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Tag Archives: lenition

Five Irish Names for Boys: Pronunciation and Meaning (Alabhaois, Éadbhard, Feardorcha, Rónán, Tiarnán) Posted by on Mar 31, 2016

(le Róislín) Continuing our look at some Irish given names, here are five more, this time for boys.   I picked these five names since they are interesting from the viewpoint of spelling or meaning.  They range in popularity from moderate (Rónán) to fairly uncommon (Alabhaois).  At some point, I might also do a blog…

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Naomh, Neamh, Neamh-, Niamh, Nimh — Which One Pertains to St. Patrick and How Do You Pronounce Them? Posted by on Mar 17, 2016

(le Róislín) Oh, the beauty of péirí íosdifríochta! In the title we see five words that have similar spellings and somewhat similar sounds.   So let’s dig right in and see what the differences are. We’ll start with “naomh” for two reasons.  First, it comes first alphabetically, never a bad reason for sequencing.  Second, this is…

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Christmas Movie Titles  — Aistrithe go Gaeilge (Irish) le Bearnaí le Líonadh Posted by on Jan 6, 2016

(le Róislín)   One last Christmas blog before the season really wraps up.  For any teachers out there, especially of adult ed/night school courses in the Irish language, this one could be a ready-made class activity.  For some lesson objectives, please see Nóta a Dó (thíos). We’re building here on a previous blog (nasc thíos)…

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Irish Christmas Terms without the Word ‘Christmas’ — Quiz Yourself! Posted by on Dec 23, 2015

(le Róislín) One of the first Christmas blogs I wrote in this series was about Christmas phrases that don’t have the word “Christmas” in them (nasc thíos).  Every time we use the word Christmas in Irish (Nollaig, Nollag), we have to be aware of the ending (“-aig” or “-ag”) and whether or not to include…

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Mutating Turkeys, With ‘Séimhiú’ and ‘Urú’ That Is Posted by on Nov 17, 2015

(le Róislín) ‘Tis the season to “talk turkey,” so let’s go for it.  And by the way, “mutating” here (as in the title of this blog) doesn’t refer to “sócháin” (mutations in genetics:  A thiarcais, sin turcaí a bhfuil trí shnúda air!) but rather to “athruithe gramadaí,” that is, the use of “séimhiú” and “urú”…

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Irish Pronunciation Redux — with lenition — for “25 Chulaith Oíche Shamhna” (25 Halloween Costumes) Posted by on Oct 29, 2015

(le Róislín) In the most recent blog (nasc thíos), we looked at the pronunciations and translations for 25 Irish words or phrases for popular, or at least hypothetical, Halloween costumes.  In reviewing these, I mentioned that I was undoing the lenition that sometimes occurs when we use these terms.  In this blog, we’ll look at…

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When Is “gh” pronounced like “y” in Irish words?  Think ‘gheobhaidh’ and ‘gheocaigh’ Posted by on Sep 30, 2015

(le Róislín) So, we finally finished that mionsraith about Irish words starting with non-traditional letters in the Irish alphabet (v, w, x, y, z) and even threw in the “-cs-” spelling for “x” (as in “innéacs” or “tacsaí“) for good measure.  We’ve previously noted that in Irish, “gh-” and “dh-” at the beginning of a word…

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