Tag Archives: moon
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…
How To Say ‘Tweet’ and ‘Twitter’ in Irish Posted by róislín on Sep 30, 2013
(le Róislín) Remember when “tweets” and “twittering” mostly referred to birds, especially the “spideog” or the “smólach imirce“? Or perhaps the sound of “caint eachtardhomhandach” (the speech of extra-terrestrials) as in H. G. Wells’ insect-like Selenites? You might recall that they made “a slight elusive twittering,” as observed by Messrs. Bedford and Cavor (The First…
Who Says Irish Doesn’t Have Many Cognates with English? (Cuid a Trí/Pt. 3: Grian, Gealach, Sol, Luan) Posted by róislín on Apr 30, 2013
(le Róislín) Continuing the quest for cognates (naisc thíos), let’s look at another pair of words, sun and moon, each of which typically has many similar-looking cousins throughout the Indo-European language family. Given that the Irish word for sun is “grian” and the Irish for “moon” is “gealach,” it looks like we have a bit…
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…