Gaelic phrase

Subject: Gaelic phrase
From: GUEST,Reiver 2
Date: 19 Aug 03 - 06:03 PM

I haven't visited the Mudcat for a long time, but thought someone might be able to provide some information. This isn't really a music question but an acquaintance of mine says a friend of hers used to call her his "moe-doon" (she says that's what it sounded like) and she's pretty sure it was Irish or Scottish gaelic. She's curious to know what it meant (and wants to know regardless of whether it was complimentary or not!). It doesn't ring a bell with me, but I thought immediately of the Mudcat and figured there might be someone here who could decipher what this phrase might have been. It was probably a term of endearment of some kind, but the closest I can come is my Scottish glossary mentions dou or doo as meaning "dove". That's a wild guess on my part. Any thoughts out there?
Reiver 2

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From:
Date: 19 Aug 03 - 06:29 PM

Well, the first word is easy.

Mo = My

Dhuinn (from Duinn which is a form of the word Donn) = Brown-haired one.

Is your friend a person with hair of a dark brown?

This is Scottish Gaelic, I'm thinking of.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: GUEST,Reiver 2
Date: 19 Aug 03 - 07:41 PM

End of thread!! Thanks George. I'm sure that it. Yes she has brown hair and I was pretty sure it was a Scottish phrase. She'll be pleased to know -- and happy that it WAS a term of endearment and not something rude. Thanks again. (You can always find what you're looking for at the Mudcat!)
Reiver 2

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: michaelr
Date: 19 Aug 03 - 10:30 PM

Not so fast whith the "end of thread" thing, please!

Isn't there an (anglicized) Irish word "muldoon"? Or is that a surname? Just thinking out loud.

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From:
Date: 19 Aug 03 - 10:58 PM

You're very welcome, Reiver. Ask any time. Even more fun with PMs etc. Consider joining.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: Amos
Date: 19 Aug 03 - 11:30 PM

Michael:

Muldoon is a surname, as in Paul the writer Muldoon.

I do not believe it ever made it into use as a common word though.


A

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: mack/misophist
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 12:50 AM

In some circles, "Muldoon" is a synonym for abnormally strong. Because of the joke.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: Fiolar
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 08:34 AM

Couldm it possibly be "Mo Dun" (pronounced "muh doon"). "Dun" is the Irish word for fort or fortified place i.e. a place of strength. So it may be that the speaker was calling his girl friend "my rock" or "my steadfast one." Seems to make more sense than "my brown" because "donn" in Irish is an adjective and would be accompanied by a noun.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 11:17 AM

if he called her 'MY moe-doon' the 'MY' would be redundant, since that's what the mo means, it may be that it was Irish and he called her 'my mómhar duine' which might be 'my graceful person' pronounced sort of like 'mower dune'. It could be many things, depending on the exact pronunciation, better she just ask her friend what he was calling her?

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: GUEST,Bill kennedy
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 11:23 AM

and of course that couldn't be right because it would be 'duine mómhar', adjective follows the noun, so I don't know. the point is he either called her something like 'moe-doon' or he called her 'MY moe-doon', which means the 'moe' is probably not 'mo' which means 'my'. If is mó (long o, as in 'moe') that would mean 'many' which makes know sense unless she has multiple personalites, she might then be 'my mó duine' 'my many people'!

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From:
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 11:30 AM

That's why I rejected the "duine". Couldn't fit that into the sentiment.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: GUEST,Reiver 2
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 11:51 AM

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: GUEST,Reiver 2
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 12:04 PM

Yes, Muldoon is a surname, so I doubt if he'd be calling her that (or my rock or my many people). Bill's is a possibility, but I'm pretty sure the person was of Scots, not Irish, background (I'll check on that) and that what he called her was "mo dhuinn" and NOT "my mo dhuinn". Wonder why dhuinn is not in the Scotts Glossary that I see is now available on the Mudcat. Or did I just miss it? (Great addition, BTW). Oh, and George, since you asked -- I AM a member and have been for some time. Don't know why this thing keeps listing me as "Guest". Maybe I just need to check in more regularly. Thanks to everyone for their comments. (In my original reply to George I should have said, "You can aleays find what you're looking for AND MUCH MORE at the Mudcat.") :-)

Reiver 2

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: GUEST,Cheeky
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 12:09 PM

It sounds to me like the Scottish guy who used to call his English girlfriend " Numpty" until she found out what it meant.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From:
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 12:58 PM

Gaelic is a separate language from Scots. In Gaelic dictionaries you might not find "dhuinn" as it is a derivative of the word "Donn".

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From:
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 01:01 PM

Reiver 2, It may not be having to come visit more often. Have you tried resetting your cookie?

Up at the top you can see a linke called Membership. It'll take you to a place where you can Login (or reset Cookie). Try that.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: Reiver 2
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 05:03 PM

I checked with the lady (her name is Echo!) and she confirmed the Scots background and that she has "great quantities" of brown hair, and that she's very happy with that translation!! (Said she's glad to know that he wasn't calling her a "fool" or "idiot". BTW, the guy is deceased, so she can't ask him as someone suggested.

I'd checked my membership yesterday and was told that Mudcat had it, but I didn't reset the cookie as I wasn't sure I remembered the password. I asked them to email it to me but it got caught in my SpamBlocker. I think it's taken care of now, or will be soon. Thanks for the advice.

Lang may your lum reek! -- Reiver 2

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: Reiver 2
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 05:33 PM

P.S. I always thought both Irish and Scottish languages were considered to be forms of Gaelic. (I found when visiting Ireland that they mostly refer to their language as "Irish" rather than Gaelic.) Much of the Scottish "dialect" that causes so much trouble (and enjoyment!) is spoken only in the lowlands, I've been told. Is that true? I have only a very small Scottish glossary from a book of songs, plus the glossary in the back of "English and Scottish Popular Ballads" edited from Child's collection. So I'm very happy to discover the glossary here on the Mudcat... I hadn't seen it before. I suppose this whole thread should have been sent to the "non-musical threads" section. (That's another new, to me anyway, addition to the Mudcat that I didn't realize existed until now.) I HAVE been away for a long time!! Must remedy that.

Slainte!
Reiver 2

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From:
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 05:44 PM

Not a problem, Reiver. Looks like your Cookie problem is fixed.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: Leo Condie
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 05:52 PM

reiver - as far as my fairly wee knowledge of the languages goes:

there are irish and scottish gaelic dialects, with a fair few differences, but overall a similar sound. i believe the irish language was "modernised" in the 50s and a few of the words were made a lot smaller, whilst scottish gaelic was left alone. but the lowland scottish dialect is called scots, and is more like a very colloquial version of english.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: Reiver 2
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 06:20 PM

Thanks, Leo. That pretty much jibes with what I understood or have been told. I agree about lowlands Scots as being colloquial English more than Gaelic. That raises the question: is "mo dhuinn" Scotish Gaelic, or is it Scots? Sounds to me as though it's the Gaelic, but I'm guessing.

Yes, George, I think I'm now "officially" a member once again.

Reiver 2

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: Leo Condie
Date: 20 Aug 03 - 06:30 PM

i'm no expert but i'd be almost absolutely certain that mo dhuinn is not Scots. as to whether it's Irish or Scottish, I couldn't say.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From:
Date: 21 Aug 03 - 01:16 AM

Reiver, as I said in my original posting. It's Scottish Gaelic NOT Scots.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: Jim McLean
Date: 21 Aug 03 - 11:13 AM

The Lowland Scottish dialect has nothing to do with colloquial English. They may both have their roots in old German and have French influences but that's as far as it goes. One could argue quite successfully that modern English is a dailect of Lowland Scottish. Take modern English words such as 'night, bright, light'. Their spelling points to their original pronounciation,with a gutteral, fricative sound as in Lowland Scottish (or just plain Scottish for that matter) i.e. 'nicht, bricht, licht'. There are also Gaelic and Scandinavian borrowings. There are too many examples .. look at a Burns' poem and tell me that an English reader sees it as having been written in colloquial English.
Cheers,
Jim McLean

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 21 Aug 03 - 11:52 AM

It's not uncommon for people to get confused over all this, though it's really quite simple once you know. At the risk of repeating some of what George has already said, a few notes may help.

Scots is a form of English, and is spoken throughout Scotland (not just the Lowlands) in various dialects. It retains a lot of words which have dropped out of use in Standard English (though many are still used in Northern English dialects) and also has other loan-words deriving from French, Gaelic and other languages, which were probably never part of "English" English. At times it has been considered sufficiently distinct to qualify as a separate language (in the way that French and Provençal are considered separate) but opinion among linguists differs on this; it is this question of separateness that may give rise to the strange misapprehension we sometimes encounter that Scots derives in some way from Gaelic. It does not. It belongs to the Germanic group of languages.

Gaelic is a completely separate language, and arrived in what we now call Scotland a little earlier than did English. The Scottish, Irish and Manx forms of it are closely related but distinct. It belongs to the Celtic group of languages. It includes a good few loan-words from English, as is to be expected, but is related only insofar as they are both members of the larger Indo-European language family; a distant cousin, you might say.

You will find a number of words and expressions of Gaelic derivation in a Scots (or English, for that matter) dictionary, just as you will find words and expressions of English derivation in a Gaelic dictionary; in each case, however, the words will have been re-spelled according to the conventions of the language which has borrowed them.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: Jim McLean
Date: 21 Aug 03 - 12:45 PM

PS I hope Reiver 2's friend wasn't being called 'a ma don' !!

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 21 Aug 03 - 04:23 PM

"Amadan" is masc. "Amaid" would be fem.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: Reiver 2
Date: 22 Aug 03 - 02:58 PM

My friend said that she was glad to know that he WASN'T calling her "amadan" or "muldoon." She likes "mo dhuinn" so I'll leave it at that with her! That way she said she won't have to punch out her friend if they should happen to meet in some kind of afterlife.

Many thanks to Malcolm for what appears to be a definitive lesson on the languages. I know I tend to be careless in making references to "Gaelic", "Irish", "Scots", etc. Your comment is very helpful. I'll print it out and save it. Thanks to Jim, also.

Apologies to George. You did tell me the phrase was Scottish Gaelic from the very start. (I didn't expect this thread to get so long, and didn't go back to check before asking that unnecessary question.)

Reiver 2

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 22 Aug 03 - 03:31 PM

Just a point about Muldoon not making it into the English language Michael.In one of Paul Muldoon's poems ,I can't remember which one ,he goes on about how the Muldoo(n)s were a San Francisco street gang at the turn of the last century .The word OODLUM was derived through back slang from their name.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From:
Date: 22 Aug 03 - 03:37 PM

No problem, Reiver.

Subject: RE: Gaelic phrase
From: michaelr
Date: 22 Aug 03 - 07:24 PM

Guest, that's very interesting. Do we know whether that supposed "back slang" derivation (MULDOON = OODLUM) is for real or whether ol' Paul made it up?

Cheers,
Michael