Buddy/Bodach

 

Tá an focal seo pléite agam roimhe seo ar an bhlag, ach níor chaith mé mórán ama air. Tá an focal buddy le fáil sa Bhéarla ó lár an 19ú haois. An míniú is coitianta ná gur leagan páistiúil den fhocal brother atá ann. Ach tá an scéal giota beag níos casta ná sin. Tá focal i gcanúintí Béarla Shasana sa 19ú haois, mar atá, “butty”. De réir cosúlachta, is ón fhocal booty (creach) a tháinig an téarma seo. B’ionann booty-fellow agus duine a bhí le chéile leat ar eachtra nó ar fhiontar agus a roinn an brabús leat. Ach ní hé sin a dheireadh ach oiread. Síleann daoine eile go bhfuil baint aige leis an téarma ‘body’ san Albainis nó Lallans. Síleann daoine eile gur acrainm atá ann ó thréimhse Chogadh Cathartha Mheiriceá, a chiallaíonn Brother Until Death. Nó go bhfuil baint aige leis an Raj agus le focal Pashto ‘Badda’ a chiallaíonn páirtí nó céile. Nó ó fhocal boetie san Ollainnis a thagann ón fhocal broer, a chiallaíonn deartháir.

Deir Daniel Cassidy, ina leabhar bréagach How The Irish Invented Slang, go dtagann an Béarla buddy ón Ghaeilge bodach. Mar is gnách, déanann sé ransú ar na foclóirí lena chás a chruthú. Deir seisean go gciallaíonn bodach “a strong, lusty youth.” Níl a fhios agam cá bhfuair sé an sainmhíniú sin, mar de réir na bhfoclóirí, ciallaíonn bodach “a churl, a clown, a tramp”. (Focal eile, bodalach, a chiallaíonn “strong, lusty youth.”) Ach chomh maith leis sin, dá mbeadh bodach in úsáid leis an chiall chéanna le buddy, ní bheadh an fhuaim mar an gcéanna leis an dóigh a ndeirtear buddy sa Bhéarla, ar ndóigh.

Agus mar is gnách, bhí Cassidy chomh cinnte sin de féin nár bhac sé le féidearthachtaí eile a phlé. Deir sé go drochmheasúil go ndeir na foclóirí Angla-Mheiriceánacha ‘ar chúis éigin nach bhfuil míniú air’ go dtagann na téarmaí bud agus buddy ón fhocal Béarla brother.’ Cad chuige a ndeir sé nach bhfuil míniú air? Ar ndóigh, cionn is go raibh an ghealt thoirtéiseach Cassidy cinnte dearfa go raibh an fhadhb réitithe aige agus gur chóir do gach duine glacadh leis an amaidí nua-chumtha s’aige faoin fhocal bodach. Is é an rud atá deacair a mhíniú, i mo bharúil féin, go nglacfadh duine ar bith le raiméis an chaimiléara seo nuair is léir nach raibh ann ach gealt.

I have discussed this word before on the blog, but I didn’t spend much time on it. The word buddy is found in English from the middle of the 19^th century. The most common explanation is that it is a childish version of the word brother. However, it’s a little more complicated than that. There is a word found in the 19^th century English dialects of England, the word “butty”. Apparently, this term derives from the word booty. A booty-fellow was a person who joined you on a journey or venture and shared the profit with you. But that’s not all! Other people link it to the word ‘body’ in Scots or Lallans. Others think it’s an acronym from the period of the American Civil War, which means Brother Until Death. Or that it is from the Raj and the Pashto word ‘Badda’, which means a partner. Or from the word boetie in Dutch which comes from broer, meaning brother.

Daniel Cassidy, in his fake book How The Irish Invented Slang, says that the English buddy comes from the Irish bodach. As usual, he ransacks the the dictionaries to prove his case. He says that bodach means “a strong, lusty youth.” I don’t know where he got that definition, because according to the dictionaries, bodach means “a churl, a clown, a tramp”. (It’s another word, bodalach, which means “strong, lusty youth.”) Not only that, but if bodach were used with the same meaning as buddy, it wouldn’t sound the same as buddy in English. (Bodach is pronounced roughly bodda, while a bhodaigh is pronounced a woddy.)

And as usual, Cassidy was so sure of himself that he didn’t bother discussing any other possibilities. He says sniffily that the Anglo-American dictionaries say ‘inexplicably’ that the terms bud and buddy come from the English word brother. Why does he say ‘inexplicably?’ Of course, because this pompous liar was 100% certain that he had solved the problem and that everyone should accept his made-up nonsense about the word bodach. The inexplicable thing, in my opinion, is that anyone would accept Daniel Cassidy’s crap when it is obvious that he was nothing but a nut-job.

 

Litir Oscailte Chuig Rónán

Bhí mé ag éisteacht le clár Rónáin inniu. Is breá liom Rónán Mac Aodha Bhuí. Bíonn scoth na Gaeilge le cluinstin ar a chlár agus níorbh aon eisceacht clár an lae inniu. Bhí roinnt daoine ina chuideachta agus is é saibhreas na Gaeilge a bhí i gcaibidil acu. Bhí go maith agus ní raibh go holc, go dtí gur luaigh Rónán an focal snagcheol. Chuir duine éigin téacs isteach. Cad chuige ar úsáid Rónán an focal snagcheol? Ní focal Béarla é jazz, dar leis an téacsóir. Is focal Gaeilge é, mar dhea, a thig ón fhocal deas. Tháinig téacs eile. Ní hea, arsa an ceann sin. Is ón fhocal teas a thig sé. Aidhe, agus fuair an Béarla rock ón Ghaeilge fosta, mar bíonn sé de nós ag lucht an rac-cheoil na seomraí san óstán a raiceáil i ndiaidh dóibh ceolchoirm a dhéanamh…

Agus ansin, luaigh Rónán leabhar Cassidy. Nár scríobh duine éigin leabhar i Meiriceá faoi na focail Ghaeilge atá le fáil sa Bhéarla?

Cuireann rudaí mar sin díomá orm. Tá go leor fianaise sa bhlag seo agus in áiteanna eile ar an idirlíon nach raibh sa Chasaideach ach leathghealt, lán-amadán agus caimiléir cruthanta. Ní raibh eolas dá laghad aige ar an Ghaeilge, agus cé gur Ollamh a bhí ann go hoifigiúil, ní raibh oiread agus céim aige. Is mór an náire nach mbíonn lucht na Gaeilge ag magadh go neamhthrócaireach faoin bhocamadán sin a luaithe agus a luaitear a ainm nó a theoiricí bómánta i lúb cuideachta.

Ní lia saoi ná tuairim maidir le bunús an fhocail sin jazz, agus ní fiú na teoiricí bómánta sin a nascann an focal leis an Ghaeilge a chur ar an liosta, dar leis na saineolaithe, gan trácht ar iad a chur ag barr an liosta! Más mian le daoine a chreidmheáil gur ón fhocal teas a tháinig jazz, bíodh acu, ach is bréag lom a rá nach bhfuil míniú ar bith eile ann nó go bhfuil tuairimí bómánta Cassidy chun tosaigh ar na barúlacha eile.

A Rónáin, a chara, is maith liom do chlár agus tréaslaím do shaothar leat. Léiríonn do chlár nach bhfuil an Ghaeilge marbh ná baol air, agus nach gá do lucht na Gaeilge sodar i ndiaidh na nGall agus scáil na teanga s’againne a fheiceáil i ngach aon chrístín agus drochfhocal atá le cluinstin san Oileán Úr, go díreach mar a bhíonn lucht na cráifeachta ar lorg aghaidh Íosa i ngach aon phancóg agus giota arán rósta dá bhfeiceann siad. Ní linne an snagcheol, agus ní le Cassidy agus a lucht leanúna an teanga s’againne ach an oiread.

Was Daniel Cassidy A Racist?

Was Cassidy a racist? In a sense, the answer to this is no. He wasn’t a Klansman or a white supremacist. He would not have identified himself as a racist. Yet the behaviour of people like Cassidy (i.e. crazy people) is often problematic. They frequently act in ways that conflict with the principles they pretend to live by. For example, Cassidy claimed to be a socialist and a trade unionist, yet he took a job as an academic without having a degree. Nobody who believed in the principles of socialism, trade unionism or ordinary, basic fairness would do that. In a sense, he was also a racist, because he treated the Irish language and Irish culture not as a reality existing in its own right, but as a worthless dead language which he had a right to use as a plaything.

I recently mentioned Cassidy’s family tree. His brother has put a fairly comprehensive pedigree on Ancestry.com, which shows that there was a family tradition that the Cassidys had Cherokee blood. Cassidy’s grandmother Frances Stokes was the daughter of Frances Garrity, whose mother was Matilda May Byrnes, whose mother was Emma Pattison, whose mother was Margaret Abbott, who was rumoured to be part Cherokee, and her surname, Abbott, is found in records of the Cherokee at the time. In other words, Cassidy’s great-great-great-great-grandmother might have been partly of Cherokee descent.

Let’s just suppose that Cassidy, instead of getting a bee in his bonnet about Irish, decided to look at his Cherokee ancestry. Suppose he came up with a theory that millions of America’s urban poor had Cherokee descent and that they had remembered the Cherokee language without knowing it. And suppose that, instead of going off to the Cherokee nation and learning some of the language, he hit the dictionaries running and came up with ‘Cherokee’ phrases like guladale, the ‘obvious’ origin of English galoot. (Derived from gu-la = idiot + da-le = foolish! These are genuine Cherokee dictionary entries, but I have no idea whether adjectives come before nouns or after them in Cherokee or whether anyone would actually say ‘foolish idiot’ in that language – I mean, what other kind of idiot is there? And of course, this is exactly the kind of inept guesswork that Cassidy applied to the Irish language.)

And suppose that some Cherokee people thought that this theory would help to bring them support and money and give them kudos, so they backed him, in spite of the fact that they knew this was all rubbish, and allowed this pretentious, badly-educated white fool to stand on a platform with a highly inappropriate feathered head-dress and beaded vest sounding forth about the Cherokee roots of American popular culture. And meanwhile, imagine that other people who had a good knowledge of linguistics and Cherokee language were crying foul and pointing out that all of his claims were nonsense, and they were being accused of being time-servers and narrow-minded fools refusing to think out of the box by people who had never heard a word of Cherokee in their lives. Wouldn’t that be racism? Wouldn’t that be cultural appropriation? Wouldn’t that be treating a minority language as something with no value except as a source of unearned income for a liar and fantasist who was completely ignorant of that language?

Yes, it was all of those things. Because, although the Cherokee scenario never happened, this is exactly what happened in the case of Cassidy’s claims about Irish. People who know nothing at all about Irish are arguing with people who use the language every day of their lives, as if they have an equal right to decide what sounds like good Irish and what doesn’t. People who do that might think they are socialists, or radicals, or left-wing, or even Irish Republicans. But in the real world, Cassidy and his minions are simply ignorant bigots who refuse to accept the facts. They are as much a product of colonialism as men in bowler hats trying to force unwelcome marches through Catholic areas in Belfast.

Mayhem

According to Cassidy, this word, which means a disturbance or trouble, is derived from the Irish word maidhm, which means an outbreak. Sounds plausible enough when you first hear it but let’s examine the evidence carefully. First of all, what does the word maidhm mean?

Maidhm is pronounced  similarly to the English word mime. It does mean an outbreak. It is used of something which has been held in and suddenly breaks through. So a maidhm shneachta is a maidhm of snow, an avalanche. A landslide is a maidhm thalún, while a maidhm phortaigh is a distinctly Irish natural disaster, the bogslide.

So, can maidhm be used for riot or civil disturbance? Irish is very rich in words and phrases for disturbances or hubbub. Trioblóid, ciréib, cíor thuathail, cath, ruaille-buaille, rí-rá, fuirse má rabhdaileam.  Maidhm is not one that would normally be used.  If someone said “Bhí maidhmeanna i mBéal Feirste aréir”, an Irish speaker would take this to mean that there were landslides of some kind in Belfast, not that there were riots.

When maidhm is used about warfare, it has a very specific meaning, namely that your defensive line has broken and that your troops are running away. In other words, it means a rout or catastrophic defeat. This is not at all what the word mayhem means, of course.

And in any case, the word mayhem doesn’t sound much like maidhm and it has an unassailable history going back to the 13^th century, before any Irish ghettoes appeared in the English-speaking world. It derives from Norman French and is a legal term.  Cassidy mentions the dictionary derivation but obviously prefers his own  fantasy version to reality.