{"id":8624,"date":"2016-11-25T17:49:46","date_gmt":"2016-11-25T17:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/?p=8624"},"modified":"2016-12-06T17:53:51","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T17:53:51","slug":"leasmhac-leasinion-leas-siblini-and-the-hypothetical-irish-or-martian-leas-taoiseach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/leasmhac-leasinion-leas-siblini-and-the-hypothetical-irish-or-martian-leas-taoiseach\/","title":{"rendered":"Leasmhac, Leasin\u00edon, Leas-sibl\u00edn\u00ed and the hypothetical Irish (or Martian) Leas-Taoiseach"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"0783-leasmhac-and-leasinion\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The last entry (for now, at least), in our “leas<\/strong>-” terms series will cover the words “leasmhac<\/strong>” (stepson) and “leasin\u00edon<\/strong>” (stepdaughter).<\/p>\n

Probably, in fact, these words will be more applicable for a lot of readers than some of the other “leas-” terms (like “Leas-Phr\u00edomhLeabharlanna\u00ed<\/strong>” — remember that one?\u00a0 If not, please see below).\u00a0 Still, I think it was good practice to see the various patterns that occur after prefixes in Irish.\u00a0 Unlike English, where we simply apply the prefix and, at most, decide whether to hyphenate or not, Irish is a little more complex.\u00a0 After the prefix “leas<\/strong>-“, we can do one of the following:<\/p>\n

* nothing (before vowels: leasainm<\/strong>, and, as in today’s blog, “leasin\u00edon<\/strong>,” and also before non-leniteables: leasleabharlanna\u00ed<\/strong>, leasr\u00fana\u00ed, an Leas-Sp\u00e9ic\u00e9ir, srl.<\/strong>)<\/em><\/p>\n

* lenite b, c, f, g, m, p (as in “leaschod\u00e1n<\/strong>” and “leasmh\u00e1thair<\/strong>,” and, as in today’s blogpost, “leasmhac<\/strong>“)<\/em><\/p>\n

* skip lenition for d, s, t (leasdeirfi\u00far, leasdearth\u00e1ir, leas-seanmh\u00e1thair<\/strong>, and although there’s no realistic word that I can find with “leas<\/strong>-” as the prefix and a noun starting with “t” as the core, that would also have lenition; examples like “seanteach<\/strong>” and “an-te<\/strong>” show a similar “resistance” of initial “t” to lenition)<\/em><\/p>\n

We also always need to consider whether our compound word gets hyphenated or not (usually not, in Irish, but some do: sean-n\u00f3s, r\u00f3-\u00f3g, leas-seanathair, srl.<\/strong>).\u00a0 And some that don’t get hyphenated when used generically (leasuachtar\u00e1n<\/strong>), do get hyphenated when used as an official title (An Leas-Uachtar\u00e1n Joe Biden<\/strong> or Leas-Uachtar\u00e1n Mheirice\u00e1 Joe Biden<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

And now to the heart of today’s blogpost, which is simply the pair of words for one’s “leasph\u00e1ist\u00ed<\/strong>” \u00a0or “leaschlann<\/strong>.” From a language perspective, there’s not really much that needs to be said about them, except that they fit the standard pattern with prefixes.\u00a0 And a pronunciation note for newcomers usually never goes amiss (mh pronounced like w or v):<\/p>\n

leasmhac<\/strong> [ly<\/sup>ass-wahk or ly<\/sup>ass-vahk], stepson<\/p>\n

leasin\u00edon<\/strong> [Ly<\/sup>ASS-IN-yeen, or, since many people say “‘n\u00edon<\/strong>” for “in\u00edon<\/strong>,” [ly<\/sup>ass-neen], stepdaughter<\/p>\n

Depending on one’s role in the family, these “leasmhic<\/strong>” and “leasin\u00edonacha” <\/strong>could be your “leasdeirfi\u00faracha<\/strong>” or “leasdearth\u00e1ireacha,<\/strong>” in other words your “leas-sibl\u00edn\u00ed<\/strong>.” \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>As for the word “leas-sibl\u00edn\u00ed<\/strong>” itself, in my experience it’s not widely used in Irish (I got no Google hits for the singular, leas-sibl\u00edn<\/strong>, and just 3 hits for the plural — tortha\u00ed suimi\u00fala<\/strong>!), with “sibl\u00edn<\/strong>” itself first showing up in a dictionary around 2004, IIRC.\u00a0 But all of that could be \u00e1bhar blagmh\u00edr eile<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

So that’s the skinny on “leas<\/strong>-” … at last!\u00a0 Maybe just one final note on prefixes in general before we close for the day. \u00a0 In any given word, the exact types of changes (or lack of change) depend on which prefix is being used.\u00a0 So the situation is slightly different for “m\u00ed-<\/strong>” as opposed to “dea<\/strong>-” as opposed to “droch<\/strong>-,” etc., but to cover all of these prefixes would be too much for one blogpost.\u00a0 So, i bhfad uainn an drochrud agus an m\u00ed-\u00e1dh agus le gach dea-ghu\u00ed — R\u00f3isl\u00edn \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aistri\u00fach\u00e1n: Leas-Phr\u00edomhLeabharlanna\u00ed<\/strong>, Deputy Chief Librarian<\/p>\n

P.S.\u00a0 If in the realm of our imagination, there was a “deputy Taoiseach” as such (instead of a t\u00e1naiste<\/strong>), that word in Irish would demonstrate the non-lenition situation: *Leas-Taoiseach<\/strong>.\u00a0 I’m using the asterisk here to indicate that, at least for practical purposes, this is a hypothetical word.\u00a0 But … hang on a sec!\u00a0\u00a0 Lo and behold, Google does give me two hits for “leas-taoiseach<\/strong>,” neither, of course, being official government positions.\u00a0 One is at http:\/\/www.anfearrua.com\/topic.aspx?id=965813, in a comment by Dariog, and refers to a title desired after resignation as Taoiseach (!).<\/p>\n

The second is actually stranger, in what I assume is a machine-translation of A Princess of Mars<\/em>, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, at allreadable.com\/e263KdT AND at allreadable.com\/fc7866zw, both URLs with the prefix ga.\u00a0 I’m deliberately not including an active link here, because, frankly, I don’t know anything about this site. \u00a0Tempting as it would be to read A Princess of Mars<\/em> in Irish (Yes, I have read it in English!), I’m not tempted to click on the “ga” link because the translation looks pretty sketchy.\u00a0 I’ll quote it directly and you can make what you will of it: Mo captor, a bhfuil a ainm a bh\u00ed Tarra\u00ed Tarkas, bh\u00ed an chuma ar an leas-taoiseach<\/em> na pobail, agus fear de cumas iontach mar st\u00e1taire agus laoch.<\/strong> [sic! for the whole shebang] \u00a0I could include the editorial [sic] to illustrate each point separately, but I’d need to use it, let’s see, at least seven times.<\/p>\n

I hope this isn’t anyone’s Eye-of-Argon-ish labor of love, because if it is, I suggest getting an eagarth\u00f3ir<\/strong> who is l\u00edofa sa Ghaeilg<\/strong>e.\u00a0 At first glance I see too many verbs per clause, too many definite articles per noun and not enough lenition.\u00a0 I get a rough translation like: My captor, that his name is was Tarra\u00ed Tarkas, the appearance was on the people’s the deputy- …[ hmm, given that this is Mars, we should probably use the original meaning of “taoiseach<\/strong>,” which was “chieftain,” so …] \u00a0… deputy-chieftain, and a man of wonderful ability as a statesman and hero.”\u00a0 The last part is actually almost readable.<\/p>\n

In case anyone isn’t familiar with The Eye of Argon<\/em>, it has its own Wikipedia page, in English, Spanish, and Finnish (no less!) \u00a0and about 17,000 hits on the Internet.\u00a0 And I have it straight from the horse’s mouth that it was alluded to in a Buffy, The Vampire Slayer book.\u00a0 So it’s not completely obscure.<\/p>\n

So much for postscripts being short addenda.\u00a0 Hopefully it was fun to read at least!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

(le R\u00f3isl\u00edn) The last entry (for now, at least), in our “leas-” terms series will cover the words “leasmhac” (stepson) and “leasin\u00edon” (stepdaughter). Probably, in fact, these words will be more applicable for a lot of readers than some of the other “leas-” terms (like “Leas-Phr\u00edomhLeabharlanna\u00ed” — remember that one?\u00a0 If not, please see below).\u00a0…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":8626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3898],"tags":[5878,2418,474635,474636,474634,474633],"class_list":["post-8624","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-irish-language","tag-lenition","tag-prefix","tag-step-sibling","tag-step-siblings","tag-stepdaughter","tag-stepson"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8624","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=8624"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8634,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8624\/revisions\/8634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}