{"id":7083,"date":"2015-09-05T19:14:49","date_gmt":"2015-09-05T19:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/?p=7083"},"modified":"2015-09-10T21:42:49","modified_gmt":"2015-09-10T21:42:49","slug":"from-vacsain-to-vuinsciu-and-some-other-irish-words-that-start-with-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/from-vacsain-to-vuinsciu-and-some-other-irish-words-that-start-with-v\/","title":{"rendered":"From ‘vacsa\u00edn’ to ‘vuinsci\u00fa’ and some other Irish words that start with ‘v’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

From the English perspective, there’s nothing particularly unusual about words starting with the letter ‘v.’\u00a0 After all, we can go from “vacancy” (casual, or otherwise, noted with homage to JKR) to “vyingly,” without batting a “fabhra<\/strong>” (eyelash).<\/p>\n

But the traditional Irish alphabet did not include the letter “v,” so most words you’ll find in this section of a dictionary are relatively recent borrowings.\u00a0 “Recent,” by this point in time, could mean over a hundred years old, but the key concept is that these words didn’t exist in Old Irish.\u00a0 Of course, some of them (like “vampam<\/strong>” and “veilbhit\u00ed<\/strong>n”) didn’t exist in Old English either.\u00a0 But that’s really a topic for a History of English blog.<\/p>\n

In today’s blog post, we’ll look at a few basic Irish vocabulary words that start with “v” and, for fun, look at few that we might not use often but which look intriguing.<\/p>\n

First let’s have a note on pronunciation.\u00a0 There are two basic ways that “v” can be pronounced in Irish, more or less comparable to the two ways we can pronounce “v” in English.\u00a0 Remember the two examples I gave in the last blog, the one about the “leathbhearta<\/strong>” and the “zeitibhearta<\/strong>“? \u00a0For pronouncing all those “-bheart<\/strong>” compound words, the “bh” sounds like the “v” in English “view” or “review.”\u00a0 We have a similar pronunciation in Irish words showing lenition like the “bheo<\/strong>” in “d\u00fail bheo<\/strong>” (a living creature) or “bhearna<\/strong>” in the phrase “sa bhearna<\/strong>” (in the gap).\u00a0 This sound (like English “view”), represented by Irish “bhear<\/strong>t,” “bhearn<\/strong>a,” and “bheo<\/strong>,” among others, is referred to as the “slender bh” sound.<\/p>\n

Let’s backtrack before we go farther.\u00a0 What does “bh” have to do with “v” anyway?\u00a0 This brings up an even more fundamental aspect of Irish pronunciation, one which has been mentioned throughout this blog series.\u00a0 In Irish, a lenited consonant, like “bh,” is no longer pronounced like the original consonant (the “b” by itself).\u00a0 The Irish “bh” is pronounced either like an English “v” or a “w” or something in between.\u00a0 It may help to remember the Irish “bh” is NOTHING like the one other “bh” that might be somewhat familiar to English speakers, from Hindi\/Sanskrit, that is, the “bh” of words like “Mahabharata<\/em>” and the “Bhagavad Gita<\/em>” (they have a very smoothly connected “buh-huh” sound).<\/p>\n

Now let’s look at the other “v” sound in Irish, the “broad” version, more like English “voodoo” or “vulture.”\u00a0 In Irish, this “v” sound will be found in words that are spelled “va-,” “vo-,” or “vu-,” and there aren’t very many of them.\u00a0 Some examples are “v\u00e1lsa<\/strong>” (a waltz), \u201dv\u00f3ta<\/strong>” (a vote), and “v\u00fad\u00fa<\/strong>” (guess what that one means– and yes, it has been borrowed into Irish, although I don’t find many examples of it\u00a0 Fiosrach?\u00a0 F\u00e9ach an n\u00f3ta th\u00edos!<\/strong>).\u00a0 Few as the “broad” Irish “v” sound words are, they do seem a bit more prevalent than the “slender” Irish “v” sound words.<\/p>\n

To get back to the main focus of today’s blog post, let’s look at a few more Irish words that start with “v,” some quite basic for everyday topics and some more specialized, or even downright obscure.\u00a0 I’ve noted the ones pronounced like “view” with “vy<\/sup>” (and there are very few).\u00a0 The others are like the “v” of “voodoo” or “vulture.”<\/p>\n

vacsa\u00edn<\/strong>, a vaccine<\/p>\n

vailint\u00edn<\/strong>, a valentine<\/p>\n

valba\u00ed<\/strong>, a wallaby (remember it’s three syllables, with the “helping vowel” between the “l” and the “b”)<\/p>\n

v\u00e1sa<\/strong>, a vase<\/p>\n

Cathair na Vatac\u00e1ine<\/strong>, the Vatican City<\/p>\n

vearanda<\/strong> [VY<\/sup>AR-an-duh], veranda<\/p>\n

vearnais<\/strong> [VY<\/sup>AR-nish], varnish<\/p>\n

Veinis\u00e9ala<\/strong>, Venezuela<\/p>\n

v\u00e9ir<\/strong>, vair<\/p>\n

veist<\/strong>, vest (remember, slender “s” here, so say “vesht”)<\/p>\n

vibreas<\/strong>, vibrissa \u00a0(derived from the Latin for “hair in the nostrils,” in case you were wondering)<\/p>\n

vinil<\/strong>, vinyl<\/p>\n

v\u00f3l<\/strong>, vole<\/p>\n

volta<\/strong>, volt<\/p>\n

vuinsci\u00fa<\/strong>, wainscoting<\/p>\n

The “ve-” and “vi-” words for “Venezuela,” “vair,” “vest,” “vibrissa,” and “vinyl” are slightly more slender than the words with a broad “v,” but, in my opinion at least, not as slender as the “v” of “vearanda<\/strong>” or “vearnais<\/strong>” or English “view.”\u00a0 So I only marked “vearanda<\/strong>” and “vearnais<\/strong>” as noticeably “vy<\/sup>-sounding.”<\/p>\n

So, there’s a nice sampling of some less typical but sometimes useful words.\u00a0 Sl\u00e1n go f\u00f3ill<\/strong>, or, if I were to keep talking to you until you turn into a vole (!), maybe I could say, “sl\u00e1n go v\u00f3l<\/strong>.”\u00a0 Or maybe I should just quit while I’m ahead!\u00a0 – R\u00f3isl\u00edn<\/strong><\/p>\n

Maidir leis an bhfocal “v\u00fad\u00fa” i nGaeilge agus sa tSeicis<\/strong>:\u00a0 my recent Google search for “v\u00fad\u00fa<\/strong>” + “Gaeilge<\/strong>” gave me an intriguing 27 hits, several of which were really Czech language sites.\u00a0 Why the Czech sites came up with “Gaeilge<\/strong>” as a search term is a little baffling, but probably because the sites very broadly dealt with languages around the world, with lots of native terminology.\u00a0 So Irish and Czech share the exact same spelling for the word “voodoo” (“v\u00fad\u00fa<\/strong>“)!\u00a0 When I removed\u00a0“Gaeilge<\/strong>” from the search, I got about 25,100 Google hits, almost all of which turn out to be in Czech.\u00a0 Too much to plough through now, but maybe a rainy day project.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, there could be some stray Irish references to “v\u00fad\u00fa<\/strong>” there (among the 25,100), which don’t happen to have the word “Gaeilge<\/strong>” in the site anywhere.\u00a0 Like I said, a project for “l\u00e1 na coise tinne<\/strong>,” which is the Irish equivalent (not translation) of a “rainy day project.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(le R\u00f3isl\u00edn) From the English perspective, there’s nothing particularly unusual about words starting with the letter ‘v.’\u00a0 After all, we can go from “vacancy” (casual, or otherwise, noted with homage to JKR) to “vyingly,” without batting a “fabhra” (eyelash). But the traditional Irish alphabet did not include the letter “v,” so most words you’ll find…<\/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":[8244,11827,8872,332057,390407,390411,390412],"class_list":["post-7083","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-irish-language","tag-alphabet","tag-letter","tag-v","tag-vearanda","tag-vearnais","tag-veist","tag-vinil"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7083","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=7083"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7088,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7083\/revisions\/7088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}