English really is the bastard tongue, so much of it comes from so many places. Of course there’s the obvious ones like jalapeño, spaghetti, déjà vu, etc. Even for Scottish Gaelic we use cèilidh which most know is borrowed, but there are some hidden ones! Thought I’d share cause I find this stuff p cool
Galore - Comes from Scottish Gaelic ‘gu leòr’ (or Irish ‘go leór’) which means sufficient or enough. Funny how it came to mean abundance lol
Whiskey - This one I already knew a while ago, but it derives from ‘uisge-beatha’ which meant water of life. It was then shortened to whikseybae and now, whiskey
Clan - This one isn’t too surprising, but still interesting. It comes from ‘clann’ in Scottish Gaelic which meant children. It’s easy to imagine the context of the Fraser Clann becoming the Fraser Clan we know today
Slogan - Now this one was a shock! Slogan is from ‘sluagh-ghairm’, a battle cry or word-for-word, army shout. It evolved from a designated expression for an army to one for a political party, and today for anything really
sgian [knife f.] - sounds like the verb ‘to skin’. Knives can be used to skin things and other similar uses
sgillin [penny f.] - so similar to shilling! I’m going to assume that’s the origin till I google the etymology
not [pound] - sounds like note $$$
latha [day] - sounds like long if you were to yawn and exhale while saying it, which makes me think of someone coming home from work and yawning “long day”. A bit of a reach but it clocks in my mind lol
stais [moustache f.] - this is literally just ‘stache
mac [son] - mac!! Like in last names mac! Macgreggor, Macdonald, Macmillan…. Equivalent to Robertson, Stevenson, Johnson
No seriously, learn how to sing songs in your language. It doesn’t even matter if you comprehend the lyrics, the main goal is picking up the phonetics! The bardic tradition is a huge part of Celtic identities, especially for the Gaels of Scotland, Ireland, and Nova Scotia through the ceilidh. There’s also a pretty strong tradition in Wales through Eisteddfod. So by learning your language through song you’re learning pronunciation and flow whilst maintaining an ancient tradition!
In Scottish Gaelic we don’t say “You’re welcome” we say “se do bheatha (shay doh veha)” which means “It’s your life” as in “Your life depended on it of course I helped you” and I think that’s beautiful.
Okay okay okay but so the first one is simple! Vocative is when you’re adressing someone, so the noun (person) changes and gets an ‘a’ before it if the first letter is a consonant, to my understanding. Cool
First time getting back into gaelic since a while, did a lil revising and realized that ‘muc’ sounds a lot like muck lol. Imma be using that from now on 🐽
I can’t express how much of an idiot I looked like jumping around in the dairy section because I recognized bó as cow from knowing it in Scottish Gaelic
(“Gáildhig” is the native word for Scottish Gaelic)
Currently on my 43 day streak on Duolingo, and thought I’d post some basic sentence patterns for Gáildhig (gah-lik). When I first started studying Japanese what got me through a lot of conversations was learning sentence patterns (which were heavily emphasized by the podcast I was listening to), that I could pop new words into when I learned them, instead of learning a lot of vocabulary I would forget easily.
So here’s the sentences I’m seeing most commonly, mostly from Duolingo and LearnGaelic! And some words to fit into them for the absolute beginners.
–Words in parentheses are pronunciations of the previous word–
“This is”, “Is”, and “It isn’t”.
Seo _____ (shoh _____) // This is _____.
Tha _____ (hah _____) // It is _____, or _____ is _____
Chan eil_____ (hahn eel_____) // It isn’t ______, or ______ isn’t _____
Seo is translated to “This is”, since they are both demonstrative pronouns. Seo cofaidh (shoh cawfee) means “This is coffee”. You, in this situation, are demonstrating that this is, indeed, coffee.
Tha is usually translated as “Is” or “It is”. It can be used similarly to Seo, but is a personal pronoun rather than demonstrative. It is a third person pronoun much like ‘he’ or ‘she’ (which in Gáildhig is e (eh) and i (ee) respectively). Tha gràindeag (ha granyak) is “It’s a hedgehog”. Tha gràindeag stampa (hah granyak stahm-puh) is “The hedgehog is cute.”. In the last sentence, rather than being “It is”, it functions more like “is”.
Finally, Chan eil is the negative form of the previous two. Chan eil uisge-beatha (hahn eel ooshka beh-heh) means “This is not whiskey” or “It is not whiskey”.
And… that’s it! Here’s ten more phrases to practice your Gáildhig!
Dulich (doo lichk) // Sorry
Hálo (hah loh) // Hello
Tìoraidh (cheerie) // Goodbye
Cimar a tha sibh? (kimahr a hah shiv) // How are you?
Tha mi gu math (hah mee goo mah) // I’m fine
Tapadh leat OR Tapadh leibh (tahpah let OR tahpah leiv) // Thank you (casual and formal, respectively)
Mas e do thoil e (mass e doo holl eh) // Please (if using in a sentence, it comes after whatever you are requesting. Pasta mas e do thoil e is “Pasta, please”. And yes, pasta is pronounced the same
I was doing a little bit of prep for my beginners Gaelic group tonight and thought I’d share some of the questions that we’ve covered over the past few months. I will do the answers, but we’re going to go over them all together tonight, so I thought I’d just post these for now as I may not have time to type everything up for a few days.
Here they are:
Dè an latha a th’ann an-diugh? What day is it today?
A bheil e fuar an-diugh? Is it cold today?
Cò tha seo? Who is this?
Dè an aois a tha thu? What age are you?
Ciamar a tha an t-sìde an-diugh? What is the weather like today?