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Today I am going to go through a little bit of Irish language vocabulary or foclóir to do with the sky. Foclóir is also the word for dictionary, but you can also use it for vocabulary. I’ve seen stór focail for vocabulary, but that feels more like a word bank, like in a word search.

I will only go through a few basic words, but hopefully the fragments and sentences that I include are transparent enough. To do with the sky is ‘ag baint le an spéir’, with ‘an spéir’ for the sky. ‘An ghrian’ for the Sun, but sunlight is ‘solas na gréine’. There are times when you can say ‘solas an ghrian’, but that’s not usually how you say it. ‘na gréine’ is the genitive case of ‘an ghrian’. ‘Solas na gréine’ is the light of the Sun.

Starting during the day gives us a blue sky, ‘spéir gorm’. ‘I gcomhair an píosa seo beimid ag féachaint ar an oíche’, for this piece we’re going to be looking at nighttime. Nighttime is ‘an oíche,’ and of course, that’s normally when we look when we’re looking for stars. As the Sun goes down, the stars will come out.

‘Tá na réaltaí chun teacht amach, ach ar dtús tagann na pláinéid, the stars are going to come out, but first come the planets. The stars, ‘na réaltaí’, a star ‘réalt’, planets, ‘na pláinéid’, ‘an pláinéad’ a planet. It is ‘na pláinéid’ for the planets, but a lot of people, including myself, I say ‘pláinéadaí’ a lot of the time instead of saying pláinéid. It’s technically a little bit wrong, it’s kind of like saying gooses instead of geese, but it’s a mistake that I certainly make.

The planets we see at the moment are Véineas, Iúpatair, Mars. Mars is Mars, Iúpatair agus Véineas for Jupiter and Venus, they’re not too different, thankfully.

Low underneath mars, ‘sin Réalt an Madra’, that’s the Dog Star, ‘Réalt an Madra’ is the star of the dog, and of course that is the brightest star in the sky. The planets of course come out first, ‘tagann na pláinéid amach ar dtús’.

Low above the sunset, ‘sin an Mearcair’, that’s Mercury. ‘An-dheacair le fheiscint’, very difficult to see. ‘Tá an ghrian ag dul in a luí’, the Sun is setting, ‘agus tá an spéir ag fháilt níos dorcha’, and the sky is getting darker.

So here we’ve got a few of the constellations. ‘Tá cúpla de na réaltbhuíon again’, we have a couple of the constellations. ‘Is é seo An Bodach’, this is An Bodach. If you are a regular reader then you’ve seen me mention An Bodach, possibly in articles with Irish language videos attached. In English, it is Orion, ‘an Fiagaí’, the Hunter. I tend to say ‘fiachadóir’ which usually means debtor, the word ‘fiach’ is the word for debt and hunt in Irish, but they are usually turned into agents differently. Orion is a perfectly acceptable name for this constellation, but An Bodach is an option. There are records that people in Ireland called this An Bodach rather than calling it Orion, so it is possibly a more indigenous term for the constellation. ‘Is é ‘indigenous’ dúchasach’, ‘dúchasach’ is a word for indigenous, it can be native for plants and animals as well.

‘Tá cúpla réaltbhuíon ana-cáililúil thuas anseo’, there’s a couple of very famous constellations up here. Over the east ‘seo é an Leon’, this is the lion, ‘nú an Cú’, or the wolf. Again, there are some records of people in Ireland calling this ‘Cú’ or wolf rather than lion as well. Behind Mars, ‘An Cúpla’, the Twins or Gemini, and behind Jupiter ‘an Tarbh’, the Bull or Taurus. For Taurus and Tarbh, the name of the constellation does sound a little bit like the Irish word and that happens occasionally. There is also Pisces ‘agus iasc’, Pisces and fish. They may not immediately look similar, but they too are related.

‘Má théann muid níos déanach san oíche’, if we go later in the night, ‘tagan an ghealach suas’, the Moon comes up. ‘Seo í an Ghealach’, this is the Moon, ‘An Ghealach Lán’ the Full Moon, this weekend at least. A little ahead and we are after the full moon, ‘táimid tar éis an ghealach lán’ . Of course we have ‘An Leath Gealach’ the Half Moon and ‘Corrán Gealaí’ for Crescent Moon, really lunar crescent. The Moon is ‘an Ghealach’. If a planet has more than one ‘gealach, ‘tá gealacha acu’, if a planet has more than one moon, then it has moons. In the video I say ‘gealaí’ by accident, the genitive of Moon ends the same as the plural of many common nouns, and it was on my mind. Usually in English, there’s not too many choices when it comes to the plural. If you’re talking about more than one thing, usually you whack an ‘-s’ at the end, maybe an ‘-es’ , along with some nouns like foot-feet and ox-oxen. In Irish this it is complicated by different declension classes, similar to Latin and most modern romance languages.

Moving later with the full Moon, ‘seo í an urú’, this is the eclipse. ‘Urú an gealach, nú urú na gealaí’, an eclipse of the Moon or a Lunar eclipse. This is the eclipse happening early in the morning of the 14th for us here in Ireland, after midnight on the 13th. A partial is all we get to see here in Ireland. It is a total lunar eclipse, just not for our location here.

An eclipse, ‘urú’, happens to the Moon when it goes into our shadow and to the Sun when the Moon blocks it out. There is a solar eclipse, ‘urú gréine, nú urú an ghrian’, a solar eclipse or an eclipse of the Sun. They sound a little bit different in English and, they sound a little bit different in Irish as well. The eclipse we’re getting at the end of March is a partial eclipse, ‘urú páirteach’, unfortunately it’s not a total eclipse, ‘urú iomlán’.

‘Táimid thar nais go dtí an lae’, we’re back to the daytime, there are a few other words that I wanted to point out, but we’ll need to go into the countryside. ‘Dul amach faoin tuath’, go out into the countryside, so you can remove the light pollution. Light pollution is ‘truailliú solas’. ‘Táimid chun an truailliú solas a bhaint’, we are going to remove the light pollution. This is a dark sky, ‘seo é spéir dorcha’. When you are out in the countryside, ‘amuigh faoin tuath’, you get a dark sky with the light pollution removed. ‘Spéir dorcha’ is a dark sky, ‘spéartha dorcha,’ are dark skies, because there are plenty of them around the place and they are kind of broken up. Originally we just had one big dark sky covering the entire planet, now things are a little bit broken up.

In a dark sky you can often see the glow of the Milky Way, ‘Bóthar na Bó Finne’, the Milky Way, ‘solas Bóthar an Bó Finne’, the light of the Milky Way. It is our galaxy, ‘ár réaltra’, ‘na réaltraí’ the galaxies, they include the Andromeda Galaxy, ‘Réaltra Andromeda’. Names can be tricky, but there are plenty of galaxies whose names are also words, so we can absolutely translate the words as words like ‘Réaltra an Coireán/Guairneán’ the Whirlpool Galaxy.

Of course, there are plenty of numbers as well, the Whirlpool being M51, and M fifty-one being ‘M caoga a haon’. You can say ‘Messier caoga a haon’. ‘Is ainm é Messier, nílim chun an ainm fraincis sin a athrú go dtí Gaeilge’, Messier is a name, I’m not going to change that French name into Irish, I’ll leave it at Messier. This is ‘uimhir Messier’, a Messier number. Messier numbers are one way of classifying various objects in the sky, ‘cosúil le cnuasach réaltaí’, like clusters of stars.

Looking at the Pleiades, this is a cluster of stars, ‘is cnuasach réalta é seo, cnuasach réalta oscailte’, an open cluster of stars. ‘Na Seacht Deirfiúracha’ for The Seven Sisters, and the Pleiades is ‘Na Pleiades’. ‘Is ainm Gréagach é na Pleiades, nílim chun é a athrú,’ it’s a Greek name, the Pleiades, I’m not going to change it. ‘Fresin le Subaru, is ainm Seapánach é sin, nílim chun é a athrú’,’ same with Subaru, it’s a Japanese name, I’m not going to change that. however, Seven Sisters/’Seacht Deirfiúracha’, ‘táim sásta é sin a athrú’, I’m happy to change that. They are Messier 45 or M45, so ‘Messier daichead a cúig’, Messier forty five, that’s the number that it’s given.

‘Sin cnuasach réaltaí, tá réaltra amach an sin, tá a lán sóirt réad amach anseo’, that is a star cluster, there’s galaxies, there’s lots of objects out here. ‘Réad’ is object. An observatory, a place where you look at objects, is ‘réadlann’. It’s a common suffix in Irish, -lann. ‘Leabharlann’ is a library, it’s a place where you have a book, ‘leabhar’, ‘réadlann is an observatory, a place where you would look for an object, ‘réad’. ‘Amharclann’ is a theater, a place where you go to look at plays, or view them, with a view being ‘amharc’. I normally say ‘radharc’ for view, but either works. These ‘-lann’ words are usually a place.

Looking into Orion’s Sword we have a a nebula, ‘réaltnéal’. ‘Réaltnéal’ is a nebula, it is a cloud in space. All of these words have an Irish translation. Of course they do, any language can be used to express any concept. Here, thankfully it’s not simply a matter of borrowing. Some of the terms used in astronomy, ‘réalteolaíocht’, they are borrowings, terms are borrowed from English. For example, X-ray is ‘x-ga’. A ray is ‘ga’, There’s an Irish word for ray, but an X-ray, we didn’t come up with another word for that. We just whacked an X on ray as well, like English, for ‘x-ga’. ‘Raidió’ for radio as well, it’s a borrowing, spelt and pronounced a little differently, a nativized borrowing, but still transparently taken from radio. Thankfully, there are plenty of scientific terms, ‘réaltra’, ‘réaltnéal’, that are completely Irish, they’re completely Irish coinages. Of course, the basics, réalt, ‘gealach’, ‘spéir’ are all fully native. ‘Pláinéad’ and planet both come from the Latin ‘planēta’, so that isn’t too bad. All of these things are nice, easy Irish words that you can throw out if you are stargazing.

So this may help, if you want to watch some of my completely Irish videos, you may be able to follow along without looking at the subtitles all of the time. Maybe this will help you pick up on a couple of the words at least. Of course, the subtitles are still useful if you don’t speak Irish.

I hope you enjoyed this piece, if you did, make sure to like it. You can subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel if you like this kind of content. Thank you for reading and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.