{"id":9,"date":"2009-03-23T16:10:03","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T20:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/?p=9"},"modified":"2016-07-22T19:43:08","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T19:43:08","slug":"beannachtai-i-ngaeilge-%e2%80%93-or-how-to-greet-someone-in-irish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/beannachtai-i-ngaeilge-%e2%80%93-or-how-to-greet-someone-in-irish\/","title":{"rendered":"Beannachta\u00ed i nGaeilge \u2013 Or How to Greet Someone in Irish"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Beannachta\u00ed i nGaeilge (Cuid a hAon) \u2013 Or How to Greet Someone in Irish<\/strong><\/p>\n

For starters, let\u2019s look at the word \u201cbeannacht<\/strong>,\u201d which literally means \u201ca blessing\u201d but which also means \u201cgreeting.\u201d Traditionally almost all Irish greetings were blessings. Today, the field has opened up with various versions of \u201chello\u201d and \u201chi\u201d now on the scene. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The two options given in most textbooks up to the 1990s were \u201cGo mbeanna\u00ed Dia duit\u201d <\/strong>and \u201cDia duit<\/strong>.\u201d They both basically mean \u201cGod bless you.\u201d The first greeting literally means \u201cMay God bless (to) you\u201d and the second one is simply \u201cGod to you.\u201d The longer greeting isn\u2019t as widespread today, although I do hear it among native speakers of Irish. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In both cases, the word \u201cduit<\/strong>\u201d can appear as \u201cdhuit<\/strong>,\u201d with a change in spelling and pronunciation. This version is pronounced with the initial \u201cdh,\u201d a sound not found in English and not too easy to describe, except by comparison with other languages. One important feature is that the \u201cd\u201d in the \u201cdh\u201d cluster is not pronounced at all. If anything, \u201cdh\u201d is more of an \u201ch\u201d sound, pronounced deep in the throat. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This \u201cdh\u201d sound is a guttural version of the \u201cch\u201d sound found in words like Scottish \u201cloch<\/em>\u201d and German \u201cBuch<\/em>\u201d or \u201cAchtung<\/em>,\u201d that is to say, the vibration of the vocal cords occurs lower down in the throat than in \u201cloch<\/em>,\u201d \u201cBuch<\/em>,\u201d or \u201cAchtung<\/em>.\u201d It is represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet by the gamma symbol, \/<\/span><\/span>\u0263\/<\/span>, and is found in languages such as Arabic, Portuguese, and Turkish. Some Spanish words (haga, agua<\/em>) also have this pronunciation, depending on who is speaking. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard the \u201cduit<\/strong>\u201d pronunciation mostly among Donegal speakers, and the \u201cdhuit<\/strong>\u201d among those from Conamara. Either way, these phrases are just a few of the many ways to greet someone in Irish. Some of the recent alternatives are hal\u00f3<\/strong>, haileo<\/strong>, haigh<\/strong> and hoigh. <\/strong>There are other strategies for greeting people as well. One is to plunge right into the question \u201cHow are you?\u201d and that will be the subject of at least one whole blog, maybe more. Another approach, which is pretty well restricted to informal usage among peers, friends, or colleagues, is simply to say \u201cbhuel<\/strong>,\u201d followed by the person\u2019s name. You guessed it! \u201cBhuel<\/strong>\u201d is the Irish for the interjection \u201cwell.\u201d Since Irish has very few words spelled with a \u201cw,\u201d the cluster \u201cbhu\u201d is used instead. In pronunciation, it sounds almost exactly like the English word \u201cwell.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Stay tuned for another blog on how to respond to a greeting in Irish and another on the plural forms used for saying hello to several people. And, as promised, blag eile<\/strong> (another blog) on the various ways to ask \u201cHow are you?\u201d in Irish \u2013 at least one for each dialect! <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Bhur mblag\u00e1la\u00ed – R\u00f3isl\u00edn<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\ufffd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(le R\u00f3isl\u00edn) Beannachta\u00ed i nGaeilge (Cuid a hAon) \u2013 Or How to Greet Someone in Irish For starters, let\u2019s look at the word \u201cbeannacht,\u201d which literally means \u201ca blessing\u201d but which also means \u201cgreeting.\u201d Traditionally almost all Irish greetings were blessings. Today, the field has opened up with various versions of \u201chello\u201d and \u201chi\u201d now…<\/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":[3972,4302,4488,4756,229744,273425,273424,58,359130,374821,374817,7431,5466,374813,374822,12121,306389,229646,11],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-irish-language","tag-achtung","tag-beannacht","tag-buch","tag-conamara","tag-connemara","tag-dia-dhuit","tag-dia-duit","tag-dialect","tag-donegal","tag-go-mbeannai-dia-daoibh","tag-go-mbeannai-dia-duit","tag-greeting","tag-guttural","tag-haigh","tag-haileo","tag-halo","tag-hoigh","tag-loch","tag-pronunciation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8158,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/8158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/irish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}