Re: Irish Gaelic is evil!

Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Mar 1, 2005, at 8:24 PM, Carsten Becker wrote:
>
>> Sheet 1: "Ceacht a hAon" (Lesson 1): BEANNACHTAÍ (Greetings)
>> A man meets a friend at home, but her dog is making things
>> difficult since it doesn't like the man ...
>> -- Dia duit. (JEE-ah ditch) Hello.
>>   Fáilte (FWAL-tche) Welcome.
>> -- Dia is Muire duit. (JEE-ah iss MWER-ah ditch[1]) Hello!
>>   (reply)
>> -- Cad é mar tá tú? (cad ay mar TAW too) How are you?
>> -- Go maith, go raibh maith agat. (guh moyh, guh roe moyh
>>   agat) Well, thank you.
>> -- Go measartha, go raibh maith agat. (guh MASS-ar-ha, guh
>>   roe moyh agat.) Fair, thanks.
>
>
> Yay for Irish!  ;-)
>
> I remember this basic greeting stuff from my one semester "Irish
> Language and Culture" class a few years ago.
>
> If i remember correctly, _Dia duit_ (not |Día|?) was pronounced by my
> teacher as something like /'dZ)i@ gItS)/, and everyone was really
> confused how _duit_ could sound like "gitch"... eventually i realized
> that it must be either an incredibly strongly velarized /d/, or what
> happens when a non-native speaker tries to reproduce such a sound.
>
> I think my teacher said that _Dia duit_ and _Dia is Muire duit_
> literally mean something like "God be with you" and "God and Mary be
> with you", and that people who might feel uncomfortable using
> theologically-loaded greetings could just stick to "cad é mar tá tú"
> type 'how're you doing?' greetings.

Erm...shouldn't that be 'dia dhuit'?

|dh| is usually [G] (though often [j]).  And yes, you're right about the
meanings.  O' course, 'Goodbye' is short for 'God be with you' anyhow.

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