garraí vs gairdín

Dáithí Mac Giolla. · **Joined:** Sat 01 Jun 2013 8:46 pm **Posts:** 466

Is there any difference between garraí vs gairdín. Ive heard garraí used in terms of a garden growing food , but that might just have been the speakers choice of words.

WeeFalorieMan · **Posted:** Mon 01 Jun 2015 4:34 pm

I was taught (by a native speaker from Cork) that garraí is a vegetable garden and gairdín usually refers to a landscaped garden or a flower garden.

MacBoo · **Posted:** Mon 01 Jun 2015 5:04 pm

Certainly it looks like de Bhaldraithe makes that distinction.
Garraí comes from the Norse garðr the same stem as English yard, gairdín sounds too much like the English or the French not to suspect it is a borrowing from one or the other.
And this could explain the different nuances in the two words...

CaoimhínSF · **Joined:** Sun 04 Sep 2011 11:02 pm **Posts:** 1581

Quote:

Certainly it looks like de Bhaldraithe makes that distinction.
Garraí comes from the Norse garðr the same stem as English yard, gairdín sounds too much like the English or the French not to suspect it is a borrowing from one or the other.
And this could explain the different nuances in the two words...

I suspect you're right about how the two words came to enter the Irish language and acquire their nuances, but it seems that the two sources are also cognates of one another. The etymology is fascinating. I found this in Wikipedia:

Quote:

The etymology of the word garden refers to enclosure: it is from Middle English gardin, from Anglo-French gardin, jardin, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German gard, gart, an enclosure or compound, as in Stuttgart. See Grad (Slavic settlement) for more complete etymology. The words yard, court, and Latin hortus (meaning "garden," hence horticulture and orchard), are cognates—all referring to an enclosed space

with this being the discussion of the Slavic "grad" mentioned above:

Quote:

A gord is a medieval Slavonic fortified settlement, also occasionally known as a burgwall or Slavic burgwall after the German term for such sites. The ancient peoples were known for building wooden fortified settlements. The reconstructed Centum-satem isogloss word for such a settlement is g'herdh, gordъ, related to the Germanic *gard and *gart (as in Stuttgart etc.). This Proto-Slavic word (*gordъ) for town or city, later differentiated into grad (Cyrillic: град), gard, gorod (Cyrillic: город), etc.
...
The Proto-Slavic word *gordъ means a "fenced area", compare to Ukrainian horodyty, Czech ohradit, Russian ogradit, Croatian/Serbian ograditi and Polish ogradzać meaning "fence off". The word ultimately finds its root in the Proto-Indo-European language; cognates are many English words related to enclosure: "yard", "girdle," and "court." In some modern Slavic languages, *gordъ has evolved into words for a "garden" (likewise a fenced area, from which Latin hortus, and English horticulture and orchard)

I wonder whether the Irish gort, meaning a field, is from a Celtic cognate of all those words? It seems to fit right in, and would mean that Irish ended up with at least three forms of the same original concept (an enclosure), from three separate lines of language development.

WeeFalorieMan · **Posted:** Tue 02 Jun 2015 3:22 am

gort - a tillage field, a cultivated field

:prof:

franc 91 · **Posted:** Tue 02 Jun 2015 2:38 pm

I remember a Gaeilge-Française family who ran a guest house somewhere in the Burren, south of Galway which they called 'Gort na Bláthanna', which according to them meant - The Garden of Flowers. Would a gort have been enclosed in some way to separate it from the open pasture-land ? Walled kitchen gardens would have only belonged to the Big House, I imagine.

Dáithí Mac Giolla. · **Joined:** Sat 01 Jun 2013 8:46 pm **Posts:** 466

Local football pitch is called Gort Caide. So not just a tillage field.

WeeFalorieMan · **Posted:** Tue 02 Jun 2015 9:14 pm

Dáithí Mac Giolla. wrote:

So not just a tillage field

That's true. I'm just saying it the way that I was taught.

CaoimhínSF · **Joined:** Sun 04 Sep 2011 11:02 pm **Posts:** 1581

Quote:

I wonder whether the Irish gort, meaning a field, is from a Celtic cognate of all those words? It seems to fit right in, and would mean that Irish ended up with at least three forms of the same original concept (an enclosure), from three separate lines of language development.

I should have though of MacBain's Etymological Dictionary of Scottish Gaelic. He confirms the connection of gort to the other Indo-European cognates, with Gaelic gart for a standing field of corn, from Old Irish gort, and Gaelic goirtean, cognate with Irish goirtín, for a small field of corn (I assume all of these refer to "corn" in the English sense, to mean grain or wheat, rather than the North American usage of the word for maize).

He also explains the separate origin of Gaelic gort/goirt, cognate with Irish gorta, meaning famine, both being from the Old Irish gorte and ultimately Indo-European *gher, meaning desire or want. Interestingly, the English word "yearn" is apparently also a cognate of those terms, as is the Greek khreos, meaning necessity.

NiallBeag · **Joined:** Wed 19 Dec 2012 3:58 pm **Posts:** 488

Dáithí Mac Giolla. wrote:

Local football pitch is called Gort Caide. So not just a tillage field.

Except that football parks often retain the name the field had before it became exclusively use for leisure. The prime conditions for football parks are very similar for those for growing cereal crops, so it's quite possible that the park was a tilled field in the not-too-distant past.

Forum rules

garraí vs gairdín

Who is online