The Irish language and sex

March 12th, 2005 | by aobaoill |

Geoffrey Pullum has debunked a claim that was seemingly made on NPR recently – notably that the Irish have no word for sex. I’m reminded of a talk by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (I think) on RTÉ some time ago where she stated that the Irish do not have obscenities (at least related to sex) though they have curses a-plenty. Without casting judgement on Nuala’s claim, the numerous examples she gave of the easy acceptance of sexuality in the Irish language would immediately give the lie to the claims (by author Frank Delaney) on NPR even if Pullum hadn’t gone to the trouble of listing a sizeable list of terms for ‘the act.’
Incidentally, not withstanding Pullum’s admonishment against claims of the form “The X have no word for Y” I will repeat my favourite here: The Irish have no verb ‘to have’ – the construction used instead is of the form ‘to be at [me].’ So for example: Tá leabhar agam : There is a book at me : I have a book.
We have a word for owner but it appears to be derived from the English, to my amateur eyes: úinéir. We also have a word for ‘my’ (mo) so perhaps the lack of a verb isn’t as significant as you might think – but it does position possession as a state of being, a relationship, rather than as an action or activity.
Incidentally, harking back to the Ní Dhomhnaill talk she mentioned her father or grandfather’s claim that the term ‘feis’ (festival or celebration, best known now for the Feis Ceol or music festival) originally had sexual overtones, but I’ve no idea whether there is any truth to this, or whether it is merely a good story….

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