Wednesday 30 July 2014

Nice to meet you. To meet you.... Deas?

OK, here's another post about Irish but how it has made me think about the English language. Is this something that you have experienced while learning a new language?

Image credit: Jeltovski
I hadn't thought about how much emphasis is placed on the tone of voice while speaking English. If you're feeling quite formal, for example, and say It's nice to meet you quite often the response can be It's nice to meet you, with an emphasis on the last word.

Some would respond with It's nice to meet you too, you too or just grunt but this is simply to add an additional word to the end of the greeting.

In Irish the greeting can be tá sé go deas bualadh leat, and the response can be tá sé go deas bualadh leatsa 

 - with the bonus sé go deas bualadh leatsa chomh maith! if you want to show off ;-)

So the surprise to me was the addition of the sa sound for emphasis, rather than simply adding an additional word to the end. It's another example to me of how the Irish language is formed differently to English.

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Image sourced from Morguefile, a free photo archive

Sunday 27 July 2014

Féinphic - Selfie sunday

Féinphic is the (new) Irish word for "selfie"

Donegal by night
Dún na nGall ar an oíche
I took this selfie in Donegal last night       Thóg mé an Féinphic sa dún na nGall aréir

Yes - I went there.                                                Cinnte, Chuaigh mé go ansin
                                                                             (no Chuaigh mé ann. Níl mé cinnte!)

Tuesday 1 July 2014

I resign!

So tonight was officially my last night on the committee of the Medway St Patrick's day parade committee. It was a sad evening, but I know the time has come to move on. There are other projects that I would like to work on, and the time needed to put together a parade like this would mean that they would not see the light of day

After speaking with the new committee, I know that there are a lot of plans for the next year. It sounds very exciting, and I am sure that that the future of the parade rests in safe hands

Image credit: DuBoix
 So, what do I do now? It's very exciting, but I'm not sure which project to start first...
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Image sourced from Morguefile