{"id":3804,"date":"2013-03-22T02:18:20","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T02:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/?p=3804"},"modified":"2017-04-01T12:31:14","modified_gmt":"2017-04-01T12:31:14","slug":"beoir-uaine-no-glas-no-ceachtar-beer-greenuaine-or-greenglas-or-neither","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/beoir-uaine-no-glas-no-ceachtar-beer-greenuaine-or-greenglas-or-neither\/","title":{"rendered":"Beoir: Uaine n\u00f3 Glas n\u00f3 Ceachtar? (Beer: Green\/Uaine or Green\/Glas or Neither?)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>

uaine n\u00f3 glas?<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Our last blog primarily covered the actual history of St. Patrick and his name.\u00a0 This blog will take a lighter-hearted look at some St. Patrick’s Day imagery, namely the much-maligned-but-nevertheless-consumed green beer.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m refraining from value judgments on the topic (unlike many of the online commentators!), but am primarily interested in whether people say the beer is “uaine<\/strong>” or “glas<\/strong>,” two different Irish words for green, \u201cuaine<\/strong>\u201d usually for manmade things and \u201cglas<\/strong>\u201d for things in nature.\u00a0 Soon I hope to probe the depths of green bagels (mostly limited to the New York metropolitan area, I think) and green rivers (found in various locations in the United States, most famously Chicago, but also San Antonio, Texas, and Tampa, Florida).\u00a0 For both of these, I’ll also search online for a future blog to see how much cibearbh\u00fas<\/strong> they have attracted.<\/p>\n

Ar aon chaoi<\/strong>, in this blog, we’ll look at the terms “beoir uaine,” “beoracha uaine,” “beoir ghlas,”<\/strong> and “beoracha glasa,”<\/strong> to see what kind of cibearlorg<\/strong> each one leaves.<\/p>\n

a) beoir uaine<\/strong>: I got a grand total of 80 hits, of which many (21) were advertisements for t-shirts, beer steins, or other products with “beoir uaine<\/strong>” slogans on them, mostly “N\u00ed \u00f3lfaidh f\u00edor-Ghael beoir uaine<\/strong>.”\u00a0 Most of these sites translate the phrase as “Real Irishmen don’t drink green beer.”\u00a0 Which is more or less correct, except that the slogan is written in the singular and uses “Gael<\/strong>,” not “\u00c9ireannach<\/strong>.”\u00a0 And it’s written in the future tense, not the present habitual.\u00a0 So it really translates to “A true Gael will not drink green beer.”\u00a0\u00a0 But the sentiment is the same and the grammatical differences are relatively minor.<\/p>\n

I suppose “the real men” trope stems from the “N\u00ed itheann f\u00edorfhir quiche<\/strong>” phenomenon started by Bruce Feirstein in 1982. \u00a0Of course he started it in English.\u00a0 I simply translated it here to add to the Irish mix.\u00a0 There could be a slight Celtic connection if Feirstein was inspired by the “No True Scotsman” fallacy, which dates to at least 1975 in Andrew Flew’s classic, Thinking about Thinking<\/em>.\u00a0 But pursuing that is definitely \u00e1bhar blag eile<\/strong>, and perhaps beyond even the scope of this blog go ginear\u00e1lta<\/strong>.\u00a0 Maybe more relevant to some sort of a “guy thing” blog.\u00a0 N\u00ed i mo “bh\u00e1illcheantar” at\u00e1 s\u00e9 sin<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Out of the 80 hits, another 8 are basically tangential sites that just seem to use the phrase “beoir uaine<\/strong>” to generate web traffic.\u00a0 From the looks of most of them, I don’t even dare clice\u00e1il<\/strong> on them, since they look pretty bogus.\u00a0 Another couple are simply very passing references in a long thread about drinking in general.\u00a0 Interesting to note, but not particularly insightful.\u00a0 Then we have a healthy 35 links to the Transparent Language Irish blog, many of which are cross-references in a side bar column at The Hidden Ireland (http:\/\/galltacht.blogspot.com\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Some of the 80 are hits for the St. Patrick’s Day blog on www.transparent.com<\/a> dating back to 2009 (Yay!).<\/p>\n

So overall, we could say that there aren’t that many hits in general for “beoir uaine<\/strong>,\u201d and of them, only about half of them shed any real insight into how people use the word. \u00a0Of course, these results only reflect what Google shows me, but I think they do establish a useful pattern.<\/p>\n

b) beoracha uaine<\/strong> (“green beers”): I tried “beoracha uaine<\/strong>” as well as “beoir uaine<\/strong>,” even though the phrase wouldn’t typically be used (in favor of “pionta\u00ed beoir uaine<\/strong>,” “ceaigeanna beoir uaine<\/strong>,” or perhaps even “oigis\u00e9id beoir uaine,<\/strong>” that is making the container plural, not the “beers” themselves).\u00a0 I was a little surprised that my search yielded absolutely no results, not that I expected much.\u00a0 Even “beoracha<\/strong>” itself, never mind the “green” part, only yielded a paltry 6 hits.\u00a0 But again, the whys and wherefores of \u201cbeoracha<\/strong>” vs. “beoir<\/strong>” will have to remain “\u00e1bhar blag eile<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

c) beoir ghlas<\/strong>: I changed the adjective to “glas<\/strong>,” (usually referring to green growing things) and modified it to \u201cghlas<\/strong>\u201d to match the feminine noun.\u00a0 This got a total of 8 hits, 6 if we eliminate two that are simply quotes or duplicates of other hits.\u00a0\u00a0 Not a big number, but, interestingly, most showed the phrase used in realistic contexts, albeit mostly brief, like chat forums, and also mostly negative, like “Is fuath liom beoir ghlas<\/strong>” (I hate green beer).<\/p>\n

And then, I tried, for thoroughness\u2019s sake, a search for “beoir<\/strong>” followed directly by “glas<\/strong>,” as such, i.e. without the agreement of “beoir<\/strong>” (a feminine noun) and “ghlas<\/strong>” (a feminine form of the adjective “glas<\/strong>“).\u00a0 So, yeah, I searched for an incorrect grammatical form, just to see what it would yield.\u00a0 An pota \u00f3ir — 83 amas<\/strong>.\u00a0 So much for grammar and for gender agreement, is d\u00f3cha<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

So, 83 hits, for the grammatically incorrect form!\u00a0 Actually the top of the list started out, probably unintentionally, with “glas<\/strong>” modifying “l\u00e1,<\/strong>” which would be ceart go leor de r\u00e9ir na gramada\u00ed<\/strong>.\u00a0 But it looks like the author intended to say “Green Beer Day” so “L\u00e1 Glas<\/strong>” doesn’t really make much sense.\u00a0 The adjective almost always follows the noun in Irish, so for beer, “glas<\/strong>” should change to “ghlas<\/strong>,” bringing us back to “beoir ghlas<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

Another interesting twist is that occasionally (in at least one of these hits) we can<\/em> have “beoir<\/strong>” followed by “glas<\/strong>.”\u00a0 That is when “glas<\/strong>” is a predicate adjective, not part of the noun phrase.\u00a0 So “duchessinaustin” is correct when she says “N\u00edl beoir glas<\/strong>” (Beer is not green;\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/twicsy.com\/i\/4scFrd<\/a>)<\/p>\n

But most of the other 83 hits fell into the typical trap, look up “beer,” look up “green,” force them together regardless of word order, gender or tradition in the language.\u00a0 But that got the most hits <osna<\/strong>!>.<\/p>\n

d) beoracha glasa<\/strong>: This search (the plural), got me no hits, though it sure made eBay and Etsy try to sell me some beach glasses!\u00a0 Must be the \u201cminus o, minus r, add ses\u201d algorithm, or however they intuit what they think you meant to say.\u00a0 I’m somewhat comforted that I also got no hits for some searches with deliberately incorrect spellings with “beoracha<\/strong>” followed by “ghlas,” “glas,” <\/strong>or ghlasa.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

So what does all this tell us?\u00a0 Probably that “glas<\/strong>” is more widely understood as the Irish word for “green,” and that a lot of people try to use it to say “green beer.”\u00a0 A handful get it correct, and actually have something to say about the topic.\u00a0 “Beoir uaine<\/strong>” is also used, although it is more often channeled into commercial applications or cibearbhruscar (*bruscarl\u00edne,<\/strong><\/strong>\u00a0if I do say so myself).\u00a0\u00a0 The plural, using “beoracha<\/strong>,” just doesn\u2019t seem to be happening.\u00a0 In fact, “beoracha<\/strong>,” as such, without “green,” only got 6 hits, as mentioned above.\u00a0 But then we are more likely to use the word “beoir<\/strong>” in the singular, even if the quantities imbibed are plural.\u00a0 Because we pour it into containers (pionta\u00ed, gloin\u00ed, ceaigeanna, oigis\u00e9id, srl.)<\/strong>, which can then be plural, even though the word \u201cbeoir<\/strong>\u201d stays singular.<\/p>\n

For what it’s worth, the English search, “green beer,” generates 1,830,000 hits but the plural, “green beers,” drops significantly to about 79,300.\u00a0 The plural introduces also the idea of “green beers” meaning beer produced in an ecologically friendly manner, as in “8 Great Green Beers: Eco-friendly brews that won’t turn your tongue green,\u201d by\u00a0Maryse Chevriere<\/a> <\/span>(http:\/\/www.thedailymeal.com\/great-green-beers<\/a>)<\/p>\n

And a final note, even the people who do talk about green beer don\u2019t seem to like it much.\u00a0 I found a fitting “focal scoir<\/strong>” from Beauregard in Gaeltacht Minnesota (https:\/\/twitter.com\/AsGaeilge\/status\/181107959907106816, dated 3\/17\/12): Beoir uaine a \u00f3l, d’anam a dh\u00edol don Diabha<\/em>l<\/em><\/strong>, which translates to “To drink green beer (is) to sell your soul to the Devil.”\u00a0 Which should put the kybosh on the subject for now!<\/p>\n

Next up, b\u00e9igil uaine<\/strong> (or “ghlas<\/strong>a”) and aibhneacha uaine<\/strong> (or “glasa<\/strong>“).\u00a0 SGF,\u00a0<\/strong>R\u00f3isl\u00edn<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gluais\u00edn: ceaig<\/strong>, keg; oigis\u00e9ad, <\/strong>hogshead; pota \u00f3ir<\/strong>, jackpot, pot of gold. \u00a0Also, my newly coined contribution to Irish portmanteaus, bruscarl\u00edne, <\/strong>from “bruscar” <\/strong>(rubbish) + “ar l\u00edne” <\/strong>(online)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

(le R\u00f3isl\u00edn) Our last blog primarily covered the actual history of St. Patrick and his name.\u00a0 This blog will take a lighter-hearted look at some St. Patrick’s Day imagery, namely the much-maligned-but-nevertheless-consumed green beer.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m refraining from value judgments on the topic (unlike many of the online commentators!), but am primarily interested in whether people…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":3809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3898],"tags":[274903,12675,3926,274870,274920,274919,274894,274915,274880,274911,274884,274901,274909,1928,274900,274864,274918,274917,4337,274851,4339,274913,207346,274852,274853,274883,274874,274887,274876,4656,274902,274861,274862,274898,274905,274904,5064,274878,274875,274867,274882,274908,71,5289,274910,274912,5361,274850,5378,5379,3678,5438,274849,274895,5439,535718,274891,274855,274892,274890,274916,5802,274896,274856,274906,274839,274858,2332,2341,274873,274866,274865,274899,274877,274897,274888,274889,274886,274893,111636,274869,274868,274871,274859,3404,6850,6935,6936,274863,274860,274885,274907,274881,274914,274872,7220],"class_list":["post-3804","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-irish-language","tag-bruscarline","tag-12675","tag-3926","tag-a-true-gael-will-not-drink-green-beer","tag-aibhneacha-glasa","tag-aibhneacha-uaine","tag-amas","tag-anam","tag-andrew-flew","tag-asgaeilge","tag-baillcheantar","tag-beach-glasses","tag-beauregard","tag-beer","tag-beer-is-not-green","tag-beer-stein","tag-beigil-ghlasa","tag-beigil-uaine","tag-beoir","tag-beoir-ghlas","tag-beoir-uaine","tag-beoir-uaine-a-ol-danam-a-dhiol-don-diabhal","tag-beoracha","tag-beoracha-glasa","tag-beoracha-uaine","tag-bhaillcheantar","tag-bruce-feirstein","tag-ceaigeanna-beoir-uaine","tag-celtic-connection","tag-chicago","tag-cibearbhruscar","tag-cibearbhus","tag-cibearlorg","tag-duchessinaustin","tag-eco-friendly","tag-ecologically-friendly","tag-eireannach","tag-fallacy","tag-feirstein","tag-fior-ghael","tag-flew","tag-focal-scoir","tag-future-tense","tag-gael","tag-gaeltacht-minnesota","tag-galltacht","tag-ghlas","tag-ghlasa","tag-glas","tag-glasa","tag-green","tag-green-bagels","tag-green-beer","tag-green-beer-day","tag-green-river","tag-history","tag-hogshead","tag-imagery","tag-is-fuath-liom-beoir-ghlas","tag-keg","tag-kybosh","tag-la","tag-la-glas","tag-manmade","tag-maryse-chevriere","tag-name","tag-natural","tag-nature","tag-new-york","tag-ni-itheann-fiorfhir-quiche","tag-ni-olfaidh","tag-ni-olfaidh-fior-ghael-beoir-uaine","tag-nil-beoir-glas","tag-no-true-scotsman","tag-noun-phrase","tag-oigiseid-beoir-uaine","tag-pint","tag-piontai-beoir-uaine","tag-pota-oir","tag-predicate-adjective","tag-present-habitual","tag-real-irishmen-dont-drink-green-beer","tag-real-men","tag-san-antonio","tag-singular","tag-slogan","tag-st-patrick","tag-st-patricks-day","tag-t-shirt","tag-tampa","tag-the-hidden-ireland","tag-thedailymeal","tag-thinking-about-thinking","tag-to-drink-green-beer","tag-trope","tag-uaine"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804","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=3804"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9028,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804\/revisions\/9028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}