By the way, Re "Beag air Bheag"... if it means "little by little", why is the first "little" spelled differently from the second one? Too much whisky in the Gaelic mind? It's a daft language. You know what the Gaelic for "television" is? "Telefision" apparently, according to one text I looked through. Hmmm.... Still, maybe it's a very subtle thing with "Bheag" being even littler than "Beag", or just slightly bigger... or... nah, I expect it was the whisky.
I'm afraid I just learned one or two phrases in Gaelic from my mum - I don't pretend to understand the language. They do like to throw in 'h's all over the place for no apparent reason. I was told that the gaelic for "computer" was "compuchter", but I have a feeling that was stretching the truth somewhat!
You know how the Eskimos have at least 100 different words for snow (apparently - Claudia can confirm or correct this when she drops by), well similarly in Gaelic there are over 100 different ways to say "Are you lookin' at me pal?" (Apologies to foreign readers if they don't quite get the point here, but each of the 100 conveys a subtly different sense of threat).
Congratulations, Pride-and-Joy no 2! Lovely smile and uniform!
One-Hundred-Inuit-Words for snow is an urbain legend. It started at 7 words, and it grew, and grew. What happens is that the Inuits add a suffix to the word snow: driftingsnow, fallingsnow, softsnosw, icysnow...so on, and so on...The more you speak with them, the more snow words you encounter. The reason the legend was thought to be true is that it started with a so-called language specialist (I don't know the official name for that job!) It was a blah-blah-blah scientific statement. And I'm not looking at Gaelic you, Andrew. I wouldn't dare!
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Aw... Bless his curly little head. (I bet he'll love that comment).
By the way, Re "Beag air Bheag"... if it means "little by little", why is the first "little" spelled differently from the second one? Too much whisky in the Gaelic mind? It's a daft language. You know what the Gaelic for "television" is? "Telefision" apparently, according to one text I looked through. Hmmm.... Still, maybe it's a very subtle thing with "Bheag" being even littler than "Beag", or just slightly bigger... or... nah, I expect it was the whisky.
I'm afraid I just learned one or two phrases in Gaelic from my mum - I don't pretend to understand the language. They do like to throw in 'h's all over the place for no apparent reason.
I was told that the gaelic for "computer" was "compuchter", but I have a feeling that was stretching the truth somewhat!
You know how the Eskimos have at least 100 different words for snow (apparently - Claudia can confirm or correct this when she drops by), well similarly in Gaelic there are over 100 different ways to say "Are you lookin' at me pal?" (Apologies to foreign readers if they don't quite get the point here, but each of the 100 conveys a subtly different sense of threat).
Congratulations, Pride-and-Joy no 2! Lovely smile and uniform!
One-Hundred-Inuit-Words for snow is an urbain legend. It started at 7 words, and it grew, and grew. What happens is that the Inuits add a suffix to the word snow: driftingsnow, fallingsnow, softsnosw, icysnow...so on, and so on...The more you speak with them, the more snow words you encounter.
The reason the legend was thought to be true is that it started with a so-called language specialist (I don't know the official name for that job!) It was a blah-blah-blah scientific statement. And I'm not looking at Gaelic you, Andrew. I wouldn't dare!
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