Tag Archives: máthair
Oh, Man! ‘Fear,’ ‘Fir,’ ‘Fhir,’ and ‘bhFear,’ (How to say ‘man’ and ‘men’ in Irish) Posted by róislín on Jan 9, 2014
(le Róislín) Since Nollaig na mBan on January 6th gave us the opportunity to discuss the Irish word for ‘woman,’ we might as well follow up with the word for ‘man.’ First, let me clarify that this blog will discuss ‘man’ (fear) as opposed to woman (bean), not “man” as opposed to the following: plants…
JFK agus a Chúlra Éireannach Posted by róislín on Nov 21, 2013
(le Róislín) Let me start out by saying that other than a Vicipéid article (flagged by Vicipéid itself as containing “droch-Ghaeilge“) and one brief bio in Irish that appears to have been machine-translated (naisc thíos), I haven’t found much biographical information on John F. Kennedy written in Irish. So this blog will just present the…
When Is A ‘Máthair” Not A ‘Mother’ (literally, that is) Posted by róislín on May 7, 2013
(le Róislín) No, this blog isn’t going to be about toircheas fireann (à la Trip Tucker and the Xyrillians in Star Trek: Enterprise, The Unexpected). Nor will it be about capaill mhara or snáthaidí mara or the possibilities of toirchis eachtópacha i bhfir as postulated in our homeworld or as speculated about i bhficsean eolaíoch…
Who Says Irish Doesn’t Have Many Cognates with English? (Cuid a Dó/Pt. 2: Téarmaí Gaoil, Focail Ghaolmhara) Posted by róislín on Apr 27, 2013
(le Róislín) Ascaill, axilla … in the last blog* we talked about how Irish may, in fact, have many focail ghaolmhara with other languages. The words are just not always cognates with English, at least not basic everyday English. Most of us are more likely to say that “ascaill” means “armpit” than to say that…
Stella, Étoile, Estrella, Stea … Réalta! Posted by róislín on Jun 20, 2011
(le Róislín) Sandwiched between Lá na Brataí (an American holiday celebrated on June 14th) and Lá na Saoirse (4 Iúil) might be a good time to talk about “réaltaí agus riabha” (stars and stripes). So we’ll take a sos (break) from the díochlaontaí for a while, and address, first, the “réalta” component. The “riabha” will…
“Comharsa,” “Monarcha,” “Pearsa”: An Cúigiú Díochlaonadh Arís Posted by róislín on Jun 10, 2011
(le Róislín) We’ve recently seen several patterns for 5th-declension nouns in Irish. One small group, which contains some very important kinship terms, looks like this: athair (father), athar, aithreacha máthair (mother), máthar, máithreacha Another group sometimes also has the “-air” ending but works slightly differently when you create the possessive form (adding “-ach”) and includes…
An Iarmhír “-ach” sa Chúigiú Díochlaonadh: Beoir (Beer) vs. Beorach (of Beer), srl. Posted by róislín on Jun 3, 2011
(le Róislín) We’ve recently seen one pattern for the 5th category of Irish nouns (an cúigiú díochlaonadh), which involved dropping the “i” of words like máthair, athair, deartháir, and bráthair. As you may recall, that change results in phrases like the following (aistriúcháin thíos): a) gach mac máthar b) in ainm an Athar c) carr…