{"id":9224,"date":"2017-04-30T12:57:09","date_gmt":"2017-04-30T12:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/?p=9224"},"modified":"2017-05-25T20:46:21","modified_gmt":"2017-05-25T20:46:21","slug":"mi-na-bealtaine-may-mothers-memorial-mint-juleps-and-macaroons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/mi-na-bealtaine-may-mothers-memorial-mint-juleps-and-macaroons\/","title":{"rendered":"M\u00ed na Bealtaine: May, Mothers, Memorial, Mint Juleps, and Macaroons!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

OK, so what do all those words in the title have in common besides, starting with the letter “M” in English?\u00a0 Well, May, Mothers and Memorial (in the U,S.) are a shoo-in — holidays (laethe saoire<\/strong>) during the month of May (m\u00ed na Bealtaine<\/strong>).\u00a0 So are Macaroons and Mint Juleps.\u00a0 Maybe I should clarify the latter a little bit — they are on that sometimes mind-boggling list of “National Days,” which includes foods (Buttermilk Biscuit Day), activities (Talk Like a Pirate Day), people (School Librarian Day), and material objects other than food (Tweed Day).\u00a0 Personally, I’ve never celebrated National Macaroon Day or National Mint Julep Day.\u00a0 But they all give us a nice chance to practice some Irish vocabulary!<\/p>\n

Here’s a selection of days for May, starting with the day, and indicating if the date changes from year to year (adding 2017 for Mother’s Day and Memorial Day):<\/p>\n

1 M\u00ed na Bealtaine:\u00a0 L\u00e1 Bealtaine<\/strong>. May Day, lit. Day of May, i.e. May 1st.\u00a0There are umpteen possible topics here, ranging from damhsa\u00ed crann Bealtaine<\/strong> and\/or the dance specifically entitled “Aoibhneas na Bealtaine”<\/strong> (which is not a “damhsa crann Bealtaine<\/strong>“) to cuileanna Bealtaine<\/strong> and the great and uniquely Irish expression “a bheith idir dh\u00e1 thine Bhealtaine<\/strong>.”\u00a0 But our main interest here is vocabulary, including an tuiseal ginideach<\/strong>, not traidisi\u00fain cheoil<\/strong> or feithideola\u00edocht<\/strong> or deasghn\u00e1tha cosanta eallaigh<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

So our key points to note are that:<\/p>\n

(a) The ending of the word “Bealtaine<\/strong>” stays the same (“-ne”) whether we’re saying “May” or “of May” but it is interesting to note which expressions include the definite article (M\u00ed na Bealtaine<\/strong>, the month of “the” May) and which do not (L\u00e1 Bealtaine<\/strong>, May Day).\u00a0 There’s no absolutely clear-cut \u00a0pattern for these types of phrases, so some of them probably just have to be memorized.\u00a0 Consider, for example “bl\u00e1th b\u00e1n na Bealtaine<\/strong>” and “lus Bealtaine<\/strong>“:<\/p>\n

bl\u00e1th b\u00e1n na Bealtaine<\/strong>, hawthorn blossom, also known as “May” (the plant), lit. (the) white flower of “the” May, but …<\/p>\n

lus Bealtaine mara<\/strong> OR simply lus Bealtaine<\/strong>, sea mayweed (Tripleurospermum maritima<\/em>).\u00a0 “Lus<\/strong>” usually means “herb” or “plant,” but not usually “weed” as such; “weed” is typically “fiaile,<\/strong>” and there are several other options as well.\u00a0 Literally these two phrases break down to “plant of May of sea” (“weed” of May of sea, if you will) and “plant of May,” respectively.\u00a0 The Latin binomial name, as we can see, has no reference to “May.”\u00a0 One might think that a plant called “lus Bealtaine<\/strong>” would simply be “mayweed” in English without the maritime part, but apparently not — the names of the other types of mayweed plants are based either on “f\u00edogad\u00e1n<\/strong>” or “me\u00e1<\/strong>,” so … go figure.\u00a0 “Lus Bealtaine<\/strong>,” apparently, is specifically a maritime plant, whether or not the word “mara<\/strong>” is included.<\/p>\n

(b) “Bealtaine<\/strong>” may change to “Bhealtaine<\/strong>” depending on the context.\u00a0 So we have “L\u00e1 Bealtaine<\/strong>” (day of May), but “dh\u00e1 thine Bhealtaine<\/strong>” (two fires of May, two May Day fires) where “May” is used as an adjective describing “tine<\/strong>” (a fire), which is grammatically feminine.\u00a0 \u00a0Hence, lenition.<\/p>\n

Sometimes usages simply vary according to source, so “lus Bealtaine mara<\/strong>,” mentioned above, may, also be known as “lus Bhealtaine mara<\/strong>.”\u00a0\u00a0 Ar\u00eds<\/strong>, go figure.<\/p>\n

And now you can breathe a sigh of relief, because most of the grammar is done for this blogpost, at least most of the more complex grammar.\u00a0 The remaining examples of May holidays and events should be more straightforward.<\/p>\n

14 M\u00ed na Bealtaine (sa bhliain 2017): L\u00e1 na M\u00e1ithreacha<\/strong>.\u00a0 Mother’s Day, lit. “(the) Day of the Mothers.”\u00a0 True, the English punctuation indicates one mother (one symbolic mother of all, one presumes) but terms like this frequently turn out to be plural in Irish.\u00a0 When we get to National Macaroon Day, we can be sure that more than one macaroon is implied by the English.\u00a0 The form “m\u00e1ithreacha<\/strong>” is quite straightforward, if slightly irregular (m\u00e1thair<\/strong>, mother; m\u00e1ithreacha<\/strong>, mothers).\u00a0 “Happy Mother’s Day!” is “L\u00e1 na M\u00e1ithreacha Sona!<\/strong>“, but this could literally be interpreted as “(the) Day of the Happy Mothers. ”\u00a0 Of course, we could say the same thing for the English, which could mean, “(the) Day of the Happy Mother.”\u00a0 Hopefully, the mother(s) is\/are happy on Mother’s Day, so we hope it’s a moot point.<\/p>\n

29 M\u00ed na Bealtaine (sa bhliain 2017): L\u00e1 Cuimhneach\u00e1in (i Meirice\u00e1)<\/strong>, Memorial Day (U.S.).\u00a0 Ireland has a National Commemoration Day (L\u00e1 Cuimhneach\u00e1in N\u00e1isi\u00fanta<\/strong>), but it’s held in July.<\/p>\n

30 M\u00ed na Bealtaine: L\u00e1 N\u00e1isi\u00fanta na S\u00falap Miontais (i Meirice\u00e1)<\/strong>, National Mint Julep Day.\u00a0 I’ve never seen “s\u00falap<\/strong>” in Irish outside of the name of this drink, but then, I had never seen the word “julep” outside of the phrase “mint julep” until I looked it up and found phrases like “medicinal julap” [sic] and “a doze of julap” [sic]. \u00a0The link for the nationaldaycalendar,com link for this is below.<\/p>\n

“S\u00falap<\/strong>” (whenever that word entered Irish!) is a first-declension noun, so it stays the same when we say “a julep” or “of juleps.”<\/p>\n

And finally, one last example, with an initial “m” in both English and Irish:<\/p>\n

31 M\u00ed na Bealtaine: L\u00e1 N\u00e1isi\u00fanta na Macar\u00fan (i Meirice\u00e1)<\/strong>, National Macaroon Day.\u00a0 Some day I’ll have to corner a Conamara cainteoir d\u00fachais<\/strong> and find out if when they pronounce “macar\u00f3n<\/strong>” (macaroni) it ends up sounding like “macar\u00fan<\/strong>,” given that in the Conamara dialect (can\u00faint Chonamara<\/strong>), “n\u00f3<\/strong>” sounds like “n\u00fa<\/strong>” and “romhat<\/strong>” (\/ro:t\/) can sound like \/ru:t\/ and “seomra<\/strong>” like \/s’u:mr\u04d9\/.\u00a0 In that case, it would be hard to distinguish a “National Macaroon Day” from a “National Macaroni Day.”\u00a0 Unless we added the “c\u00e1is<\/strong>.”\u00a0 Or looked at the f\u00e9ilire<\/strong>, since “National Macaroni Day” is in July. \u00a0That would presumably be “L\u00e1 N\u00e1isi\u00fanta Macar\u00f3in<\/strong>” in Irish, with the genitive singular, since “macaroni” usually implies the final cooked product, with hundreds of individual pieces of pasta. \u00a0Macaroons, on the other hand, would tend to be eaten individually, so I’m thinking genitive plural here, with the “of the macaroons” construction in Irish (na macar\u00fan<\/strong>). \u00a0The link for the nationaldaycalendar,com links for these are below.<\/p>\n

And on that tasty, commmfort food note, I hope you enjoyed this blogpost with the genitive case examples insinuated seamlessly into a hopefully fun discussion.\u00a0 Hmm, food note, footnote?\u00a0 I’ll have to get one of my cairde Gearm\u00e1nacha<\/strong> to try pronouncing “food note” to contrast with “footnote” — can you tell I just recently listened to www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0SOsaZiUCuk (SUPER EASY ENGLISH WORDS Germans Can’t Say)? \u00a0It deals a lot with specific\u00a0pronunciation issues like that (“head” sounding like “het” and “bad” sounding like “bat.”\u00a0 Ach sin an Ghearm\u00e1inis agus is \u00e1bhar do bhlag \u00e9ile \u00ed<\/strong>.\u00a0 Hope you enjoyed this and learned some “tuiseal ginideach<\/strong>” as well. – SGF — Roisl\u00edn<\/strong><\/p>\n

Naisc:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

www.nationaldaycalendar.com\/days-2\/national-mint-julep-day-may-30\/<\/p>\n

www.nationaldaycalendar.com\/national-macaroon-day-may-31\/<\/p>\n

www.nationaldaycalendar.com\/2015\/07\/06\/july-7th-2015-national-macaroni-day-national-father-daughter-take-a-walk-day-national-strawberry-sundae-day\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

(le R\u00f3isl\u00edn) OK, so what do all those words in the title have in common besides, starting with the letter “M” in English?\u00a0 Well, May, Mothers and Memorial (in the U,S.) are a shoo-in — holidays (laethe saoire) during the month of May (m\u00ed na Bealtaine).\u00a0 So are Macaroons and Mint Juleps.\u00a0 Maybe I should…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":9227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3898],"tags":[4297,288587,95147,4913,1083,5373,489413,5802,359393,489417,489416,489415,1151,218741,208922,273230,6223,489414,7206],"class_list":["post-9224","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-irish-language","tag-bealtaine","tag-bhealtaine","tag-case","tag-day","tag-genitive","tag-ginideach","tag-julep","tag-la","tag-macaron","tag-macaroni","tag-macaroon","tag-macarun","tag-memorial","tag-mint","tag-mothers","tag-naisiunta","tag-national","tag-sulap","tag-tuiseal"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9224","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=9224"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9246,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9224\/revisions\/9246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}