DR GARRY BANNISTER originally believed his Irish-English thesaurus project would take him “a year or two” to complete.
40 years later, it is finally on the shelves.
The book has been described by its publisher New Island as “the culmination of a life’s work.” Bannister, who is 70 now, said the idea came to him during a fateful conversation he had with his father on the Isle of Man, when he was 30.
“It was the last time I saw my father, because he died shortly afterwards and I was away in Russia at the time. But he asked me if I had any kind of life project. ‘You need something that will be a continuity in your life. Everybody needs a big life project. What’s yours?’”
Released earlier this year, Bannister’s Teasáras Gaeilge-Béarla is one those shortlisted in the Best Irish Published Book of the Year category, sponsored by The Journal, at the An Post Book Awards (the shortlist can be read in full here). Weighing at 2kg, the impressive tome contains no fewer than 700,000 entries.
Speaking to The Journal about his book, Bannister described it as “a reference book that is very much needed. It’s something that we need to have. We needed this for years.”
The bilingual thesaurus does exactly what you would expect and more. Naturally, it contains Irish words and their various English counterparts, but it also features thematic lists, proverbs, and etymologies and histories of Irish words and phrases with respect to the language’s mystic past.
“Tá do chosa nite/Your feet are washed” is one such phrase included by Bannister, a phrase which draws on the Biblical story of Jesus having his feet washed before his crucifixion. In colloquial Irish, this phrases means that someone is about to be crucified.
Bannister studied at Trinity College before moving to Moscow and achieving a PhD in comparative linguistics. He went on to teach at St Columba’s College where he served as head of the Irish Department for 30 years.
“There’s one very interesting thing which I have in this thesaurus, which no other thesaurus has,” said Bannister. “It’s lists of verbs with their preposition or noun combinations in long lists, which shows the great variety of English verbs that are used to translate them.”
Illustrating the versatility of the Irish language, Bannister gives the example of “laghdaigh,” a word commonly means “to lessen”. The Teasáras demonstrates that this one Irish verb can be used for many different purposes, such as:
Bannister also spoke about the painful decision to omit certain words which have fallen out of use down through the ages.
“There’s a lovely word in Irish: fáfall, which means the falling off or dissipation of rain, but it’s not used now. We didn’t include it because it went out years ago.”
Indeed, Bannister tells The Journal that only “one-third, if not even less” of the phrases and words gathered while researching the book have made it into its final, printed edition.
While Bannister has great hopes that poets and writers will be able to draw upon his Teasáras to add detail to their work, he also hopes it can be helpful for would-be Irish speakers at large.
“We have to work with the English words that would be most used by English speakers, and find the best Irish equivalent for these, and at the same time, represent the vast richness of the Irish language,” he said.
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