{"id":3003,"date":"2018-07-27T16:14:54","date_gmt":"2018-07-27T20:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/?p=3003"},"modified":"2018-07-27T16:14:54","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T20:14:54","slug":"ar-fheabhas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/2018\/07\/27\/ar-fheabhas\/","title":{"rendered":"Ar fheabhas!"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I have been learning Irish, I wondered why I would possibly need so many words to say \u201cwonderful,\u201d \u201cawesome,\u201d or \u201camazing.\u201d\u00a0 On my first day of class alone, when discussing how to reply to the question \u201cHow are you?\u201d, Mary gave us 3 different ways to reply that we were wonderful.\u00a0 \u201cT\u00e1 m\u00e9 go hiontach,\u201d \u201cT\u00e1 m\u00e9 ar fheabhas,\u201d \u201cT\u00e1 m\u00e9 go dial.\u201d I couldn\u2019t possibly convince myself that I would need to learn more than just one way to say that anything was wonderful, so I stuck with the standard \u201cgo hiontach\u201d and that was it. And in the permacloud of South Bend with a pre-lunchtime class, the answer to \u201cconas at\u00e1 t\u00fa?\u201d was usually not much more than \u201cgo maith\u201d (good), \u201ctuirseach\u201d (tired) or \u201ct\u00e1 ocras orm\u201d (hungry).\u00a0 Iontach was dropped into my writing occasionally, but never overused.<\/p>\n

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Now that I\u2019m in An Cheathr\u00fa Rua, I\u2019ve found that I have, indeed, overused the word \u201ciontach.\u201d I added \u201car fheabhas\u201d to my vocab and even that was becoming overused. Our teacher begged us for some variety in our adjectives.\u00a0 I know understand why the Irish needed so so many words for wonderful.\u00a0 I\u2019ve since added \u201cthar cionn,\u201d \u201cthar bearr,\u201d and \u201car d\u00f3igh.\u201d\u00a0 If I\u2019m asked \u201cc\u00e9n chaoi bhfuil t\u00fa?\u201d I could answer with \u201cT\u00e1 m\u00e9 ar muin na muice\u201d \u2013 translated to \u201cI am on the pig\u2019s back\u201d \u2013 translated to \u201cI\u2019m wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n

How are you?<\/p>\n

T\u00e1 m\u00e9 ar muin na muice<\/p>\n

How was the trad session last night?<\/p>\n

Bh\u00ed s\u00e9 ar fheabhas<\/p>\n

How was the beach?<\/p>\n

Thar bearr<\/p>\n

Although so many aspects of the Irish language still confuse me to no end, their vocabulary makes more sense as I live through it. Not everything can be ar fheabhas, and since so many things are indeed \u201cwonderful,\u201d I have to expand my vocabulary.<\/p>\n

Their 50 or so words for types of rain are more logical as I must describe the difference between the different types of ways I get rained on during my long walks to town. And while I doubt I will ever learn each of the different words for the Ireland rain, I can imagine what creative description the Irish have for the type of rain falling.<\/p>\n

One of my proudest moments so far in this program happened at one of the (two) local pubs. One of the people in the program is well known around the town after attending the program nearly 20 years ago (he even adopted an entirely new Irish name), and one of his friends joined our table. His friend was nearly fluent but wasn\u2019t a native speaker, which was probably why I found it easier to understand him. I was able to hold conversation with him for over an hour, mostly all in Irish. If ever I was unsure of whether I got my point across and translated to English to make sure, he would say \u201cDon\u2019t translate, don\u2019t translate, tuigim,\u201d (I understand).\u00a0 Even if I wasn\u2019t forming the most academic of sentences, I was communicating.\u00a0 At one point he even tested my grammar going around and having me change the pronouns for first person, second person, third person, plural \/ single, etcetera.\u00a0 It was an easy lesson, but he was very impressed with my Irish. Each time I would stop speaking, he would tell me to keep going, saying that it didn\u2019t matter what I said, so long as it was in Irish. When I ran out of things to say I introduced everyone at the table as Gaeilge or just started saying random things, but all they want is for people to learn the Irish language. It was so encouraging to see that my communication abilities exceeded my relative confidence in them.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, we will be taking a trip to one of the Aran Islands, so my next blog post will hopefully be full of more amazing pictures of this beautiful country.\u00a0 Sl\u00e1n go foill!<\/p>\n

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Of all the places for our bus to break down, I can’t complain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\u00a0Kylemore Abbey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\u00a0Kylemore Abbey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I have been learning Irish, I wondered why I would possibly need so many words to say \u201cwonderful,\u201d \u201cawesome,\u201d or \u201camazing.\u201d\u00a0 On my first day of class alone, when discussing how to reply to the question \u201cHow are you?\u201d, Mary gave us 3 different ways to reply that we were wonderful.\u00a0 \u201cT\u00e1 m\u00e9 go … Continue reading Ar fheabhas!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2999,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290963],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sla-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2999"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3011,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3003\/revisions\/3011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}