Fuer Fortgeschrittene
Top of the mornin’ to ye:
Wenn es Euch recht ist, schreibe ich folgendes auf Englisch, erstens, weil ich davon ausgehe, dass jemanden, dass es interesiert, mehr als genuegendes Englisch kann und zweitens, weil ich faul bin.
In reference to this line:
'Tis you, 'tis you must go, and I must bide.
‘tis certainly stands for “it is,”in all manner of english usages. However, in irish dialect – or at least the irish dialect of popular culture to which I have been exposed (songs written during an earlier era by and for irish immigrants to America, dialog from movies, etc.) it always seemed to me that it can at times be used to mean “it is so that/it is the situation that, etc. At least this is what I assumed, based on the minimal evidence to which I have been exposed. Among the evidence was the song under discussion, “Danny Boy.” I have always assumed that the line should be understood to be thus:
“tis you ……(singer pauses because of her sadness/her realization of the import of what she is singing/to regain her composure because she is upset, etc.)….’tis you must go …
and not” ‘tis you, ‘tis you must go….
And my assumption was that the line was to be understood to mean something along the lines of: It is so that you must go and I must bide.”
To verify the validity of my assumption, we need only look at another line of the song:
“’tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow.” The only way to possibly make sense of the “’tis” as used here is in the meaning of something along the lines of “It is so that…”
Well, as I indicated, this is what I have always believed. As backup for this belief is the stereotypical irish dialect phraseology along the lines of.- and here I will make up a few examples off the top of my head: “It’s/’tis thanking you that I am.” “It’s/’tis unhappy that you’re looking." The best translations of these into German would be along the lines of: “Es ist so, dass ich dir dankbar bin.” “Es ist so, dass du traurig aussiehst.” It always seemed probable to me that such phrases are a gaelic word order/word choice translated into english.
The occasion of this posting caused me go to the source of all wisdom – the internet – to check my assumptions. I found a discussion of the influence of gaelic on the irish dialect of english (and it wasn’t easy.) Here an excerpt - please note that how easily things are understood if "‚tis‘ is understood to mean „it is so that“:
……………
Is ceangailte do bhidhinn, literally ‚It is bound I should be,‘ i.e. in English ‚I should be bound.‘ This construction (from ‚Diarmaid and Grainne‘), in which the position of the predicate as it would stand according to the English order is thrown back, is general in the Irish language, and quite as general in our Anglo-Irish, in imitation or translation. I once heard a man say in Irish is e do chailleamhuin do rinn me: ‚It is to lose it I did‘ (I lost it). The following are everyday examples from our dialect of English:
'‚Tis to rob me you want‘: ‚Is it at the young woman’s house the wedding is to be?‘ (‚Knocknagow‘): ‚Is it reading you are?‘ '‚Twas to dhrame (dream) it I did sir‘ (‚Knocknagow‘): 'Maybe ‚tis turned out I d be‘ (‚Knocknagow‘): ‚To lose it I did‘ (Gerald Griffin: ‚Collegians‘): ‚Well John I am glad tosee you, and it’s right well you look‘: [Billy thinks the fairy is mocking him, and says :-] ‚Is it after making a fool of me you’d be?‘
(Crofton Croker):
You remember our neighbour MacBradywe buried last YEAR:
His death it amazed me and dazed me with sorrow and GRIEF;
From cradle to grave his name was held in ESTEEM:
For at fairs and at wakes there was no one like him for a SPREE;
And 'tis he knew the way how to make a good cag of potTHEEN.
He’d make verses in Gaelic quite aisy most plazing to READ;
And he knew how to plaze the fair naaids with his soothering SPEECH.
He could clear out a fair at his aise with his ash clehalPEEN;
But ochone he’s now laid in his grave in the churchyard of KEEL.
http://indigo.ie/~kfinlay/Joycenglish/joyce4.htm
…
If ‘tis you have an interest in such things, ‘tis happy I am to have provided this.
Incidentally, it also seems to me that certain constructions in French – for example using c’est in strange and unusual ways – to speakers of a germanic language at any rate – show a similar constructional influence of gaelic on the latin that evolved into French. And gaelic seems to have had an influence on the English that Yoda spoke. But then that is to be expected. He was green.
Jim
- da braucht es noch etwas Bastelarbeit