AN GAODHAL.
711
The
Gael.
A monthly Journal devoted to the Cultivation and
Preservation of the Irish Language and the au¬
tonomy of the Irish Nation.
Entered at the Brooklyn P. O. as second-class mail
matter.
Sixth Year of Publication.
Published at 814 Pacific st., Brooklyn, N. Y.,
M. J. LOGAN, - - - Editor and Proprietor.
Terms of Subscription — Sixty Cents a year, in
advance ; Five Cents a single copy.
Terms of Advertising — 10 cents a line, Agate.
VOL 6, No. 2. JULY, 1887.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE "GAODHAL"
Claremoris, Ireland,
Feast of St. Brendan, 1887
DEAR SIR — It is now over three months since I
read in an issue of the Gaodhal that it would be a¬
geeable to you and your subscribers if I should
express my opinion on the point of controversy
which has been carried on for some time past by
you and some of your correspondents regarding the
future and conditional tenses of verbs in one sylla¬
ble, and derivative verbs of two syllables in Irish
Gaelic.
I wish to be as brief as possible in expressing
my own opinion, which in my mind, amounts to a
settled conviction.
(1) It is certain that all verbs of one syllable in
Irish make the future tense indicative end in fad
(or fuidh, third singular); and, the conditional in
fainn. (I omit the second person singular and the
third, with the first, second and third plural, refer¬
ring the reader to those personal endings as print¬
ed in the "College Irish Grammar")
(2) It is equally certain that derivative verbs
ending in uigh, (or igh, simply), make the future
in ochad and the conditional in ochainn, and not in
fad or fainn, with the personal endings as noted in
Grammar.
How is the truth of this statement proved? I
answer, from authority, and from the science of
philology. And first, as to authority — Every Irish
work in manuscript, or in print, or from the pen
of approved authors since the twelfth century —
since the days of Donchadh Mor O'Dala, Abbot
of Boyle, whose writings are as complete in gram¬
matical form as if written yesterday — proves the
truth of the proposition. To enumerate the writ¬
ers in detail would make this letter fill several col¬
umns.
Philology, aided by Phonetics, is the second
source on which the truth of the statement rests.
Every Irish student knows that in the compound
prepositions agam, at me, orm, on me; in the verb
taim, I am (synthetic,) the letter m is a broken
form of the personal pronoun me, I or me. In like
manner, comparative philology teaches that the m
in the Latin verb sum, I am, the m in amabam, I
did love, is the same primitive pronoun me, bor¬
rowed from the Sabine-Keltic speech of primeval
periods: and further still that the ba of bam in the
imperfect tenses of Latin verbs, and the termina¬
tion bo, in amabo, I will love, are nothing more or
less than the future or past tense of the verb ba,
was, beidh will be, in Keltic. Thus amabam is
made up of the root ama, loving, ba, was, and me,
I; that is, loving was, I did love. Amabo — ama
loving, beidh, I will be — i.e. I shall love. Grant
all this; what has it to do with the future and
conditional tenses of verbs of one syllable and of
two syllables in Irish? I answer, much in every
way. The synthetic forms of the tenses in Irish
have been efformated in process of time, like those
of the Latin verbs: Thus deanfad, I shall per¬
form: olfad, I shall drink, have been formed
from the root dean, and ol, by annexing beidh, will
be, that is, I will be doing. I will be drinking. How
does ol beidh become olfad, or in the third singu¬
lar olfaidh (se)|? Beidh remains unaffected in Lat¬
in (bo,) while in Gaelic, according to the law regu¬
lating compounds, it is directly affected; that is,
it is aspirated, and it takes the sound of v (in Ger¬
man) or f, as olfaidh me — pronounced, olfwee mai.
So with the verb deanfad, I shall act, and with all
the verbs of the monosyllabic class. The condit¬
ional tense has fainn, fa, fad. (and not faid, for
the sake of distinction,) from the conditional tense
of the verb to be, as olfainn, I should or would
drink. The reader will say very well; that phil¬
lological view seems very natural and correct; but
does not the same reasoning hold good for deriva¬
tiev verbs in uigh ? I answer yes, it is so; but the
result of the combination is different. It must be
borne in mind that the consonants g and c are of
the same class — gutturals, and that g aspirated, and
c aspirated, are aspirate forms of the same guttur¬
als, and all are interchangeable. In the west of
Ireland, Irish speakers say gradhuigh, love thou,
in Kerry and Cork gradhuig, (g hard); in Iver¬
ness, Scotland. gradhich. Again we say beannuigh,
bless thou, and the term for blessing is beannacht,
c aspirated before final t. Thus, the reader sees
that ch, and g, and gh, are interchangeable, and
are made use of according as the annexed conso¬
nant is hard (like t) or aspirate, or soft, or a vow¬
el sound. When, therefore, the final syllable uigh
of this class take the future ending beidh, the sound
of b asp. is directly aspirated and incorporated with
uigh and the union of both blends into the phonet¬
ic guttural ochad and not ochfad, which would
be a two fold aspirate. The aspirate guttural och
suffices. Hence it follows, this ending is special
to this class of verbs, and is found (as it is at times)
in other dissyllables the form is adopted by the law
of analogy, and not to multiply grammatical ter¬
minations. It is plain also, from this reasoning,
that verbs of one syllable connot make the future
ense in och, which is itself a compound of uigh.
It is further seen that the uigh is not lost, nor is the
f sound of bh, entirely omitted, for both are con¬
verted into one guttural aspirate. All this is regu¬
lated on the laws of phonetic combinations com¬
mon to every language, in Greek especially, as kath
for kata, eph for epi, when aspirates occur.
Compounds from one syllable verbs follow the
law of their primitives. Thus the verbs tabhair,
give, and tabhair, speak, which are from beir, give
impart, bestow, should form the future in faidh —
