Ozish, the language of the Land of Oz
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Introduction The Ozish Gaelic English Dictionary is complete. 143 names and expressions, for all of which the relationship of the 1800s Irish Gaelic pronunciation is one to one with the English pronunciation. All of them are also appropriate in meaning. None are inappropriate. “Pearl” as the name of the maid in Langwidere’s palace for instance. It’s an appropriate name for a woman. Of the 143, over 80 are downright to the point. “Jail housekeeper” for the lady whose house is the prison of the city of emeralds. And there are a few which are simple straightforward translations as the wanderer being named “Wanderer”.At first I was going to cite the dictionary where the word was best to be found out of the numerous dictionaries and glossaries that I have investigated. But there’s no need. All the words occur in two dictionaries and quite a few are in both. The “Etymological Dictionary of Scottish-Gaelic” of Alexander MacBain, published in 1896, which is still in print today. It contains about 7000 words and gives their derivation as it was understood in the 1800s. The dictionary portion is preceded by a section on pronunciation and historical grammar which has been extremely useful. It’s available in paperback for $10 or so. There is also an online version which has only the dictionary portion and is free. It’s in “Your dictionary”. The “Irish-English Dictionary” of Edward O’Reilly, published in 1817 and again in 1821 and 1864. It was the standard Gaelic dictionary of the 1800s. This dictionary contains more than 20,000 words along with some quotations and usage. There is a grammar and guide to pronunciation, which, if you already have a good idea of how the words are pronounced can be quite useful. This one’s a bit pricey, being $750 to $1000 on Bookfinder but at least it’s available. That these two collections out of the more than 20 that I consulted should contain all the words in Baums’ 17 books tells me two things. That most likely he used these two dictionaries, and that he was probably not a fluent speaker of Gaelic. The last because, if he were, there would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 of his words that were in no dictionary at all, since only about 20% or less of the language has survived. Or then again, perhaps he just didn’t want to use a word that he couldn’t find called out. Regardless, all of the names and expressions in the 15 Oz books and 2 Borderland books are either English usage, English puns and distortions, English nonsense forms or Gaelic. With three exceptions. There are two expressions in Greek and one in Chinese. The two Greek words are “Hippikaloric” and “Skeropythrope” which mean “Magma” and “Spark emitter”. The Chinese expression is “Tititi hoochoo the great JinJin” which you will find explained in Tik-Tok of Oz part 1. The material is presented in sections. First, all the words in context, with their English equivalents in quotes. Then the phonetic alphabet, so you can see the relationship between the Gaelic spelling and the AngloIrish pronunciation. Then the dictionary, broken into bitesize chunks. And why Gaelic? See Oztological Conclusions And of course I will gladly answer any questions about this that you may have. |
copyright 2007 by Boq Aru