How To Say Hello In Irish (as Gaeilge)

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By Lessthansteve

Cúpla Focal

Irish, or Gaeilge as its known in Ireland, is a very beautiful language. While being quite a hard language to master, it is not hard at all to learn to speak enough to have a chat with your friends down in the pub, or to read signposts and other things in Irish speaking areas. Going hand and hand with the easy going, friendly nature of Irish life, native speakers will always be glad to give you a hand with learning a cúpla focal - a few words!

Greetings - How to say hello

When you first meet someone, the normal way of saying "hello" would be "dia duit".

This is usually pronounced "Djee-ah Dit" depending on the area.

In English, "dia duit" would translate to "God be with you"

The correct response to this, would not to reply with the same phrase, but to say "God and Mary be with you" which is "Dia is Muire dhuit"

This is pronounced "Djee-ah is Smura Dit"

Although it is unlikely for a greeting to go on longer than that, one must bare in mind that Irish people are famous for talking for a decent amount of time, without saying all that much at all. But anyhow, if you were to reply back again to "God and Mary be with you", you must reply with "God and Mary and Patrick be with you".

"God and Mary and Partick be with you" in Gaeilge is "Dia is Muire is Pádraig duit".

The pronounciation of this is "Djee-ah is Smura is Paw-drig Dit"

In Conversation

So a basic greeting as Gaeilge would unfold like so..

Person 1 - "Dia duit"

Person 2 - "Dia is Muire duit"

Person 3 - "Dia is Muire is Pádraig duit"

Comments

Fiona 3 months ago

you could add a 4th person to the conversation, who'd say: " Dia agus Muire agus Pádraig agus Brighid dhuit"! and for the next ones, you can say whatever you like, use your imagination!!

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