Gaelic guide for learners

Staoig

Picture this: you’re sitting in a restaurant and have just swallowed your first mouthful of an enormous steak (staoig) when the person sitting opposite asks how it is, in Gaelic (writes Coinneach Macfhraing).

How do you reply? You might simply go with Tha i blasta ‘it’s tasty’, but in the interest of expanding our vocabulary, let’s go deeper. Is the feòil ‘meat’, geireach ‘fatty’, seang ‘lean’ or mèath ‘rich’?

I would hope it’s not lìtheach ‘greasy’ or loisgte ‘burnt’. What is the texture like? Is it maoth ‘tender’, maothanach ‘gristly’ or righinn ‘tough’? It could even be cho righinn ri pìos leathrach ‘as tough as a piece of leather’!

If it’s been too long in the pan, you could say that it’s na ruadhan (overcooked) or, if it’s more on the rare side, lethamh (literally ‘half raw’) or just amh if it’s completely black and blue! Did it come in sùgh na feòla ‘the meat juices’ or is there a sabhs ‘sauce’ with it? That could be milis ‘sweet’, spìosrach ‘spicy’ or perhaps leanailteach ‘sticky’.

Remember, you can also employ words like beagan, glè or caran to indicate a degree of each of these, for example tha i caran righinn ‘it’s somewhat tough’. lsabhal Mòr Ostaig offers Gaelic learning opportunities on site and by distance-learning www.smo.uhi.ac.uk