Verse:Irta/Judeo-Mandarin/Filichdiș
Filichdiș or Ăn Fhilichdiș 'the poetic language of the filí, the highest rank of Classical Irish poets' is a special register of Ăn Yidiș which uses inflectional morphology derived from older Irish, most often Classical Irish (like most Irish bardic poetry) but sometimes from Old and Middle Irish. It is a poetic register mainly used
- for imitating Irish poetry
- in translations of Biblical poetry or vaguely medieval-European fantasy
- in experimental and speculative fiction for a variety of effects
These forms, including case forms, preposed possessive pronouns, and synthetic verb forms, are best preserved in Munster Irish, but in Ăn Yidiș they were almost completely lost and replaced with analytic constructions. Ăn Yidiș writers during the Learăgis 'Awakening' period recreated these forms by cognatizing (creating hypothetical Ăn Yidiș cognates of) older Irish or Munster Irish forms, at first to imitate Irish bardic poetry. Filichdiș works written during the Learagis period can be nigh-impenetrable for a modern reader who doesn't know Old and Middle Irish, the most notorious of which is ___ by ___. Colloquially, the term Filichdiș is often used for the most difficult versions of this register, or as "it's Greek to me", like Eleazar Kallir's piyyut Atz Kotzetz (Și Filichdiș/loșăn Oz Guziz).
Sometimes Old or Middle Irish morphology is directly borrowed:
- שעינ`פאט șeyņfăd 'I will sing' from Middle Irish 1sg future -fat
- ră-bo e 'he was, he became', from the Old Irish absolute form ro.bá of the perfect of at.tá. (The conjunct form .roba survives naturally in the răv 'jussive' and răv 'dependent form of bhă' forms of the auxilliary, cognate to Irish raibh.) Forms derived from Old Irish absolute/deuterotonic forms are sometimes used to imitate Biblical Hebrew waw-consecutives to which they are syntactically similar (in that they can't be negated or subordinated); see the Song of the Sea example below.
The Yăhuăș translation of the Tanakh uses toned down Filichdiș for poetic passages. The translation made the Filichdiș register somewhat less marked (and more like a standard suite of archaisms) for the speakers that came after it, however. In Modern Ăn Yidiș poetry, a limited number of features from Filichdiș are common.
Filichdiș often uses possessive pronouns similar to older Irish possessive pronouns rather than inflected forms of the preposition tăģ 'of'. However, even in Filichdiș, Hebrew and other non-native loans are not allowed to take possessive prefixes (the same is true of Modern Hebrew). Standardized Filichdiș possessive pronouns use both prefixes and suffixes, like in Salish languages:
- măL-chnov 'my bone', emphatic mă-chnov-să
- dăL-chnov 'your bone', emphatic dă-chnov-să
- (ăL-)chnov-șăn 'his bone' (proscribed cnov-șăn)
- (ăH-)cnov-șă 'her bone'
- or(n)-cnov 'our bone', emphatic or(n)-cnov-ņă
- văr(n)-cnov 'your bone', emphatic văr(n)-cnov-șă
- (ăn-)cnov-săn 'their bone'
-chd is a Filichdiș cognate of the native abstract noun suffix -f (both from -cht).
Samples (Translations)
From "The Call of Cthulhu"
(Use cases and Old Irishisms as much as possible)
Ņichnél nă Yăzúrim h-Orsi șa zeantă ză chol fyul is fil in iřă săm bith, ărsă Castro. Șe cruth o că gu zerăv --- nach dă-dherăv ăn zelăv șu mhünlăthă lă řołtăn e șin? --- ăch ņichnél ăn cruth șin zeantă ză dhavnă. Nuař o nă řołtăn inș ăn oț, efșăr lu torț ruathăr u dăvăn gu dăvăn třin nyav; ăch nuař o nă řołtăn as ăn oț, chan efșăr lu bi byu. Ăch ged nach el șied byu tilăgh, cha bey șied ney egi gu h-emăs.
These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die.
From the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15)
TODO: display gloss for each word in alt text
| Yăhuăș (Special forms bolded) | Neutral Ăn Yidiș | Irish (An Bíobla Naofa, 1981) |
|---|---|---|
|
Bi mi ă șeyņ dă Hășéym |
Bi mi ă șeyņ dă Hășéym |
Canfaidh mé don Tiarna; |
|
Șe mă-ņhert is mă-dhon(*) e Yoh; |
Șe ăņ ņert tam is ăn șiră tam e Yoh; |
An Tiarna mo neart, mo dhán(*); |
(*) an alternate translation of זִמְרָת zimråṫ (< *zimråṫi) is 'my might', but traditionally it's been translated as 'my song'
(**) Ăn Yidiș 'he is become my salvation'; Irish 'it is he who is my salvation'