{"id":4063,"date":"2013-05-24T02:27:31","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T02:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/?p=4063"},"modified":"2016-01-06T19:46:25","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T19:46:25","slug":"deir-tusa-slan-deirimse-halo-saying-hello-and-goodbye-in-irish-cuid-a-haon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/deir-tusa-slan-deirimse-halo-saying-hello-and-goodbye-in-irish-cuid-a-haon\/","title":{"rendered":"Deir Tusa ‘Sl\u00e1n,’ Deirimse ‘Hal\u00f3’ (Saying ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ in Irish, Cuid a hAon: Hello)"},"content":{"rendered":"

(le R\u00f3isl\u00edn)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ever wonder what to say first in an Irish conversation?\u00a0 Or how to wrap it up?\u00a0 In this blog, we’ll look at various greetings in Irish.\u00a0 \u00a0The next blog will cover goodbyes, that is, unless there’s another blog in between, with more greetings, or at least direct address forms of names, since you’ll need that “tuiseal gairmeach<\/strong>” to include someone’s name with your goodbye or hello.<\/p>\n

Today, one of the first questions is whether to use the traditional greeting, “Dia duit<\/strong>!,” which is also a blessing (beannacht<\/strong>) or whether to follow the new development and use words like “Hal\u00f3<\/strong>!” or “Heileo<\/strong>!”<\/p>\n

So where do we start?\u00a0 I mostly use the traditional greeting “Dia duit<\/strong>!”\u00a0 If I know someone well, I might just say “Bhuel<\/strong>” (Well), then the person’s name, in the direct address form if there is one (like “a She\u00e1in<\/strong>” or “a Mh\u00e1ire<\/strong>“) and then ask how that person is, for which there are at least five variations, beginning with three different question words (Conas<\/strong> …?, C\u00e9n chaoi<\/strong> …?, Cad \u00e9 mar<\/strong> …?).<\/p>\n

Like I just said, so where do we start?\u00a0 \u00a0Why do the dulcet tones of The Sound of Music<\/em> run through my mind here, gan stad<\/strong>?\u00a0\u00a0 I guess they fit the situation.\u00a0 “Let’s start at the very beginning — \u00e1it mhaith le tos\u00fa<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

The traditional greeting, as you saw above, is “Dia duit<\/strong>!” and I’d be doing you a disservice if I pretended there was just one form of this phrase.\u00a0\u00a0 The second main version is “Dia dhuit<\/strong>!,” which is mostly used in Connacht Irish, that is primarily in Conamara and the Aran Islands.<\/p>\n

“Dia duit<\/strong>!” is often translated as “Hello!,” but it really means, very literally, “God to you!.”\u00a0 It’s short for “Go mbeanna\u00ed Dia duit<\/strong>!” (May God bless you!), which I don’t really hear many people say these days.\u00a0 In Irish, the verb “bless” is followed by the preposition “to,” represented here by “duit<\/strong>” (to you). \u00a0Some people have reservations about the religious formulaic phrases needed for Irish greetings, but I’ll start with “Dia duit<\/strong>!” anyway because, bhuel<\/strong>, as another famous ceoldr\u00e1ma<\/strong> told us, “Traidisi\u00fan, traidisi\u00fan, traidisi\u00fan<\/strong>!”<\/p>\n

Irish greetings traditionally follow a formula.\u00a0 The first person to speak says “Dia duit<\/strong>!”\u00a0 The response is “Dia ‘s Muire duit<\/strong>!” (God and Mary bless you!).\u00a0 The word “agus<\/strong>” (and) is shortened to ” ‘s<\/strong> ” and Muire<\/strong> is the Virgin Mary, as opposed to “M\u00e1ire<\/strong>,” the latter being used for mortals named “Mary.”<\/p>\n

That much is all for if you’re talking to one person.\u00a0 “Duit<\/strong>” is specifically second-person singular.\u00a0 Remember, Irish, like most European languages, has a singular and plural form for “you.”\u00a0 English used to, when it still had “thou” for the singular, but it lost the Thou \/ Thee \/ Thine triptych centuries ago, except occasionally in the literary or poetic realm (“My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,” etc.) and as used by some Quakers up to the late 19th century.\u00a0\u00a0 Since we lost our singular\/plural you distinction in English, it seems we’ve been busily trying to recreate it with improvised plural forms (youse, yiz, youse guys, y’all, all y’all, etc.).\u00a0 Ach sin \u00e1bhar blag eile<\/strong>.\u00a0 For practical purposes, right now we need to consider what happens when you’re talking to several people, or a group, in Irish.<\/p>\n

It’s quite systematic, really.\u00a0 “Duit<\/strong>” becomes “daoibh<\/strong>” ([deev] to you, plural): Dia daoibh<\/strong>.\u00a0 Assuming it was still one person who spoke first, the response would be “Dia ‘s Muire duit<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

So we could have:<\/p>\n

A to B: Dia duit<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

B to A: Dia ‘s Muire duit<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

or<\/p>\n

A to B & C: Dia daoibh<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

B or C or B & C together to A: Dia ‘s Muire duit<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

If a third person joins the group, the traditional expression they use is “Dia ‘s Muire daoibh agus Naomh P\u00e1draig<\/strong>!” (God and Mary bless you and St. Patrick!).\u00a0 \u00a0But I can’t say I’ve heard a lot of that in real life; I’ve mostly read it.<\/p>\n

So that’s one approach, the one most typically taught.<\/p>\n

A traditional expression that doesn’t have the religious implication is “Mora duit<\/strong>!” (“Morrow to you!” or “M\u00f3r bless you!”). \u00a0“M\u00f3r<\/strong>” is\/was an elusive Celtic goddess, whose name happens to fit this usage perfectly.\u00a0 In the plural, this would be “Mora daoibh<\/strong>!”\u00a0\u00a0 If used in the morning, “ar maidin<\/strong>” can be added (Mora duit ar maidin<\/strong>!).\u00a0 This could be interpreted, a bit redundantly, as “Good morrow this morning!”\u00a0 Actually there could be some religious interpretation there, because of M\u00f3r’s divine status, but very little is known about her today.<\/p>\n

Finally we do have two words that have mostly come with telephone usage.\u00a0 There were parts of Ireland where families didn’t have their own teileaf\u00f3in<\/strong> into the 1970s and 1980s, so this is much more recent than in English.\u00a0 These are “Hal\u00f3<\/strong>!” and “Heileo<\/strong>!” (also spelled “Haileo<\/strong>“).<\/p>\n

Personally, I don’t tend to use “Hal\u00f3<\/strong>” or “Heileo<\/strong>” very much.\u00a0 If I want something less formal than “Dia duit<\/strong>,” it usually means that I already know the person.\u00a0 In that case, I’d probably go with “Bhuel, a Sh\u00e9amais<\/strong>!,”\u00a0 assuming I know that S\u00e9amas.\u00a0\u00a0 Or “Bhuel, a Mh\u00e1ire<\/strong>!” if I see my friend M\u00e1ire.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s a friendly “well,” and I don’t think there’s an exact equivalent in English, even though “bhuel<\/strong>” is borrowed from English and sounds pretty much the same.\u00a0 Anyway, we’ll wrap up this intro to greetings with a reminder that if a name follows the greeting, it’ll be in the direct address form (aka the vocative case).\u00a0 Tuilleadh ainmneacha sa tuiseal gairmeach<\/strong>?\u00a0 Somewhere within the next few blogs!<\/p>\n

Hmmm, I wonder if we could simply get away with “*Bh\u00e1dap<\/strong>?”\u00a0 Or would that be “*Mh\u00e1dap<\/strong>?”\u00a0 They’d sound the same, since “bh\u00e1<\/strong>-” and “mh\u00e1<\/strong>-” both are pronounced “waw”!\u00a0 Actually, the more traditional phrase for that purpose would be “Aon sc\u00e9al<\/strong>?” (Any story? Anything new?).\u00a0 That would be limited to use with someone you already know, as, I assume, would “Whaddap?”\u00a0 I’ve browsed a bit on the Internet to see if any other languages are literally borrowing “Whaddap?” or “Whazzup?” and literally asking “What is up?”\u00a0 Mostly I just see traditional informal greetings being used, like “\u00bfQue tal<\/em>?” or “Wie geht’s<\/em>?”\u00a0 So I’d highly recommend “Aon sc\u00e9al<\/strong>?” for people that you know reasonably well.<\/p>\n

We’ll do more with “goodbyes” in the next blog.\u00a0 There’s too much to squeeze in here, since I can think of at least five ways to say goodbye off the top of my head.\u00a0 And if I put on my “caip\u00edn smaoinimh<\/strong>,” there’s a good chance a few more will come to mind.\u00a0 Sin \u00e9, SGF (Sl\u00e1n go f\u00f3ill), R\u00f3isl\u00edn<\/strong><\/p>\n

PS: By the way, Transparent Language has been running series on “hello” and “goodbye” in the various languages it blogs, so you might want to check out na teangacha eile, \u00f3n Araibis go dt\u00ed an Urd\u00fais<\/strong> (http:\/\/www.transparent.com\/language-resources\/blogs.html#.UbaDhPlQEeU<\/a>).<\/p>\n

PPS: Sea, fuair m\u00e9 teideal an bhlag seo \u00f3 na Ciar\u00f3ga.\u00a0 Ach n\u00ed sh\u00edlim go bhfuil\/raibh aon Ghaeilge acu c\u00e9 go raibh d\u00fachas Gaelach ag cuid acu! \u00a0Maidir leis an <\/strong><\/strong>“hela, hello-a”\u00a0i gcurf\u00e1 amhr\u00e1n na gCiar\u00f3g, d’fh\u00e1gfainn \u00e9 mar at\u00e1 s\u00e9!<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

PPPS: “Na Ciar\u00f3ga” <\/strong>is fairly popularly used in Irish to refer to the Beatles.\u00a0 Of course, it really means “beetles,” without the “imeartas focal<\/strong>” we get from “beat\/beet.”\u00a0 \u00a0Ach c\u00f3ngarach go leor, de r\u00e9ir cos\u00falachta.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(le R\u00f3isl\u00edn) Ever wonder what to say first in an Irish conversation?\u00a0 Or how to wrap it up?\u00a0 In this blog, we’ll look at various greetings in Irish.\u00a0 \u00a0The next blog will cover goodbyes, that is, unless there’s another blog in between, with more greetings, or at least direct address forms of names, since you’ll…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3898],"tags":[289821,31863,273091,289820,273425,2195,289818,9780,273090,211767],"class_list":["post-4063","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-irish-language","tag-beatle","tag-beetle","tag-ciarog","tag-dia-s-muire-duit","tag-dia-dhuit","tag-hello","tag-how-to-say-hello-in-irish","tag-imeartas-focal","tag-na-ciaroga","tag-the-beatles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t