Bhí mé vs. Bhíos ... SMACKDOWN !!!
For whatever it's worth (which is probably exactly nothing), I had dinner with a lovely Irish coworker of mine recently. I specifically asked her about an issue that is obviously of cataclysmic importance based upon what I read on certain Irish-language discussion forums:
"For the Love Of God And Everything Holy, is it bhí mé or is it bhíos ???!"
She smiled and said, ".. well ya know, Dan, we're all just a buncha tribes over there, ya do know at least dat dontcha? Oneupsmanship masquerades as authority, don't let anybody fool ya. But anyway, so ya know, it's 'bhí mé' -- those pretentious Cork people love to sound archaic and put themselves above everybody else but isn't it hilarious that the Gaeltachts there are so tiny relative to everywhere else?"
I don't know that I can remember a time when multiple layers of ironic tongue-in-cheek-but-not-really-yet-yes-kinda-really were layered so successfully into a single delivery.
My take-away is that bhí mé = bhíos = "I was" and I shall learn both and be done with it, already. Sweet Jesus.
1 comment:
Bhíos is dialect but a lot of people use it. it actually sounds nicer than "bhí mé" which is standardised Irish that they teach in schools. The Irish government decided to simplify the language after achieving independence, as it's such an ancient language that there's mad grammar and stuff all over the place. It's the same way that "conas atá tú" is a standardised mixture of all 3 Gaeltacht dialects; "cén chaoi ina bhfuil tú", "cad é mar atá tú" and "conas taoi". Anyway, maith thú learning the language, it is beautiful, bain taitnimh as agus go n-éirí leat!
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