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Bill Sabatella's avatar

Very methodical, very interesting. A linguistic detective story!

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Eric Sabatella's avatar

It was fascinating to understand the process you followed. Great explanation.

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Larry Richardson's avatar

Cool post! Thanks for the help, Ethan.

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Ethan Sabatella's avatar

Any time, Deuce! Thanks for bringing me on!

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Darran's avatar

If it is of any interest. If I were to translate this to everyday language I would say:

Féach ar an muir atá forlíonta den ghealach bhuí mar a bheadh ór

If I wanted it to be archaic I would alter "ghealach" to "ghealaigh" as you have.

le is usually only used instrumentally or to convey doing something with somebody, de is used with anything implying composition or mixing, even metaphorically.

mar has many derivative constructions and using them correctly is pretty advanced in terms of Irish grammar, but to be brief "mar a bheadh" is used for "like in appearance".

forlíonta is a stronger version of líonta implying completely filled, filled up, filled to the point of becoming. This is simply a stylistic choice.

Some differences here are just my dialect, like "ar an muir" rather than "ar an mhuir", some people would say "den ngealach buí"

Now this is me trying to be as close to the original as possible. More naturally I'd probably say:

"forlíonta de sholas na gealaí buí" = Filled up with the light of the yellow moon

This is because Irish tends to prefer being a little closer to the literally than English in situations like this. "Filled with the moon" can suggest literally moon rock or dust filling the sea.

That said I probably prefer your rendering since it has that suggestion of Classical Gaelic that we sometimes use in Fantasy novels.

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