{"id":14,"date":"2009-04-01T12:23:34","date_gmt":"2009-04-01T16:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/?p=14"},"modified":"2017-01-31T14:22:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T14:22:24","slug":"la-na-namadan-%e2%80%93-the-day-of-the-fools-april-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/la-na-namadan-%e2%80%93-the-day-of-the-fools-april-1\/","title":{"rendered":"L\u00e1 na nAmad\u00e1n \u2013 The Day of the Fools (April 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

As promised in the blog of an t-aon\u00fa l\u00e1 is fiche de mh\u00ed an Mh\u00e1rta <\/strong>(March 21st<\/sup>), we will honor L\u00e1 na nAmad\u00e1n<\/strong> with an assortment of terms for fools. Be advised \u2013 it may take more than one blog to get through this!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The most widely used term is \u201camad\u00e1n<\/strong>,\u201d although in theory it should be reserved for male fools, since Irish has a word specifically for female fools. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Grammar note: with the definite article, \u201cfool\u201d becomes an t-amad\u00e1n <\/strong>(the fool), with the prefixed \u201ct.\u201d \u201cThe fools\u201d is na hamad\u00e1in, <\/strong>with both a prefix (h) and an inserted \u201ci.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Why, then, \u201cna nAmad\u00e1n<\/strong>\u201d for the holiday, you might ask? Ceist mhaith <\/strong>(good question)!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The word \u201camad\u00e1n<\/strong>\u201d is a first-declension noun, which means its forms are:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

an t-amad\u00e1n <\/span><\/strong><\/span>(the fool, as the subject or direct object of a sentence)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

na hamad\u00e1in<\/span><\/strong><\/span> (the fools, as the subject or direct object of a sentence)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

an amad\u00e1in <\/span><\/strong><\/span>(of the fool, the possessive form) or just amad\u00e1in<\/strong> (of a fool)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Example: caip\u00edn amad\u00e1in<\/strong>, the cap of a fool or a \u201cfool\u2019s cap.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But April Fool\u2019s Day, aka All Fools\u2019 Day, doesn\u2019t celebrate just one fool, so we use the possessive plural form, na n-amad\u00e1n<\/strong> (of the fools). <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to try to solve here ceist na n-uascham\u00f3g<\/strong> (the issue of the apostrophes) for the English phrases. I will simply note that, i mB\u00e9arla<\/strong> (in English), we see \u201cApril Fool\u2019s Day\u201d (one symbolic fool representing the whole), \u201cApril Fools\u2019 Day\u201d (a plurality of fools), and \u201cAll Fools\u2019 Day,\u201d the latter being inherently plural and, hopefully, with the apostrophe following the \u201cs.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Irish phrase literally translates as \u201cthe day of the fools\u201d and is closer to the phrase \u201cAll Fools\u2019 Day,\u201d where we know we are dealing with the plural. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So back to the possessive plural form (\u201cof the fools\u201d):<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

na n-amad\u00e1n,<\/span><\/strong><\/span> or if used in a phrase with upper-case letters, such as the name of a holiday or a title, say of a blog, na nAmad\u00e1n<\/strong>. When the word is capitalized, the hyphen between the \u201cn\u201d and the \u201ca\u201d is no longer needed.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

That wraps up most of the forms of the word you\u2019ll ever need for male fools. Oops, one more, maybe, for a noun of direct address you would say \u201ca amad\u00e1in<\/strong>\u201d (O, fool!). <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Please stay tuned for female fools and various specific types of fools. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Bhur mblag\u00e1la\u00ed, R\u00f3isl\u00edn<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(le R\u00f3isl\u00edn) As promised in the blog of an t-aon\u00fa l\u00e1 is fiche de mh\u00ed an Mh\u00e1rta (March 21st), we will honor L\u00e1 na nAmad\u00e1n with an assortment of terms for fools. Be advised \u2013 it may take more than one blog to get through this! The most widely used term is \u201camad\u00e1n,\u201d although in…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3898],"tags":[16,4145,4280,4523,5812,6191,7222],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-irish-language","tag-add-new-tag","tag-an-t-amadan","tag-barrons","tag-caipin-amadain","tag-la-na-namadan","tag-na-hamadain","tag-uaschamog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","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=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8844,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/8844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}