the irish apple and the english apple...

[Daniel Cassidy]

Thanks much for feedback. Please see my version of "apple" again and then 
short note below...

Big Apple
Big Áth Béil   (gen. of béal)  (pron. ahh-beeul)
Big Ford of the Mouth (of the Rivers)
New York City.

Áth: Ford; a river crossing. 
Béal: Mouth (of a river).
Belfast: Béal Feirste: Mouth of the sandy bank of Farset River
Dublin: Baile Átha Cliath: Settlement of the Ford of the Hurdles 
(of the Liffey River).  
New York: The Big Áth Béal: The Big Ford of the Mouth of the (Hudson and 
East) rivers. 

New York's monicker, then, incorporates one word each from the Irish names 
for Belfast and Dublin.  An ancient Gaelic name for the ancient crossing of 
the two great North Atlantic Rivers.

+++


A Chairde:   (Friends...)

The two Irish words A/TH and BE/AL are used in hundreds of place names in 
Ireland, Scotland and the Isles.  I believe it is the source of the Gaelic 
monicker the "apple" for NYC. If some do not agree with me than their big 
apple can be as English as big Liz Windsor. 

as far as citations of Irish words in English, that would be humorous if it 
were not for the long and well known depredations of cultural imperialism in 
Ireland. the language was first banned in 1366 with the statutes of Kilkenny. 
that was copper fastened with the passage of the penal laws in the early 18th 
century. a modern dictionary was not published until 1926. the Irish language 
was not permitted to be taught in schools in English colonized Ireland for 
close to half a millennium.

90% of the several million Irish and Scots-Gaelic speakers that came to north 
America were illiterate. 

This is the old debate fought by Murray, Furnivall et al. over spoken rather 
than written sources.

With Irish, Native American, African, and other penalized tongue you must put 
your ear to the ground.

I look forward to the discussions...Thanks for the note.

Sl/an agus Beannachtai/
Health and Blessings,

Daniel Cassidy