Thirty-Two Words for Field

n.b. A ‘no star’ rating for books I review does not imply criticism—I rarely give ratings, as giving stars is an unhelpfully blunt instrument and all too often involves comparing apples with oranges.returnreturnThis is the kind of book that remains in use for reference, even though it bears reading all the way through. As an author, I have found it very valuable for world-building, not just in terms of how to make up likely Hibernia Altera place-names, but in terms of thinking about the different ways the landscape is understood and interpreted by those who live with it. returnreturnIt is intriguing to see the way that language that is in everyday use will focus so finely on different forms of common things; not just the thirty-two words for field, but the range of words for a hole in the ground, depending on whether it was a spawning fish that made it, or it was a shelter for a wild animal. returnreturnAlso intriguing is the reminder that words can have among their multiple meanings those that seem unconnected; a goat muzzle and an invisibility cloak, for example. The words for landscape can reflect a different way of looking at things: there is a measurement of land, ‘copla’, which does not refer to distance or space but to the carrying power, the potential productivity level that a piece of land can sustainably reach. returnreturnThis book is informative, very engaging, and, for a non-speaker of Irish reading a native speaker, very convincing. Some assertions, unrelated to the language itself, could be more useful if they came with footnotes or a reference for further reading. These include assertions about interpretations of myth, the linguistic link between Irish and India, or with Arabic, or about the traceable marks left by spoken words. Less convincing are the occasional sweeping statements about, for example, Irish people having a unique relationship with the land itself, along “we are rooted to the island” lines, or ideas about race memory. returnreturnAnglicised Irish place-names have a weird, nearly quantum, state—entangled with two languages but meaning nothing in either without translation—that Tim Robinson described as being ‘like twigs snapped off the trees’, and 'Thirty-Two Words' goes a long way to assisting the interested non-speaker towards a more informed understanding of the landscape.