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Conference tallis::celt

Title:Celt Notefile
Moderator:TALLIS::DARCY
Created:Wed Feb 19 1986
Last Modified:Tue Jun 03 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1632
Total number of notes:20523

754.0. "Grandparents are great!" by AUSTIN::OREILLY (Eire in '90 or '91) Mon May 07 1990 21:01

    Hello,
    
    I would like to find out the Irish equivalent of Grandmother as well as
    the more informal term such as grandma, granny, etc.
    
    Spelling and pronounciation, please.
    
    While you're at it, you might as well give the same for Grandfather.
    
    You would be doing me a great service to extract your answer and mail
    it to me at austin::oreilly as I'm on the road a lot using TSN, etc.,
    and the phone lines failure rate is greater than the speed of NOTES. 
    But I can usually read an e-mail before the phone lines go dirty! ;-)
    
    Thanks very much,
    
    
    JO'R
T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name		DateLines
754.1PENUTS::KSULLIVANTue May 08 1990 14:202
    Will there be anything else, sir?
754.2"sean" lecture #2MACNAS::KELLYMike Kelly 822-6244Wed May 09 1990 10:4631
John,   

I checked up on the translation you asked for:

Seanmh�thair	= 	Grandmother		(shan-waa-her)

Seanathair	=	Grandfather		(shan-ah-her)

As you can see, the first part of each word is "sean" (pronounced 'shan')
which means old.  So the literal translation of the above is "old mother"
and "old father".  Note the importance of the "'" on top of a letter, it
means that letter is emphasised (not being a linguist, that may not be the
technically correct term...but you know what I mean!)

Not having been raised in a house where the language was used on a day to
day basis, I consulted a childrens (2yrs+) picture dictionary for the more
homely words, and came across:

Mam�		=	Granny			(Mam-oh)

Daideo		=	Grand-dad		(as written)

I'm sure there are others.  I'll ask around.

As an aside, the picture dictionary is an excellent little book.  It's
called "C�ad Focal - The First Hundred Words".  It's got nice illustrations
and seems to avoid the stereotyping found in some childrens books.  It's
published By Gill and Macmillan in Dublin and appears to be a translation
from English....so maybe they do them for other languages as well.

Mike.
754.3Thank You, esp. SullivanAUSTIN::OREILLYEire in '90 or '91Fri May 11 1990 13:568
    I finally got another chance to read the notesfile.  Thanks very much
    for all of your help!
    
    Thanks much for the e-mails I received.
    
    Have a great one!
    
    JO'R