I don’t want this blog (which has become a lot more part-time of late) to become a MaganIrishScam, so this will be the last comment on Manchán Magan for a while, unless I need to reply to a comment.
I have explained already why I don’t like Magan or his books but to reiterate briefly, if you read a claim in a book by Magan, there’s a good chance that it is either completely untrue or a massive distortion of the truth, so every claim should be checked thoroughly or summarily dismissed (which would save time).
About twenty years ago, a book came out called The Meaning of Tingo. This purported to be a list of weird and untranslatable words in different languages. The title says it all. Tingo in the indigenous language of Easter Island, Pascuense, according to the author, means: The act of taking objects one desires from the house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them. If this were true, it would be a great word. So, is it true?
Well, surprise, surprise, according to more authoritative sources, it really means “to extract or haul as much as possible”. Which means that borrowing all your neighbour’s stuff bit by bit might be an example of tingo, but it isn’t the definition of tingo. As David L. Gold says, it’s an application of the word, not its meaning. Another word from Welsh, gwarlingo, is supposed to mean the rumbling noise an old clock makes when it’s about to strike the hour. So far as I can see, the word gwarlingio actually means a warning. So, much less specific, much less exotic. The book Tingo was criticised a great deal, though judging by the comments you get when you put the word tingo into Google, not many people are aware that that definition, and the book in general, are nonsense.
There are quite a few books like Tingo on the market, and in many ways, Manchán Magan’s books are exercises in this kind of fake linguistics – or Tinguistics, if you prefer. A great many of the words he uses to illustrate facile points of mysticism, quantum woo and pop-philosophy are drawn straight from that most entertaining but also most eccentric and unreliable of Irish dictionaries, Dinneen’s Dictionary. Another good example of this is the word iarmhaireacht.
Here’s Manchán Magan’s version of its meaning: the loneliness felt at cockcrow, when you are the only person awake and experience that existential pang of disconnection, of not belonging.
Of course, this has drawn a lot of comment from people on line. What an amazing language Irish is! It has words for concepts like that!
As we’ve said, this seems to derive from Dinneen’s Dictionary, which in the 1904 version defined it as:
iarmhaireacht, -a, f., state of being lonely; the loneliness felt at cock-crow (W. Ker.)
Unsurprisingly, Magan was the one who added the existentialism and the disconnection. The 1927 version of Dinneen defines it slightly differently:
iarmhaireacht, -a, f., state of being a remnant or reduced; loneliness, the loneliness felt at cock-crow; ag dul chum iarmhaireachta, becoming greatly reduced.
Note that it says ‘loneliness, the loneliness felt at cock-crow’. Presumably, the first loneliness just means an all-purpose abstract word for loneliness, which could be equally appropriate at eleven in the morning or nine at night. In other words, it means loneliness at any time of day AND loneliness at dawn. So, just loneliness at any time of day or night then, INCLUDING cock-crow.
Why did Dinneen bother associating it with dawn at all then? Unfortunately, he doesn’t tell us. Maybe the person who told him about the word had a serious dose of cock-crow blues. Or perhaps Dinneen himself was prone to dark dawns of the soul. Or perhaps he just made that bit up. There is a lot in his dictionary which is untrustworthy.
Ó Dónaill’s Dictionary doesn’t mention it having anything to do with early morning blues either:
iarmhaireacht, f. (gs. ~a).1. Backward, reduced, state. Ag dul chun ~a, declining, failing, deteriorating; passing away (without issue). ~ oibre, arrears of work. 2. Eeriness, loneliness.
The rule of thumb that any sensible person (which of course, excludes Manchán Magan) adopts with these kind of ‘tingo’ words is to assume that if the definition is crazily specific and improbable, it probably isn’t genuine, so I do not regard the existence of an Irish word with the definition of loneliness felt at cock-crow, whether it’s existential or not, as proven or even likely.
cassidyslangscam 