Irish for the Big Occasions: Weddings, Sympathy, Birthdays

What to write in an Irish card. Wedding blessings, what to say at a funeral, happy birthday, Christmas and the New Year in Irish, each with how to say it and what it means word for word.

The days people reach for Irish: a wedding, a funeral, a birthday, a card at Christmas. Every line here is one that is actually said, with how to say it and what it means word for word.

One thing before you write it

Irish marks whether you are speaking to one person or to several, and the greeting changes with it. duit is to one person and daoibh is to more than one, so a card to a couple or a family wants Nollaig shona daoibh, not duit. It is the single thing most often got wrong on a card.

Bainis: A wedding

The first of these is what traditionally goes inside an Irish wedding card, and it is said to the couple rather than to one of them.

Comhbhrón: A death

The first is what you say to each of the family in turn at a wake or a removal. The second is what goes on a card, a headstone or under a death notice.

These change with who died. a anam and air are for a man; for a woman they become a hanam and uirthi. Speaking to more than one person, do thrioblóid becomes bhur dtrioblóid. Worth getting right, because this is the one card nobody wants to get wrong.

Lá Breithe: A birthday

The first is the ordinary one. The other two are older, and the kind of thing an older person would say to a child.

An Nollaig: Christmas and the New Year

Both of these go on a card. The New Year one does not wish you a happy year so much as a year that sits well on you.

Na Féilte: The feast days

Saint Patrick, Easter and Halloween, which in Irish is the night before the old new year rather than a night of its own.

Ádh agus Aistear: Good luck, and a safe journey

For an exam, a match, a new job, or somebody heading for the airport. The second is the one the whole world knows, usually in English and usually longer than it is in Irish.

Grá: Love

Irish does not say I love you so much as say that love is with me for you. The shorter ones are what you call somebody, not what you tell them.

Every one is sourced rather than translated, and each has a page of its own with a note on when it is used. There are more in the phrases, some are drawn up as posters to print, and the lot are on a study sheet.