Irish Proverb 334 - Seanfhocail Ghaeilge 334

This proverb presents what I see as a conundrum in Irish, and I'm sure there's something I'm not understanding.

If Ní hé lá na báistí lá na bpáistí means "The rainy day is not the day for children", then would "Ní hé lá na bpáistí lá na báistí" mean "The day for children is not the rainy day"?  If so, how would you tell which is which?  If not, what is the change in structure that makes it work differently?  Would "páistí" not be eclipsed in that form?  Does the change from object to subject cause such a change?

Thanks.

Dale

Hi Dale, Yes, this is a really interesting question. Not sure I can give you a full answer. The head-wrecking thing about this example is the fact that the two phrases linked by the copula sound exactly the same. So you couldn't tell which is which from the sound. I don't think one of them can be classified as the subject and the other as the object (not with the copula), even though the pronouns would lead you to think that. In these cases, you are using the copula to identify one thing with another. Thus Is é Seán an múinteoir means that there are two entities, Seán and the teacher, and they are identified with each other. So, to answer your question, could you reverse them? To me Is é an múinteoir Seán sounds really strange. It's just to do with the meaning, I think. The most specific term always has to come first. Thus Is é Obama Uachtarán Mheiriceá sounds right, but Is é Uachtarán Mheiriceá Obama sounds wrong (unless somebody has just suggested that Obama is the president of Ireland or France). To return to the proverb, you are saying that The day of the rain is not the same as the day of the children. But the theme of the sentence is the rainy day. The sentence is about rainy days. It then goes on to say that this is nto a day for children. The theme of the sentence is not days for children and it seems odd if you write this first as Ní he lá na bpáistí lá na báistí. Try putting something else in there: Ní hé lá na báistí lá na peile. (The day of rain is not the day of football) Even in English, it seems stranger or more confusing to say The day of football is not the day of rain. In other words, I think what really makes the difference here is the semantics. The meaning of the phrases. Does this make any sense at all?