Gweedore man Pádraig Ó Mianáin loves words. It would be tragic if he didn’t.
He’s the lexicographical editor of Foras na Gaeilge and he’s currently the chief editor overseeing the development of both the first monolingual Irish dictionary, which will launch in October, and the first Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla since the one compiled by Niall Ó Dónaill in 1977. That will be out in 2027.
It is his job to know all the words. Or at least have a good grasp of all the ones that are currently in use.
He loves getting into the minutiae of language and dialect and where it comes from and the regions in which it’s spoken.
RM Block
From time to time, he says things like, “You’ve got me down a rabbit hole now, Patrick.” He frequently speaks with reference to “the Dineen” and the “de Bhaldraithe” by which he means the Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla edited by Patrick S. Dineen in 1927 and the English-Irish Dictionary edited by Tomás de Bhaldraithe in 1959.
The Irish language has never had a monolingual dictionary.
“Irish users have been depending on bilingual dictionaries. To the extent that most Irish speakers will describe the new dictionary as Gaeilge/Gaeilge. That’s what people primarily call a monolingual dictionary in Irish. You would never hear of a French/French dictionary.”
There are a lot more words in English, a language spoken by 1.5 billion, than in Irish, a language spoken daily by fewer than 100,000 people (outside of education). “With the new English Irish dictionary, which went online in 2013, part of the problem was the English was generated by what was current in English,” says Ó Mianáin.
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“So there were literally thousands of translation gaps where there were no precedents [in Irish]. We calculated that there are 10,000 words in the English Irish dictionary that weren’t in the Ó Dónaill dictionary. So there are 10,000 new coinages.
“There was no word for avocado [abhacád], stuff like that. We’re trying to reflect the words people are using whether that’s social media, modern culture, current affairs, medical terminology. Whatever we think is in usage above a certain frequency we’re trying to reflect that.”
And things have changed a lot since those earlier dictionaries. “There’s been a revolution worldwide,” says Ó Mianáin. “[Dictionaries in the past] would have been more academic than current dictionaries. They would have gone through literature and various sources to find the highest level of Irish.
“And they would have been conservative by nature, not a lot of time for informal or vulgar words, whereas dictionaries are now much more democratic. If a word is used it merits being covered whether people like it or not. They can hold their noses.”
What sort of things causes people to hold their nose? He laughs. “Probably the ongoing argument within any minority language is the impact of the major language. Do you just transliterate words?” By which he means, in the Irish context, words that come directly from English. “A lot of people would have very strong opinions on where you draw the line as regards to transliteration.”
They have frequent discussions about this when compiling the dictionary, he says. “People take strong views on either side. They’re all valid.”
He gives some examples. “When tweeting was a big thing there was a word in Irish for the sound a bird makes which is ‘giolc’ would be used for tweet, but people were also saying in Irish ‘bhí sé ag tvuíteáil’. So you could be ‘ag giolcaireacht’ which was based on a proper Irish word based on the sound a bird makes or ‘ag tvuíteáil’.
“Someone who wants a higher register might use ‘giolc’, but would everyone understand that? The same with ‘surfáil’ ... There’s a word called ‘tonnmharcaíocht’ which literally means riding on a wave. It’s quite a big long word and grammatically not easy to handle but people also said ‘bhí sí ag ‘surfáil’.”
He laughs. “So these are the arguments. Some say that by recognising words like ‘surfáil’, we’re undermining the language but a lot of young people don’t have those hang-ups.
“There’s no point on calling it something that nobody will understand, because that decreases the chance of ordinary speakers using it. They’ll then just refer back to the English word. So there’s this dynamic, ‘do we invent something that’s likely to be used or say that this is the correct word whether people use or not?’”
Even majority languages adopt words from elsewhere, he notes. “Sometimes people criticise Irish saying, ‘it’s just English spelled in Irish’ but if you take an example like the word ‘telescope’, that’s made up of particles of words that come from Greek.”
The monolingual dictionary will be the first Irish dictionary to include foreign words that are in common use. The Irish for “cappuccino” is, like in English, “cappuccino”.
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There has been a resurgence in interest in the language. The majority of the native speakers in Ireland now live outside the Gaeltacht thanks to Irish speaking households and gaelscoils.
“Over the last 15 years, when we were recruiting, we would have recognised native speakers outside of the Gaeltacht,” says Ó Mianáin.
“I’m living here in County Derry. Irish is the language of the house. [My kids] haven’t got the exactly same Irish as Gweedore but they’re still native speakers. We always talk about this question, who owns the language? Dictionaries in general now are much more democratic, they tend to reflect usage.
“It’s important to us that the language is seen as a modern language, that it’s seen as vibrant and in touch with whatever’s going on in the world today and not to exclude the demographic that would use a language daily and regularly.”
Some newish Irish words (from Pádraig Ó Mianáin)
Tweet: traditional, ‘giolc’, based on the sound a bird would make, versus transliteration: ‘tvuít’. Both in use while ‘tweeting’ was in vogue.
Trolling (on the internet): Irish ‘trolláil’, based on the long established ‘troll’ for the mythological creature. It has no competition.
Surfing (on water): originally ‘tonnmharcaíocht’ (literally ‘wave-riding’) in Irish, but then joined by ‘surfáil’. Both still in use, but ‘surfáil’ is much more flexible.
Cloning: the word ‘clón’ for ‘clón’ appeared in Ó Dónaill in 1977, and ‘clónáil’ followed without any apparent opposition.
Cocooning (during lockdown): A Covid term which got two renderings in Irish: ‘clutharú’, based on a traditional word for ‘to shelter, make warm/ comfortable’, and ‘cocúnú’, based on ‘cocún’, the Irish for ‘cocoon’. Both used at the time with different demographics preferring either term.
Drone: Initially the word for a male bee, ‘ladrann’ was used in Irish for the flying device but didn’t get much traction in ordinary usage. Then the transliteration ‘drón’ was accepted (for the flying device only) and is the dominant word, although ‘ladrann’ would still be used in some formal texts.
Jiving: Would appear to have defied any plausible attempts of a gloss and ended up ‘jeidhbheáil’. Unlikely to feature in anyone’s top 10 Irish words!
Espresso/ raison d’être/ bona fides: traditionally, Irish dictionaries would not regard words from any other language as part of the lexicon of the Irish language and would suggest Irish equivalents, but in recent years both the modern dictionary and terminology lists accept the de facto existence of such words in Irish just as in English. They will be included as full headwords in the new monolingual dictionary.
Pentathlete: Originally rendered as ‘lúthchleasaí cúig mhír’, literally ‘five event athlete’. That’s still the Irish version on tearma.ie, for instance. The modern dictionaries, on the other hand, just transliterated according to the established rules and have ‘peantatlanaí’, based on peantatlan = pentathlon.
