Dia dhuit
DEE-ah ghwEET
“Hello” or “Good day”
One of the first things everyone does when learning a new language is practice the basic greeting. Coincidentally it makes a great topic for the maiden voyage of a blog :)
So far in my brief experience with learning Irish, the language reminds me a lot of Spanish. Consonants aren’t as abrupt as they are in English. “Dia” is pronounced like the last part of the word “idea.” The “d” pronunciation slightly towards a “th” sound; you put less of your toungue against the roof of your mouth.
The second part of today’s phrase, “dhuit,” is significantly trickier. In order to integrate older Irish consonants with the Western alphabet, special characters originally used to indicate certain pronunciations were converted to normal Western letters followed by the letter “h.”3 In this case, the “dh” is actually a middleground between a soft “ch” sound as in the word “chemistry” and a “g” sound as in the word “garage;” as unsettling as the image may be, I like to think of it with a hint of phlegm—helps me say it correctly :P
This phrase, typically used as a cordial greeting, is a shortened form of, “Go mbeannaí Dia dhuit”, which literally means, “May God bless you.”1
Resources for todays lesson:
