Today's School News

[schmoomom]

Every Wednesday, we get a newsletter home. Today's I thought would interest a few of you...

There is an Irish saying about the weather:

Déanfaidh sé báisteach throm má thagann leipreachán an chlaí isteach sa chistin.

Rain will drench the land when the frog comes into the kitchen.

(leipreachán an chlaí=leprechaun of the ditch=frog)

Comments

[jespere]

chlai = klei = clay :D

So funny when you can trace words back like that.

[schmoomom]

And here I thought there was no correlation between Irish and any other language!! That's neat...

[dorianegray]

Sure there is; it's an Indo-European language too, you know! As my French teacher pointed out when I was in fifth year, demonstrating with scoil/school/Schule/école.

(Its closest relative is Scots Gaelic, followed by Welsh and the rest of the P-Celtic brigade.)

[schmoomom]

Well, I didn't think it went beyond the shores of IONA, you know? I know Holland is just over there, but at the same time...isn't that a Latin-based language as well? (Curious, not snarky!)

I would never have put all the schools with école. I guess saying it out loud would put it closer, but still a bit...different. The others all seem to go well together.

Must take that course someday, so that the child doesn't speak secret language in front of parents!! I do have In The Name Of The Fada...Des is a good teacher maybe?

[dorianegray]

Dutch? I think it's a Germanic language. The Latin-based ones are French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian.

Another thing my French teacher told us (in first year, this time) is that when a French word has an E with an accent on it, very often that accent takes the place of an S in an older form of the word. So if you turn école to escole, well, now it's a little closer to the others. The example she gave that day was fenêtre, which turns to fenestre (Latin), which relates to defenestrate!

Aren't langagues fun! :-)