Irish Named Wine Dollar for Dollar Best in KC
A wine with an Irish name has been named by Kansas City’s Present magazine as the wine that “may be the best wine dollar for dollar in the Kansas City market place”.
Tir Na N’og is the name of the much regarded Australian wine, which is a pity as that’s very dodgy Irish spelling. Two problems. No sign of a sineadh fada anywhere, when there should be two. And a rogue apostrophe thrown in - for what, to make it look exotic?
Just like in English (excepting the possessive) the apostrophe in Irish denotes something that has been omitted. D’obair for example being a contraction of Do obair (your work).
The fada is the accent that does groovy things to vowels. For example fear, meaning man, sounds like the English word ‘far’, but féar means grass and is said something like the English sounds FAY-r.
So Tir without the fada nearly rhymes with the English word ‘myrrh’ - or it would if the word Tir even existed. Tír on the other hand (with the fada) means land or territory and rhymes with the English word ‘beer’ - which is not as aromatic as myrrh but sometimes the truth doesn’t stink.
Similarly Og doesn’t exist as a word in Irish, but if it did it would rhyme with the English word hog. Óg however (which means youth, young, childhood) rhymes with the English word rogue, as in rogue apostrophe.
Tír na nÓg is the mythical Land of Eternal Youth where you could leave on a white horse just so long as your feet didn’t touch the hot lava. Or something.
Tír na nÓg is one of the most commonly used Irish phrases outside of Ireland, and seems to suffer for it in it spelling. If you’re unfamiliar with Irish you may well be familiar with the word Tír anyway - through Irish place-names.
Tír is unusual in Irish place-names because while it means ‘country’, ‘land’, or ‘territory’ it can be applied to any size of land-division such as parishes and townlands right up to counties and provinces.
3 of the 4 Irish provinces have an anglicised version of Tír in their name; Munster, Leinster, and Ulster. Mumu in the case of Munster, Laighin in the case of Leinster and Uladh in the case of Ulster have each been given a possessive ’s’ - from the Norse - and that then followed by tír.
Tír Eoghain, Eoghains’s Territory was anglicised as Tyrone, the county. And Eoghain’s brother Conall used to have a county named after him, Tír Conaill - which is County Donegal, but is more often now called Dún na nGall in Irish (meaning ‘Fort of the Foreigners’ - the name of the town of Donegal.
If you think the fada doesn’t matter, note that as I’ve pontificated on before, céad (with fada) meaning ‘a hundred’ as used in ‘a hundred thousand tea-towels’ is not the same as cead, which means ‘permission’ (as in ‘permission for a thousand welcomes’).
This Tir Na N’og Old Vines Grenache was named, I think, by the Dublin-born ex-pat proprietor John Larchet in Australia.
See Also:
• The ‘craic’
• The Irish Invented American Slang
• Dublin Slanging Match
• Cynical Use of the Irish Language
• Irish Fests and the Definite Article
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Tá súil agam gur chuir tú úinéir an fhíonghoirt ar an eolas i dtaobh a mhílitriú!
Ní amháin nach ndearna mé teagmháil leis an fear sin ach táim beagnach cinnte go bhfuil fhios agat nach ndearna
Bhal, cha robh mé cinnte; ach bhí barúil agam.
Nach bhféachfá leis?
Is féidir liom scríobh anseo gan aon ainm ceart go leor, ach chuirfeadh sin aiféaltas orm.
[…] On Gaelic, the Irish Language: • Tír being deprived of its fada • Craic or Crack, and is it Irish Anyway? • A […]