Ar do bhicycle a Aire Ð Minister î Cu’vÕs new dictionary

Date Published: {J}

In the past week a press release popped up on my laptop from Minister Eamon O Cuiv in relation to the Irish language – it appears that a major review is going to be carried out on the Irish language, with a view to the fact that it has been changing, and that certain terminology may need to be developed.

I would have thought as much – for, when the Christian Brothers were in charge of hammering a love of the language into the boys of my generation, if you used a word like ‘bicycle,’ or worse still put down a sentence which included something like ‘bhí me air mo bhicycle,’ you could expect the ‘leather’ to fly when the cóipleabhar was handed in for correction.

Yet, now in the evenings when I turn on Teilifís na Gaeilge (otherwise known as TG4), I can hear words like (and this is my attempt at spelling) ‘clouthaí’. In my day the word for a cloud was scamall, and you were likely to send a Christian Brother into a twirling dervish if you simply put down what was thought to be a bastard version of the English equivalent.

I have to be careful here, for there is the issue of any language developing and changing. The evolution of a language was a point eloquently made, for instance, by Brian Ó Cuív, the minister’s father, in a series of lectures delivered under the auspices of the School of Celtic Studies of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, in 1950. He argued that if a language was not evolving, it might be dead.

However, in my school days, the word for a bicycle was rothar. I agree that a language must evolve, but it can hardly be argued that the bicycle was such a late invention that we had to adapt to the English language version.

We were unlikely to have an Irish term for nuclear fusion, but I still find it hard to believe that a term like ‘anatomy’ is so new that in the case of directional signs in the grounds of the National University of Ireland, Galway they have to put together a word that reads – anatomaíocht.Bang on time for St Patrick’s Day, however, Minister Eamon Ó Cuív announced that “a review of the Official Standard for Irish (An Caighdeín Oifigiúil) is being undertaken by the Central Translation Unit (An Lar-Aonad Aistriuchain) in his Department.”

Unfortunately, I am not sure that I am qualified to sit on this new super quango (cad is Gaeilge ar sin?), but it sounds like there could be a repeat version of that Blackadder episode where lexicographer Dr Johnson came to visit with his new dictionary and manservant Baldrick eventually burnt it. That was because of the omission of the word ‘sausage’. Cad is Gaeilge ar sausage?

The Minister in his press release goes on to give a further insight into the work of this grouping. He says: “The Official Standard was compiled and first published in 1958 and has been published periodically ever since. Its publication in 1958 was a significant milestone in the development of Irish as a modern literary and administrative language. However, in light of the rapid and ongoing developments in the texture of the living language, it is timely to undertake a review now.

“The Minister will appoint a Steering Committee to oversee the Review, whose membership will cover the fields of lexicography, education, law, translation, terminology, media and scholarship. The review will take a phased approach and each Chapter, or part of a Chapter of what will ultimately become the revised Official Standard, will be examined and agreement reached, before the Review Group will move on to the next item on its work programme.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.