \u00a0Interesting that the Irish is much more like the Latin (angustifolium<\/em>) than like the English, which describes the nature of the plant as a whole.<\/p>\n

Outside Gaeltacht<\/strong> and the cibear-Ghaeltacht<\/strong>, August 1st is probably most recognized through Brian Friel\u2019s Tony-award-winning play, Dancing at Lughnasa<\/em>, also made into a movie with Meryl Streep.\u00a0 Friel probably picked up much of his Irish in the 1930s and 40s, prior to the spelling reform, so his title reflects the spelling of the day.\u00a0 The play is set in 1936, so we could also say that he used the spelling that his characters would have known..<\/p>\n

Whether Friel really weighed the question, \u201cShould I spell this as \u201cLughnasa\u201d or \u201cL\u00fanasa\u201d for an English-medium work of literature?\u201d will probably remain unanswered.\u00a0 But, as a language teacher, the spelling issue jumps out at me.\u00a0 Friel\u2019s play was first produced in 1990, by which time the spelling reform was well entrenched, even if not everyone is satisfied with it.\u00a0 Today, you won\u2019t even find \u201cLughnasa<\/strong>\u201d as such in many modern Irish dictionaries, only \u201cL\u00fanasa<\/strong>.\u201d So using the older spelling definitely was making a statement, either reflecting Friel\u2019s student days, harkening back to the god Lugh, or being deliberately a bit old-fashioned.<\/p>\n

At any rate, now we\u2019ve seen all three versions of how to spell \u201cAugust\u201d in Irish. It just depends what decade or century is involved.\u00a0 For most modern purposes, I recommend \u201cL\u00fanasa<\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 If you\u2019re discussing Friel\u2019s play, of course, use his spelling to refer to the title.\u00a0 Meanwhile, maybe this is a good time for making muif\u00edn\u00ed<\/strong> or pi\u00f3ga<\/strong> or panc\u00f3ga<\/strong> with whichever of the berries you prefer.<\/p>\n

Pronunciation note<\/em>: from the modern perspective, L\u00fanasa, Lughnasa<\/strong>, and Lughnasadh<\/strong> are all pronounced the same [LOO-nuss-uh].\u00a0 The stress is on the first syllable.\u00a0 The \u201cgh\u201d and \u201cdh\u201d are effectively silent, as is the case with many words previously discussed in this blog series, like \u00a0\u201cfoghlaim,<\/strong>\u201d \u201crogha<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cfoghla\u00ed mara<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cs\u00edneadh<\/strong>,\u201d and \u201cfadhb<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

(le R\u00f3isl\u00edn) As you can see from the graphic above, there are three different ways to spell \u201cAugust\u201d in Irish: the modern way: L\u00fanasa a dated way, mostly found before 1960-ish: Lughnasa a historic way, going back to the Middle Ages: Lughnasadh.\u00a0 Even that is somewhat of an adaptation, as it originally would have been…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":10734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3898],"tags":[111546,111547,3122,3124,513352,127551,111558,229922,5419,303025,303027,359126,5952,6058,146,513351],"class_list":["post-10732","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-irish-language","tag-bilberry","tag-blaeberry","tag-blueberry","tag-bonfire","tag-caolduilleach","tag-dancing","tag-fraochan","tag-friel","tag-gorm","tag-lughnasa","tag-lughnasadh","tag-lugnasad","tag-lunasa","tag-meiriceanach","tag-spelling","tag-streep"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10732"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10746,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10732\/revisions\/10746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}