Tag Archives: ghrá
Ten Ways to Say “Bravo” in Irish (using Ceol, Gairm, Beannacht, Fáinne, etc.) Posted by róislín on Feb 18, 2016
(le Róislín) Music lovers at a classical music concert will probably wait politely until the very end to call out “Bravo!” or “Brava!” during the applause. But in the realm of Irish folk music, short phrases of encouragement are often used during the song or tune, offering encouragement to the performer. They can all be…
Saying “I Love You” in Irish Posted by róislín on Feb 11, 2016
(le Róislín) Around Valentine’s Day (Lá Vailintín), we see lots of cards, candies, and decorative items saying “I love you” in English. Irish has many ways to say this as well, although the actual verb “to love” isn’t usually part of the phrase. Most of the expressions rely on terms of endearment (téarmaí ceana)…
Love (Grá) and the Art of Applying Initial Consonant Mutations in Irish Posted by róislín on Feb 14, 2015
(le Róislín) In recent blogs and a few others from previous years, we’ve looked at ways to say “I love you,” in Irish. Often these phrases include initial consonant mutation, so what better way to practice the mutations than with variations on a theme of “grá“? In this blog, I’ll use some of the phrases…
Abair ‘I Love You’ i nDeich dTeanga (and Irish as the 11th) Posted by róislín on Feb 11, 2015
(le Róislín) ‘Tis the season to speak of “amour,” and the more ways, plus on rit, n’est-ce pas? So let’s briefly review the most traditional Irish phrase for “I love you,” and then we’ll look at the same phrase in 10 other languages. So how much more Irish will you learn from that? Well, the matching…
How To Pronounce ‘A Dheaide,’ ‘A Dhaidí,’ and Other Forms of ‘Dad/Daddy’ in Irish Posted by róislín on Jun 6, 2013
(le Róislín) Since June is mí Lá na nAithreacha, let’s look once more at the various words for “Dad” and “Daddy” in Irish, specifically in direct address. So we’ll take a brief break from the Irish names we were working on in the last blog (Seán, Sinéad, srl.) and their direct address forms (“Dia duit…
Saying “I love you” in Irish and Minding Your Velar Fricatives Posted by róislín on Oct 9, 2011
(le Róislín) We’ve recently been looking at different ways to say “I love you” in Irish. Some of you might have been wondering how to pronounce them, especially the phrases where the straightforward “grá” [graw] changes to “ghrá” [γraw, to be explained below, note the IPA gamma symbol for the “gh”] and the straightforward “croí” changes…
Saying “I Love You” in Irish (without the verb “to love”) Posted by róislín on Oct 6, 2011
le Róislín How do I love thee? Let me count the ways, but, at least for Irish, not the verbs. No verbs, hunh? What’s all that about? One of the first steps for learning Latin, at least when I was in school, was learning to conjugate the verb “to love” – amo, amas (I love…