(le Róislín)

I recently noticed an interesting article about an island (nasc thíos), not Irish, but let’s just say, near Ireland (relatively speaking).  It was on the November 26th episode of 60 Minutes, on CBS.  Although the article and video are in English, it’s interesting reading, and it occurred to me that some of the vocabulary used could be quite useful to practice in Irish, as a matching game.  Also, the combined words give a sort of linguistic portrait of the island.

A link to the article is given below but I’m refraining from naming the island here, since I hope doing this exercise and looking at the map in the graphic may lead you to figure it out, or at least figure out the general region.  The answer is below, beneath the first chart.

Before we start, two quick spelling points based on the text for the graphic:

1) Why “t” before “oileán“?  Because “cén” is really “cé” (which/what) + “an” (the).  “Oileán” is masculine, so a “t” gets prefixed, as it would for “Cén t-úll?” or “Cén t-oráiste?”  So “What island is this?” becomes “Cén t-oileán é seo?”

2) Why is there a hyphen (fleiscín) in pt. 1 above  and in the graphic but not in the title of the blogpost?  Because the title uses capital letters for the main words and the fleiscín is dropped when the lower-case “t” is followed by an upper-case letter.

Na Focail: In this section, each column is alphabetized but they don’t match up with each other.   The answers, matched up, are given below.

1	amateur philosopher	ba
2	camper (vehicle)	boc mór
3	community	caora, caoirigh
4	cottage (rural)	cé
5	cows	creagach
6	craggy	daon-phoblacht
7	dolphin	deilf
8	driver	eangach
9	fiefdom	fealsúnaí amaitéarach
10	hydroelectric	fíofa
11	islander	hidrileictreach
12	main artery	míshlachtmhar
13	people’s republic	oileánach
14	pod (re: dolphins)	pobal
15	grid (power, etc.)	príobháideach
16	private	príomhbhealach
17	secret	ráth
18	secretary	rún
19	sheep (sg./pl.)	rúnaí
20	sheepdog	sípéir
21	spontaneous combustion	teachín tuaithe
22	toff	tiománaí
23	ungroomed	uathdhó
24	wharf	veain champála

Tá na freagraí thíos, in ord na haibítre.   Tá súil agam gur bhain tú sult as seo agus gur léigh tú an t-alt.   SGF – Róislín

Ainmneacha na n-oileán: an t-oileán mór,  i mBéarla: Eigg, i nGaeilge na hAlban: Eige;  an t-oileán beag bídeach:    Eilean Chathastail

Freagraí na Meaitseála

1	amateur philosopher	fealsúnaí amaitéarach
2	camper (vehicle)	veain champála (veain + “campáil” in the genitive case)
3	community	pobal
4	cottage	teachín tuaithe. lit. little house of the country
5	cows	ba, pl. of “bó”
6	craggy	creagach
7	dolphin	deilf
8	driver	tiománaí
9	fiefdom	fíofa
10	hydroelectric	hidrileictreach
11	islander	oileánach
12	main artery	príomhbhealach
13	people’s republic	daon-phoblacht
14	pod (for dolphins, whales)	ráth, can also be translated as “shoal” for fish
15	grid (power, etc.)	eangach
16	private	príobháideach
17	secret	rún
18	secretary	rúnaí
19	sheep (singular and plural – English makes no distinction)	caora, caoirigh – Irish has a separate plural form, unlike English
20	sheepdog	sípéir
21	spontaneous combustion	uathdhó (uath, self  + dó, burning)
22	toff	boc mór
23	ungroomed	míshlachtmhar
24	wharf, pier, quay	cé

Nasc:  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-isle-of-eigg/ 60 Minutes; The Isle of Eigg / Just off Scotland, a tiny island with one main road is a testament to human independence  2017Nov 26 CORRESPONDENTSteve Kroft