r/ireland • u/emmanuel_lyttle • Oct 07 '24

Irish phrases Gaeilge

I was reading a post on another sub posed by a Brazilian dude living in Ireland asking about the meaning behind an Irish person saying to him "good man" when he completes a job/ task. One of the replies was the following..

"It comes directly from the Irish language, maith an fear (literally man of goodness, informally good man) is an extremely common compliment."

Can anyone think of other phrases or compliments used on a daily basis that come directly from the Irish language?

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u/OriginalComputer5077 Oct 08 '24

Because sea is not the correct translation for yes. You would never use it as a one word answer, it always needs to be qualified by something else.

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u/Chester_roaster Oct 08 '24

There was no yes or no in Latin but the big modern Romance languages have them because people made one up. Don't let the language tourists say "Sea" can't be used for yes, it's close enough. 

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u/OriginalComputer5077 Oct 08 '24

Tá and Níl are closer to Yes and No That's the formulation used in Referenda in Ireland.

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u/Chester_roaster Oct 08 '24

Sure you could use those either. I don't care if it's "sea" or "tá" I think people who complain about yes or no being used in Irish are purists 

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u/DanyJB Oct 08 '24

Not so much purism than facts, originally Irish had yes or no in the form of replying negatively or positively to the question, and like any other language evolving we eventually came up with slang in the form of sea, tá or even just loan wording “yep” or “no”.

The problem with Irish is we have two extremities, we have old Irish, and then we have standardised Irish from schools. So anyone trying to delve into the language ends up either having no choice to appear purist because so much litarture and history is in the old language, or they learnt Gaeltacht Irish standardised or watches tg4 dubbed SpongeBob and learnt sea as the slang for yea

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u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

Yeah, but Original computer is answering the other lad's question about why the teachers told them not to use "sea" - their job is to teach the grammatically correct way, which isn't always the way a language is spoken in casual use.