Irish Lesson

Many Clann members had a copy of this in their possession at one time or another. The document is a two sided piece put together by Dennis Doyle, a Celtic Harpist. The sheet is a little sales sheet for some of his music, but includes a lot of handy Irish phrases, probably because he (rightly) figured folks like me wouldn't throw it out if it was useful. I've scanned the sheet as two PDF files and attached below.

Attachment	Size
IrishLesson-1.pdf	1.02 MB
IrishLesson-2.pdf	1.4 MB

Some common expressions

Comyn once said:

> Conas ta tu?

Aonghus replied

You need to put a fada over the "a" in "tá" the word is pronounced "taw" (ryhmes with "paw") without it it would sound like "tah"

So

Q: Conas tá tu?
A: Tá mé go maith
(Tá mé can also be contracted to "Táim")

aside from that, if you are adressing more then one
person, which I assume you are, you must you the
plural form of "you" which is "sibh" (pronounced
"shiv" - like a prison made knife)

So:

Q: Conas tá sibh
A: Tá sinn go maith. (We are good)
agus tusa féin?
(and you (emphatic form) yourself?

Dairchan added to what Aonghus said;

The verb 'Tá" means literally, 'to stand'. When you ask a person 'Conas tá tú? ' you would be literally asking, How are you standing, or what is your stance or (maybe) status - the implied meaning being, How are you doing?

The reply "Tá mé go maith" simply means, 'my standing is good' or
perhaps, 'I stand well' (I think in modern day english, the closest literal approximation may be 'my status is good' or something like that. The meaning to be taken is simply 'I am doing well'.

The same is true when addressing multiple persons, as in "Conas tá sibh?" - (How are ya'll doing? - in english there are perhaps 10 to 15 personal pronouns... in irish there are at least 116 - we conjugate personal pronouns, also... so speaking to a single person and speaking to multiple persons changes the grammar).

Sin é, cibé ar bith! (That's that, anyway! ((lit: that's that,
whichever at all!)) )

Le meas (with respect)
Slan go foill! (So long for now)

What does Tuatha de Bhriain mean?

In short it means "tribe" or "people" descending from Brian.

So why is "Brian" (an Irish name) spelled so strangely?

Well, in Irish, as in other languages, there is what is known as the "genative" case, that being a case of a word to denote possession.

Brian here must be placed in the genative case. In Irish that is done by "aspirating" the first letter of the name as indicated by placing an "h" after the "B" to become "Bh". Which also mutates from a "b" sound to a "v" sound in this case.

However, we are not done here. In the genative case we must also "slenderize" the last letter in the word as well. That means we must place either an "i" or an "e" (the two slender vowels - the rest are considered broad) before the final "n" in Brian

a slender "n" is pronounced more shortened like the "n" in "finger" as oppsed to a broad "n" like in "fun"

therefore:

Brian (bree - uhn)

becomes

Bhriain (vree - in)

Thats the quick and dirty explanation anyway.