Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Tapadh leat


Today Sunburst worked on her Scotland project. She has been speaking in Scots Gaelic (apparently different than Irish Gaelic) for three days now. Not complete sentences, mind you. Assuredly not anywhere near the correct pronunciation, (I wouldn't even have a clue about that,) but in bits and pieces here and there as she can work it in, opening the book each time and requesting things like lite (porridge) and uisge (water.)

We talked through the planning stages of her display board, and she had me writing out a rough list of words/phrases she might want to recopy to include on it. She sat across the couch from me thumbing through a book on the Loch Ness Monster while I held the other book open and stared at those Gaelic words long and hard trying to spell them right ...uan, uisge, Ciamar a tha thu?

Thinking I was done, I closed the book and started to walk away, "Oh wait, tapad leet!" She yells at me. What? I looked at her blankly trying to interpret. "Thank you, tapad leet." Huh? "Write that one down too." Oh! I opened the book back up and there it was, on the bottom of the page, Tapadh leat. I hadn't heard that one before.

How on earth did she remember that?

Nothing gets past these kids. They remember every story, every promise, every everything. It's easy to see in the girls, as they come up with some new thing to amaze us with everyday (like knitting blind-folded!) The jury has been out on Kitty Bill, though. I mean, we weren't sure if we would be blessed with another sound mind. It's risky business, this gene pool lottery. But it looks like he's a clever one too. He's already watching to see what he can get away with, and as soon as we turn our heads --Zoooom! He's gone after some item of contraband, and he knows it, because he keeps looking over his shoulder to see if he's getting caught. At seven months! These kids can already outwit us, and they're not even close to being teenagers yet.

We are so screwed.

2 comments:

  1. Did you know that Scottish Gaelic is written with just 18 letters each of which is named after a tree or shrub? I did not until I did some googling today so that I could keep up with S. What fun!!
    Mar sin leat!

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  2. Silly me, I've been trying to teach her German and Spanish. Maybe Gaelic is the way to go... incredibly useful when one is talking to, well... trees or shrubs? Fairy folk? Alas, I don't ken weel get tae Scotland anytime soon. ;-)

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