# Welsh: Hiraeth



## L'irlandais

Hello,
In the context of the recent publication "Lost in Translation", by Ella Frances Sanders

_*Hiraeth* a homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to, the nostalgia and the grief for the lost places of your past, places that never were..._

She specifically says there isn't a word in English for it ;  but I was wondering if there might be one in Irish.  In a word how does one say this as Gaeilge,?


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## AndrasBP

_'She specifically says there isn't a word in English for it'
_
Isn't 'hiraeth' the same as 'longing'? (hir = long)


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## djmc

Not sure about Gaelic but the Breton for the French nostalgie is hiraezh. This could of course be a direct borrowing from the Welsh.


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## Stoggler

djmc said:


> Not sure about Gaelic but the Breton for the French nostalgie is hiraezh. This could of course be a direct borrowing from the Welsh.



Or they could be cognates (considering the Breton and Welsh are of the same branch of Celtic languages and are very similar, hardly beyond the realms of possibility!).


AndrasBP said:


> _'She specifically says there isn't a word in English for it'
> _
> Isn't 'hiraeth' the same as 'longing'? (hir = long)



It's related to longing, but there's a lot more wrapped up in the Welsh word "hiraeth" than just longing, in the same way that the English "cozy" just doesn't quite convey the full meaning of the Dutch "gezellig", German "gemütlich" or Danish "hygge".

There's a short Wikipedia article on "hiraeth" (in English) which gives an explanation of its meaning.


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## Distance

I found the word "sireacht" on Google, but it doesn't get lots of results on Google. It may be something limited to Brythonic Celtic languages.


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## Tegs

There isn't an Irish word for hiraeth, but the Breton sounds like the same thing - they share a lot of similar vocabulary. The closest to the Welsh hiraeth in other languages is the Portuguese "saudade" which also has no direct English translation.


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## WestFevalia

Tegs said:


> There isn't an Irish word for hiraeth.



I don't agree with you, Tegs. Of course I don't speak Breton fluently (just understand it a little) but here's what I found in Albert Deshayes's _Dictionnaire étymologique du breton_, p. 332 (the original is in French but I translate it):
"*Hirezh *(_hiraezh_, 1499). fem. noun, impatience, homesickness, from _hir _+ _-ezh_, corresponds with Cornish _hyreth_, Welsh _hiraeth _and Irish _sireacht_."

By the way, the language spoken in British Cornwall _is _Cornish, isn't?


AndrasBP said:


> _'She specifically says there isn't a word in English for it'
> _
> Isn't 'hiraeth' the same as 'longing'? (hir = long)



It might be!

We French also have the expression _trouver le temps long_:
1) to be bored.
2) to lose patience.

And since _hiraezh_/_hirezh _also means _impatience _in Breton...
By the way, djmc, according to Deshayes, both the Welsh and Breton words come from the Celtic root _siros_. It's related to Latin _serus_.


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## Tegs

Stoggler said:


> It's related to longing, but there's a lot more wrapped up in the Welsh word "hiraeth" than just longing, in the same way that the English "cozy" just doesn't quite convey the full meaning of the Dutch "gezellig", German "gemütlich" or Danish "hygge".
> 
> There's a short Wikipedia article on "hiraeth" (in English) which gives an explanation of its meaning.



I'll just add to this. Síreacht in Irish means longing. Hiraeth is all of the following: homesickness, grief for a lost or departed person or thing, longing.

As far as I'm aware, there isn't one word in Irish or English that means all of those at once.


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## WestFevalia

Oh, I see. Same etymology but not exactly the same meaning. My mistake


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## Tegs

No worries. The Welsh definitely doesn't mean impatience, although I don't know about Breton. Cornish is spoken in Cornwall, yes, as a minority language.


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## seanos

Tegs said:


> I'll just add to this. Síreacht in Irish means longing. Hiraeth is all of the following: homesickness, grief for a lost or departed person or thing, longing.
> 
> As far as I'm aware, there isn't one word in Irish or English that means all of those at once.



_Cumha_ is probably the Irish word for this. I don’t think _síreacht_ in that sense is really a live word.

I find these “there is no word for X” memes rather irritating as they’re almost always overstated.


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## spindlemoss

WestFevalia said:


> By the way, the language spoken in British Cornwall _is _Cornish, isn't?





Tegs said:


> Cornish is spoken in Cornwall, yes, as a minority language.



You can find lots of info on it here and there's a good dictionary too. There's lots a course here if you want to take a look.


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## Tegs

seanos said:


> _Cumha_ is probably the Irish word for this. I don’t think _síreacht_ in that sense is really a live word.
> 
> I find these “there is no word for X” memes rather irritating as they’re almost always overstated.



It's not a meme to state that there is no single word in one language which encompasses all meanings of a word in another. Another example of this is the English word "row" which has many meanings and doesn't have a one-word equivalent in Welsh which encompasses all of those. 

Cumha is used for places, not people. For a person we would say cronaigh in Irish. You can use hiraeth for both people and places. Hiraeth is perfectly encompassed in the Portuguese word saudade, which is also good for people and places.


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