NYT on Daniel Cassidy

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

Yes, of course.  There are already some words well recognized to derive from Gaelic, and it's no trick to include them in the book.  The scholarly challenge facing Cassidy was  to find words of unknown or uncertain origin and demonstrate that they plausibly derive from Gaelic.  And  of course, he hasn't done this.  Cassidy may turn out to be correct in a few of his guesses (remains to be seen), but he has not done the scholar's job of providing the necessary evidence and also winnowing  out the obviously incorrect guesses.

Btw, I don't remember seeing a bibliography in Cassidy's book.  Have any articles been written on Gaelic borrowings into English?

Gerald Cohen

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        Original message from: Wilson Gray, Friday, November 9, 2007 10:11 AM

> FWIW, I agree with Cassidy that the source of "galore" is Irish _go
> leor_ [g@ l'or], as does the OED On Line. "Even a stopped clock has
> the correct time twice a day," to coin a phrase.
>
> -Wilson
        <snip>

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