[mb-users] Any Irish Gaelic speakers in the audience?

[Cadalach]

Hi folks,

I've been thinking about trying to write some capilatisation
guidelines for Irish/Gaelic for a while, but haven't got round to it.
Not least because I'm no expert in Irish grammar. (I don't think we
have guidelines for Welsh yet either, which is more surprising.)

Anyway, here are some first general thoughts...

I'd mainly stick with the English style (rather than, say, French)
i.e. Capital letter for the first and last words and:

* Capital initial letters for nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives etc.

* Small initial letters for the article, prepositions and little
"particles" (see below)

However,

The Gaelic languages also have funny things called "prepositional
pronouns" which are used in places where a pronoun would follow a
preposition, so it's not "aig mi" (lit. "at me") but "agam". I'd use
capital letters to begin these words too.

For "particles" things can look a little funny -- I'd write "Cha do
dh'Òl Mi" (I Didn't Drink).

Irish also has eclipsis which can look funny -- "i mBaile Átha Cliath"
(in Dublin) -- but that's the way it should be done.

There are also quite a few little words which mean different things
depending on context: here's the extreme example...

a' Mhàthair (the Mother)
A Mhàthair (His Mother)
A Màthair (Her Mother)
a Mhàthair! (Mother! (vocative))

An Duine _a_ Bh' Ann (The Man _Who_ Was There)
Am Boireannach _à_ Steòrnabhagh (The Woman _from_ Stornoway)
20 Bliadhna _a_ dh'Aois (20 Years _of_ Age)
A' Dol _a_ Ghlaschu (Going _to_ Glasgow)

Which are some of the reasons I haven't written anything yet --
without knowing the language(s) would people be able to pick out these
differences effectively? (But, I know, that's not really a good reason
for not trying to write something.)

Anyway, I'll have a look for capitalisations in some books, magazines
and stuff (CDs are usually a bad place to look as the spelling is
often wrong...) and see if these thoughts are mainly in line which
what's going on out there.

Finally, I had a quick look through the Sinéad O'Connor page and
didn't see anything that was glaringly bad, but I'm having some
computer problems at the moment so it might take a while before I can
have a proper look at it.

Le deagh dhùrachd,
Don (cadalach)



On 09/09/2007, Frederik 'Freso' S. Olesen <freso.dk at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/9/8, Bogdan Butnaru <bogdanb at gmail.com>:
> >Anyway, if there's anyone with experience in the language it would be
> >nice to add at least a few guidelines. It's possible to fix titles
> >sometimes even without knowing the language using translation tools
> >and dictionaries; however I can't find guidance about the
> >capitalization rules.
>
> I usually just go by what it says in the notes. If I'm in doubt, I
> poke Cadalach towards the releases, as he knows Scots Gaelic[1], and
> thus should be able to sort out the worst errors in Irish[1] titles.
> Other than that, I think we should just ask Cadalach, being the
> closest we have to an Irish speaker, whether it would make more sense
> to go for "English" or "sentence" capitalisation rules.
>
> >Also, if you speak Irish Gaelic, please make a note of it as described
> >at http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/ModeratorLanguage
>
> I'm working on it. But... not quite yet, unfortunately. :(
>
> --
> Frederik 'Freso' S. Olesen <http://freso.dk/>
>
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