Visit Ireland Guide

3. Fir and Mna. If you are about town seeing the sights or shopping, you will eventually need to go to the bathroom. When you seen the words "fir" or "mna" on the bathroom doors, do not be confused. Fir means man in Gaelic while mna means woman.

4. Garda. If it is your first time to travel in Ireland, it is not impossible for you to get lost and unable to find your way. In which case, the first person you ought to approach to ask for directions is the garda. The garda is just the Gaelic term for a person serving in the police force.

5. Slan abhaile. If you are leaving someone's home and the host greets you "slan abhaile," pronounced as "slaan aval," he or she is wishing you a safe journey homeward. Slan is the word for safe or healthy in Gaelic. Terms meaning the same thing are "slan agat" and "slan leat." These latter terms can also be taken to mean "goodbye" in Gaelic.

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Comments (8)

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There language
written by Conor, March 31, 2009

You make Ireland sound like an undeveloped island. Also the languge they speak is English aswell as Irsh (gaelic) not the other way round so don't write stuff that you don't know about.

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written by fgjfj, April 09, 2009

one's home and the host greets you "slan abhaile," pronounced as "slaan aval," he or she is wishing you a safe journey homeward. Slan is the word for[

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written by xcbxcb, April 09, 2009

ssdgrcingYou make Ireland sound like an undeveloped island

Slan Abhaile pronunciation?
written by RadarSImulator, June 18, 2009

Sean Moncrieff on "Don't Feed the Gondolas" as Monica Loolly pronounced Slan Abhaile somehting like "slaan-tya oh-wall-uh". What's the "really" correct pronunciation?

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written by Irish Person Here, January 16, 2010

Slan Abhaile is pronounced: Slawn A-wall-ee-ah.
I'm from Ireland and I say it all the time (In school anyway. Also yes it's perfect pronunciation in my county at least. The dialect differs from county to county when it comes to certain words. For example the Irish spoken on Inis Mor pronounced "Inish More" is completely different from what I know here in the county of Leinster).

Also in general we speak fluent English, you hardly ever see anything written in Irish without some form of translation (In English at least) underneath it. Usually people only speak English anyway.


Hopefully that cleared one or two things up for anyone interested at least.

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written by Antony, February 08, 2010

thanks so much for those great tips! you know, preparing for the trip to Ireland, I used to read a lot (downloaded all the possible guides and articles by rapidshare SE ) still I've never come across the information about this language peculiarities. thanks for posting about it, useful and much appreciated.

Thanks
written by Alex, February 22, 2010

Thanks for help! This is just what I was looking for!

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written by Volker, February 22, 2010

Bin nur zufällig auf diese Seite gekommen,.
Die schönen Moderationen und Informationen
sind echt super. Über einen Gegenbesuch würde
ich mich freuen.
Viele Grüße von Westerland / Germany

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