A review of Darach Ó Séaghdha’s 'Motherfoclóir: Dispatches from a not so dead language'

A review of Darach Ó Séaghdha’s Motherfoclóir:
Dispatches from a not so dead language
For writers, social media represents an indispensable
testing ground where thoughts may tentatively be
tried out on an instantly interactive public. If it gets
liked, is shared, or starts to trend, it might well be
the stuff of literature. Get it in writing! Rupi Kaur
developed material on Instagram, for example, which
later was to make a literary success of Milk and
Honey, a rather excellent debut collection from the
original Instapoet. Darach Ó Séaghdha chose Twitter
for his The Irish For project. It was originally
undertaken as a means for him to “reconnect” with
the Irish language.
The @theirishfor brand did exactly what it said on
the tin, typically tweeting phrases beginning with the
phrase “the Irish for”, with a discussion of the word
continuing into the “thread”. Followers were
amassed at a mighty rate, and the account was soon
suggesting its own neologisms to the “voting public
on Twitter”, as per a growing belief in that particular
platform as a forum for negotiating the devolution of
democracy to the internet. Indeed, it is telling of
today’s times that one of the highest accolades to
grace the sleeve of the best selling and cheekily titled
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Motherfoclóir, the first of Ó Séaghdha’s two books to
date, was that Blindboy Boatclub was part of the
@theirishfor’s Twitter “following”.
The word Motherfoclóir itself is a neologism, as well
as a good example both of an interlingual pun, and a
highly suggestive portmanteau. ‘Foclóir’ is the Irish
for ‘dictionary’ and is not to be confused with an
English expletive to which it bears a tad bit of
sensationalistic resemblance.
Motherfoclóir, the book, mirrors much of the earlier
Twitter content. The first appearance of the
eponymical refrain “the Irish for” informs the reader
that “the Irish for Donegal is Tír Conall [sic]”. All well
and good, except that “Tír Conall” should be “Tír
Chonaill” and is actually a rather nuanced
toponymical term which encompasses only part of
the overall landmass of Donegal, or “Dún na nGall” as
a Gaeltacht native from that county might have said,
had they been consulted. Speaking of counties, the
Irish for Clare is given its genitive case form “an
Chláir” instead of the nominative “An Clár”. The
implications of this error are better appreciated
through comparison with an equivalent situation in
English: imagine somebody explained to you that
Shannon Airport was in “Clare’s”.
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For a book owing its origins to a series of Twitter
entries, it’s slightly unsightly for the Irish equivalent
of the word ‘tweet’ to be misprinted as ‘tvúít’ (recte:
‘tvuít’) in Motherfoclóir. A double fada is what is at
issue here, and a preponderance of the same error
throughout seems rather incongruent with
reminders on both the front and back cover of the
book to the effect that “a fada can make all the
difference”. In fact, even there, right there in the
blurb, ‘fáil’ is said by way of example to mean
‘hiccup’ whereas ‘fail’, without the fada, means
‘destiny’, and actually, the exact opposite is true.
Major fada fail!
This is not the only oversight on the cover; we are
warned not to confuse the word ‘Taoiseach’ with the
Irish for ‘extremist’ which should be ‘antoisceach’ but
here is misspelled ‘antioisceach’. This typo falls foul
of a schoolboy rule of thumb which Kneecap, in
delivering their brand of Belfast Gaeltacht Quarter
rap, famously have sworn never to : “brisim achan
riail seachas focan caol le caol” (i.e., “I break every
rule except that of “slender with slender”).
Meanwhile, there isn’t a single typo in English,
despite there being so much more of it in this book.
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Foclóireacht is the Irish for lexicography, a tidy term
referring to the compilation of dictionaries, or the
study thereof. There is a long tradition of Irish
language lexicography, reaching as it does back to
before the 9 th century when Sanas Chormaic was
written by the bishop-king Cormac Mac Cuileannáin.
The text is a glossary which is remembered as the
earliest vernacular language dictionary in all of
Europe. With Motherfoclóir, Ó Séaghdha has tweeted
himself right into this tradition, taking time on his
way to cast a critical eye over of his lexicographical
peers, past and present.
A rare reference to the contemporary Irish
lexicography of focloir.ie gives way to Ó Séaghdha’s
dismissal of their translation of “chick flick” as
“scannán rómánsúil do mhná” (i.e., “romantic film
for women”) because it is “a bit on the nose”.
Apparently, Irish terms are compelled to be as
“punny” as their English equivalents; or to have some
alternative kind of retweet value, at least. There is
something of the ”noble savage” attitude to Irish in
all of this.
Ó Séaghdha is happy, for example, when Irish words
conform to outdated Anglocentric notions of Gaelic
folkloric quality. The repurposing of ‘turscar’, which
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once meant “dead seaweed” but now operates as a
quaint translation for ‘junkmail’, is often recalled by
Ó Séaghdha as a precedent for a terminological
practice which personally I like to accuse of trying to
put the folklore in ‘foclóir’. Ó Séaghdha is
correspondingly unimpressed with such modern
features of Irish language terminology as choosing to
transliterate English ‘laser’ to give Irish ‘léasar’.
In a damning appraisal of an instance of the
voluntary work done by the Irish Language
Terminology Commitee, ‘léasar’ is smugly cited by Ó
Séaghdha as “an instructive example of how not to
do loanwards”. Come on Darach, it’s ‘lazer’ in
Turkish, ‘láser’ in Spanish, and ‘lesa’ in Yoruba! What
is with this expectation of Irish that every single new
word contain esoteric references to Celtic folklore?
Folklore, in fairness, is class, and Pádraig S. Dinneen’s
highly eccentric Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla is a
sterling repository in this regard. Ó Séaghdha’s
folkloric approach to the Irish language naturally led
to a vast majority of the words for Motherfoclóir
being taken from Dinneen’s dictionary. The problem,
however, is that the first edition of Dinneen’s Irish-
English Dictionary was published as early as 1904,
and had included words of Middle and even Old Irish
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with the express intent of aiding Gaelic Leaguers in
their study of poetry from bygone centuries. Many of
the words given in Motherfoclóir therefore are not
only irrelevant to modern day speakers of Irish, but
are also entirely unintelligible to them. Sure the bean
an tí will only be laughing at you!
Rather than making a conscientious disclaimer, for
example, about the original context of Pádraig
Dinneen’s archaic words, it is Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla,
the most recently published Irish-English dictionary,
that Ó Séaghdha accuses of being “dated”. At least
Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla accompanies obsolete words
with the abbreviation “Lit.” as in the case of the word
‘meabhlach’ in which entry the ancient meaning
‘disgraceful’ is given alongside its current meaning,
‘attractive’.
“Who thinks like this anymore”, exclaims an
exasperated Ó Séaghdha who, having glossed over
the clear instruction that one of the meanings was
now obsolete, now rallies against the perceived
existence of two opposing meanings for this word.
Then, he arrives at the false premise that the Irish
language is guilty of an inhibitive, old-fashioned
worldview by which all that which is “attractive” is
also “disgraceful”.
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As part of a discussion of words of Irish which have
no direct equivalent in English, the “1977 Ó Dónaill
Foclóir” stands charged by Ó Séaghdha of not having
included the “modern use of craic as meaning highly
informal fun”. Fun fact: ‘craic’ is actually an English
word which long ago was incorporated into Irish
rather than the other way around. To say that ‘craic’
doesn’t have an equivalent in English, then, is a bit
like the apocryphal story whereby George Bush
mocked France for not having a French word for
‘entrepreneur’.
Ó Séaghdha’s lay criticisms of expert lexicographers
know no bounds. In tow, too, is the legendary Bishop
O’Brien whose Focalóir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bhéarla is
caricaturised in Motherfoclóir as having drawn
inferences from superficial similarities between
Hebrew and Gaelic languages that “don’t stand up to
scrutiny”. This amounts to no more than the pot
calling the kettle black. Ó Séaghdha himself makes a
facetious association between “checkmate” which
comes from the Farsi phrase meaning “king who is
dead” and the Irish for ‘ivory’ from which material
chess pieces used to be made. However, this
connection is based on the mere coincidence of Ó
Séaghdha’s having misread Irish ‘déad’ (i.e., ‘tooth’,
‘ivory’) as English ‘dead’, and thus, a whole new
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genre of “superficial similarity” was born. A fada can
make all the difference!
What could otherwise have offered a valuable insight
into a unilingual English speaker’s perspective on the
Irish language has been tainted by overtones of
cultural appropriation arising from a complete
disinclination to engage with the actual Irish
language public. Constructive criticism generously
levelled at some of the more misguided tweets from
@theirishfor, for example, is bitterly dismissed in
Motherfoclóir as having emanated from “purists”,
“gatekeepers”, “the translator’s frying pan”,
“exasperated sighs from the linguistics faculty”, or
from “seething rage at the other end of the
internet”.
You’ve heard of Instapoetry, now hear of fake news
foclóireacht!
Considering this aversion for the experts, the
unabashed Anglocentrism, a dependence on Twitter,
and a bizarre passage from the book in which
choosing between translation methods is likened to
ways to cook a steak, I have no option but to hereby
consign Motherfoclóir to the category of fake news
foclóireacht. These harsh words enter a tradition of
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rigorous criticism in Irish lexicography 1 , preceding at
the same time the imminent appearance of a third
book in the @theirishfor series. Ná habair faic go
gcloise tú a thuilleadh.
1
cf O'Hickey, M.P. (1904) 'Irish Lexicography', The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, December, 521-532.
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