Irish Language Blog

(le Róislín) Irish can have up to five consonants in a row, something we rarely encounter in English.  These situations usually occur because a prefix has been added to a word, so the seemingly simple “cleas” (trick) can become “droch-chleas” when we add the prefix “droch-” (bad).  In this case, with “ch” followed by “ch,”…

(le Róislín, taking a short break from the “Nature Words” series, in honor of the season) ‘Tis the season where we go around wishing people ‘Happy’ (‘sona‘ in Irish) _____ (fill in your holiday). Or do we? One of the most basic words for “happy” in Irish is “sona,” which sometimes appears as “shona,” as…

(le Róislín) Which words should be in a dictionary and which ones should be removed after a certain period of time?  We can all probably agree that for modern English pocket dictionaries, we probably don’t need to take up space with words like “apricity” or “yelm,” although I’m delighted to find them in Landmarks, Robert…

(le Róislín) If you’ve been following this blog series, you probably know the drill by now.  The last few blog posts in this series have featured Irish words for nature terms, ranging so far from “acorn” to “crocus.”  What’s special about these particular words?  They are the Irish equivalents of the 50 or so nature…

(le Róislín) “Catkin” — now there’s a word I don’t use very often in English and I’m tickled pink to be writing about it here, in a blog for Irish language learners.  The other “c-anna” words for today’s post are a little more basic: cauliflower, chestnut, clover, conker (not “conquer” as such!), and crocus. Anybody…

(le Róislín) Continuing our list of nature words in Irish, today’s blog will cover the following: blackberry, budgie/budgerigar/parakeet, and buttercup, with a nod back to “bluebell,” which was the first subject treated in this series.   Is é sin le rá, déanfaidh muid na “b-anna.”  Tá “acorn” (dearcán) agus “almond” (almóinn) déanta againn cheana féin.  BTW…

(le Róislín)   Recently, we’ve been looking at the nature words stricken from the Oxford Junior Dictionary [English] about 10 years ago.  As you may recall, words like “acorn” and “almond” were removed from the dictionary and replaced by tech terms like “analog” and “MP3 player.”  I’ve posed the question several times now in this…