Meaning, I am learning Scottish Gaelic.
Tha beagan Gàidhlig agam. (Is dòcha gur e cus cus a th’ ann.) I speak a little Gaidhlig. (That might be an exaggeration.)
I am very much a beginner, and I would guess there are no Scottish Gaelic speakers in this group! So my post will be bilingual.
Fàilte! Welcome!
I got interested in Scottish Gaelic while reading the Outlander book series by Diana Gabaldon. So I signed up on Duolingo as a lark. It's a difficult language and I don't anticipate a time when I would actually use it (except when reading the Outlander books) but it's interesting. And I think it is a good exercise for my brain as well.
My favorite sentence so far: Tha Niseag ag òl uisge-beatha. The Loch Ness monster is drinking whisky. Well, wouldn't you, if you were living for centuries at the bottom of a loch, only coming up now and then to alarm and fascinate humans? There is an interesting theory about the Niseag proposed in the third Outlander book, Voyager. I won't spoil it for you, but it made sense to me in the context of the story! Also, whisky, uisge-breatha, translates literally to water of life.
Ciamar a tha thu? How are you? Tha mi ceart gu leòr. I'm fine.
What is difficult about learning this language is that:
1. the word order is different than English or French (my other language, sort of)
2. Nothing sounds the way it looks!
3. Duolingo teaches the way you might learn a language as a child who parents are native speakers, so there is no explanation of tenses, why spelling sometimes changes, and a few other things. Fortunately there are other online sites that teach the Gàidhlig that I consult.
Is toil leam dùbhlain. I like challenges.
A' guidhe fortan dhomh. Wish me luck!Tioraidh!
"The Loch Ness monster is drinking whisky." - ha, I imagine how you use this sentence in conversations. Good luck and resilience and fun in learning the language.
ReplyDeleteLove this. I think back to my childhood when my grandparents spoke Slovak. Stupidly, I kept saying, "Speak English". I did pick up some words, but never learned to speak the language.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fascinating language study slice. "The Loch Ness monster is drinking whisky," is now my favorite SOLSC sentence. (Maybe I should learn it in Gaelic?" When you said that the word for whisky is "uisge-breatha," it made me think that the English word must be a transliteration of the "uisge" part, so I have learned something new today too. Good luck in your pursuit of better Outlander reading!
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