seannyboy wrote:
Right, I totally get what you are saying Labhrás. I guess Irish is like Spanish in a way, where there are 2 different from's to mean different things, and it's not ambigious, unlike English. Is there any reason why in this translation sea is muir and not farraige, I just got that translation from google translate for sea (I know it's almost a sin to use that tool especially for Irish) just curious to know the difference. Thanks a bunch for your help anyhow. I'll just wait for a couple more replies, just like they suggested.
In usage they are largely interchangeable, meaning sea or ocean. I'm not aware of dialectical preferences, though they may exist, and there are some expressions where one is preferred over the other. Note that we have two words in English as well, sea of Germanic origin (and possibly of pre-indo-European origin before that), and ocean of Latin/French origin.
The word
muir is cognate with similar words in other Indo-European languages, such as
mare in Latin. According to Dwelly's Etymological Dictionary,
farraige is related to the word
fearg ("anger"), and in Scottish Gaelic
fairge can mean a stormy sea.
Scottish Gaelic actually has a third word as well. The word
cuan, which in Irish generally means a bay or harbor, can in Scottish Gaelic be used for the sea ("air àird a chuain" = "on the high seas"). Dwelly's says that
cuan is of Norse origin (related to the word which became "haven" in English, and is
Hafen in Modern High German). In fact, it may also be ultimately from a pre-Indo-European language, since many seafaring terms in the Germanic languages appear to be not of Indo-European origin, one theory being that they were absorbed from the language of an earlier sea-faring people already present in northern Europe when speakers of Indo-European languages arrived on the scene.