Cassidese Glossary – Hunch

For some time now, some of my on-line friends have advised me to provide a version of CassidySlangScam without the invective aimed at Cassidy and his supporters. In response to that advice, I am working on providing a glossary of the terms in Cassidy’s ludicrous book How The Irish Invented Slang with a short, simple and business-like explanation of why Cassidy’s version is wrong.

There is some doubt about the origin of the term ‘hunch’, as in ‘I had a hunch that would happen.’ The dictionary experts believe that it derives from the English word hunch meaning a hump, though it is very difficult to understand how that connection arose. Apparently it meant a push or final shove towards an answer, and then it came to mean a kind of intuition.

Cassidy disagrees with this, which is fair enough, if you can find a better and more convincing explanation. As usual, Cassidy couldn’t be bothered finding anything convincing, so he just pounced on a word which he happened to think sounded a bit like the candidate and had a meaning somewhere in the same general semantic area. The word he chose was aithint, which means knowing or recognition. Cassidy’s association of this with hunch only works if people in Irish would use aithint to mean a hunch. Would they? Of course not. Recognising something is not the same as having an opinion or a guess or a feeling about something.

How would you say ‘I had a hunch that would happen’ in Irish? Here are a few ways:

Bhí mé ag déanamh go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí éachtaint agam go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí mé ag smaoineamh go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí barúil agam go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí tuairim agam go dtarlódh sin.

Shíl mé go dtarlódh sin.

Cheap mé go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí iomas agam go dtarlódh sin.

What you wouldn’t say is ‘Bhí aithint agam go dtarlódh sin’ because it wouldn’t mean anything, any more than it would mean anything if you said ‘I had a recognition that would happen’ (though a precognition would just about work).

I should also point out that when Cassidy pronounced this word, as he did on several interviews, he pronounced it as hunch. Aithint does not sound like the English word hunch.

Hunch/Aithint

I have noticed that many of the early posts on this blog get relatively little traffic, so I have decided to start republishing some of them.

There is some doubt about the origin of the term ‘hunch’, as in ‘I had a hunch that would happen.’ The dictionary experts believe that it derives from the English word hunch meaning a hump, though it is very difficult to understand how that connection arose. Apparently it meant a push or final shove towards an answer, and then it came to mean a kind of intuition.

Cassidy disagrees with this, which is fair enough, if you can find a better and more convincing explanation. As usual, Cassidy couldn’t be bothered finding anything convincing, so he just pounced on a word which he happened to think sounded a bit like the candidate and had a meaning somewhere in the same general semantic area. The word he chose was aithint, which means knowing or recognition. Cassidy’s association of this with hunch only works if people in Irish would use aithint to mean a hunch. Would they? Of course not. Recognising something is not the same as having an opinion or a guess or a feeling about something.

How would you say ‘I had a hunch that would happen’ in Irish? Here are a few ways:

Bhí mé ag déanamh go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí éachtaint agam go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí mé ag smaoineamh go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí barúil agam go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí tuairim agam go dtarlódh sin.

Shíl mé go dtarlódh sin.

Cheap mé go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí iomas agam go dtarlódh sin.

What you wouldn’t say is ‘Bhí aithint agam go dtarlódh sin’ because it wouldn’t mean anything, any more than it would mean anything if you said ‘I had a recognition that would happen’ (though a precognition would just about work). In other words, this is just more stupid bar-room blether and fake scholarship from Cassidy.

 

Thug mé faoi deara nach bhfaigheann cuid mhór de na haltanna luatha ar an bhlag seo mórán cuairteanna, agus mar sin de, tá cinneadh déanta agam iad a athfhoilsiú anseo.

Níl a fhios againn cá has a dtáinig an téarma ‘hunch’ sa Bhéarla, focal a chiallaíonn buille faoi thuairim nó tomhas. Creideann na saineolaithe Béarla go bhfuil baint aige leis an fhocal hunch a chiallaíonn cruit, cé gur deacair a oibriú amach cén fáth a mbeadh an nasc sin ann. De réir cosúlachta, bhí sé ag tagairt don bhrú nó seáp a thugann duine agus iad ag iarraidh freagra a fháil, agus as sin, fuair an focal an chiall bhreise sin de ‘iomas’.

Ní aontaíonn Cassidy leis an mhíniú seo. Tá sin maith go leor, más féidir leat teacht ar mhíniú atá níos fearr agus níos inchreidte. Ach mar ba ghnách, ní thiocfadh le Cassidy bheith gaibhte rud éigin níos inchreidte a fháil agus mar sin de, léim sé ar fhocal a bhí giota beag cosúil leis an Bhéarla, dar leis, agus a raibh ciall aige a bhí giota beag cosúil lena chiall. Ba é aithint an focal a roghnaigh sé, focal a chiallaíonn knowing nó recognition i mBéarla. Ar ndóigh, ní chiallaíonn aithint an rud céanna le hunch an Bhéarla. Ní hionann rud a aithint agus iomas a bheith agat faoi rud.

Cad é mar a déarfá ‘I had a hunch that would happen’ i nGaeilge? Seo roinnt dóigheanna:

Bhí mé ag déanamh go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí éachtaint agam go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí mé ag smaoineamh go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí barúil agam go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí tuairim agam go dtarlódh sin.

Shíl mé go dtarlódh sin.

Cheap mé go dtarlódh sin.

Bhí iomas agam go dtarlódh sin.

Ach ní déarfá, ‘Bhí aithint agam go dtarlódh sin’ mar ní bheadh ciall ar bith leis, ach oiread leis an fhrása ‘I had a recognition that would happen’ i mBéarla (cé go bhféadfá cás a dhéanamh ar son ‘I had a precognition that would happen!’) Lena rá ar dhóigh eile, níl sa raiméis seo ach cabaireacht lucht tábhairne agus léann bréagach ó Cassidy.

Poke That Folklore!

Here is a link to a fascinating video of Daniel Cassidy, author of the ridiculous How The Irish Invented Slang, speaking to an audience at the New York Writers’ Institute.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4za9Rl8Qrc&noredirect=1.  The video is fascinating because it shows that even after Cassidy had written and published the book, he was still totally clueless about the Irish language.

In the clip, after an intro in which he quotes Professor Terence Dolan, who later publicly criticised Cassidy’s ridiculous book, Cassidy unsuccessfully attempts to pronounce a number of Irish words.

Firstly, he shows off a dog-eared pocket dictionary which he had received as a bequest from a friend. This, he says, is a folklore poker. To you or me, this is a foclóir póca, which is pronounced focklore pawka but to Cassidy, it’s a folklore poker. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who has read this blog that Cassidy had such poor Irish that after supposedly studying Irish for over six years he stood up in public and did the equivalent of pronouncing dictionary as dickery. Why should it surprise anyone? After all, in Cassidy’s hands, the contents of the dictionary were reduced to a mixture of dickery and folklore.

Then there are other words. When he says that hunch comes from aithint, he seems to simply repeat the word hunch again in English rather than even attempting to pronounce aithint. And his claim that the American ‘in Dutch’ comes from duais is very wide of the mark. Nobody has ever said Bhí mé i nduais le mo mháthair’ for ‘I was in trouble with my mother’ and if they did, they wouldn’t pronounce it ‘dush’, to rhyme with hush. Many southern speakers pronounce it doosh. I would pronounce it dooish, to rhyme with newish with a NY accent. But dush? Not a chance.

The funniest bit is when he pronounces slacaire, which according to Cassidy is pronounced in Irish the way a drunken Frenchman would pronounce slugger. (E eez a great sluggair, zat batsman, no?)

Anyway, log on and have a good laugh or as Cassidy would have said, a snag gáire and a gíog gheal (that is, a hiccup of laughter and a bright squeak, Cassidy’s absurd Irish candidates for snigger and giggle!)

Hunch

There is some doubt about the origin of the term ‘hunch’, as in ‘I had a hunch that would happen.’ The dictionary experts believe that it derives from the English word hunch meaning a hump, though it is very difficult to understand how that connection arose. Apparently it meant a push or final shove towards an answer, and then it came to mean a kind of intuition.

Cassidy disagrees with this, which is fair enough, if you can find a better and more convincing explanation. As usual, Cassidy couldn’t be bothered finding anything convincing, so he just pounced on a word which he happened to think sounded a bit like the candidate and had a meaning somewhere in the same general semantic area. The word he chose was aithint, which means knowing or recognition. Cassidy’s association of this with hunch only works if people in Irish would use aithint to mean a hunch. Would they? Of course not. Recognising something is not the same as having an opinion or a guess or a feeling about something.

How would you say ‘I had a hunch that would happen’ in Irish? Here are a few ways:

Bhí mé ag déanamh go dtarlódh sin.
Bhí mé ag smaoineamh go dtarlódh sin.
Bhí barúil agam go dtarlódh sin.
Bhí tuairim agam go dtarlódh sin.
Shíl mé go dtarlódh sin.
Cheap mé go dtarlódh sin.
Bhí iomas agam go dtarlódh sin.

What you wouldn’t say is ‘Bhí aithint agam go dtarlódh sin’ because it wouldn’t mean anything, any more than it would mean anything if you said ‘I had a recognition that would happen’ (though a precognition would just about work). In other words, this is just more stupid bar-room blether and fake scholarship from Cassidy.