Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape

The Irish language has thirty-two words for field. Among them are: Geamhar – a field of corn-grass Tuar – a field for cattle at night Reidhlean – a field for games or dancing Cathairin – a field with a fairy-dwelling in it.

The richness of the Irish language is closely tied to the natural landscape and offers a more magical way of seeing the world.

Most people associate Britain and Ireland with the English language, a vast, sprawling linguistic tree with roots in Latin, French, and German. But the inhabitants of these islands originally spoke another tongue. Look closely enough and English contains traces of the Celtic soil from which it sprung, found in words like bog, loch, cairn, and crag. Today, this heritage can be found nowhere more powerfully than in modern-day Gaelic.

In Thirty-Two Words for Field, Manchán explores how Gaelic, a three-thousand-year-old lexicon, has imbued the natural world with meaning and magic, evoking a time-honored way of life, from its thirty-two separate words for a field to terms like bróis (whiskey for a horseman at a wedding), iarmhaireacht (the loneliness you feel when you are the only person awake at dawn), and bladhmann (steam rising from a fermented haystack or idle boasting).

Manchán urges readers to consider the sublime beauty and profound oddness of this ancient tongue that has been spoken in close connection to the land for thousands of years. Told through stories collected from his own life and travels, Thirty-Two Words for Field is an enthralling celebration of Irish words and a testament to the indelible relationship between landscape, culture, and language.