Gaeilge

Dia duit!

I know it's been a while since you've gotten an update, but better late than never.

You might be wondering, "What the hell is Gaeilge?" I wouldn't fault you for one second if you did. You probably have heard the accent a million times, but you probably never knew that it had its own language.

Gaeilge = Irish!

I had some common misconceptions before I got started. I thought that Irish would be like French is to Haitian Creole, in that I thought Irish would sound like English, but only with some slight differences. Another example would be American English versus UK English. We can completely understand each other until it comes to slang, such as petrol. That was a horrible paragraph, but you get it!

Anyway, I could not have been more wrong. Irish is its OWN language, and sounds like nothing I've ever heard. It was fun and weird at the same time, because I've never been able to pull off an Irish accent, but after this lesson, I know that it's not impossible, being that you have to try to imitate what you're hearing and say it exactly like the speaker.

The weirdness comes from the silent letters. Telling someone that you don't understand is "Ni thuigim", but phonetically it's said, "Nee hihim". The "t" gets left out. Also, saying yes is spelled like "Ta" but pronounced like "Sha". And my last example would be the Irish language itself. Americans would see the word "Gaeilge" and try pronounce it like "Gaylg", but it's actually pronounce "Gaylin" with a kind of glottal g at the end.

I don't really know what to say about Gaeilge..I won't totally discount the language, even though there aren't many people who speak it, but I know that this one will be a little bit tougher to get into my list of favorites.

Until next time,

Your Favorite Polyglot
Twitter: @mistercapoeira