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Gaelic in modern Scotland

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5.3.2 Creating new Gaelic words

The following five examples show the different approaches that are used in creating new words in Gaelic to meet changing needs.

**Table 1**1
English term	Gaelic term	Origin/Method
triangle	triantan	Gaelic ‘trian’ – a third part or something made of three parts. This is an example of a well-established Gaelic word having been adapted for a new use.
geography	cruinn-eòlas	Based on the Gaelic ‘cruinne’ (world) and ‘eòlas’ (knowledge) (‘-eòlas’ is also used as the equivalent of ‘-ology’). This is an example of a concept being ‘defined’ in Gaelic.
television	telebhisean	Many Gaelic words have Greek or Latin roots, filtered though English. Often these are international terms.
rectangle	ceart-cheàrnach	This is made up of ‘ceart’ (the Gaelic for ‘right’) and ‘ceàrn’ (the Gaelic for ‘angle’). This is a translation of the Latin-derived ‘rectangle’ and so is referred to as a ‘loan translation’. The meaning is clearer than ‘rectangle’ since the word is made up of Gaelic rather than Latin elements.
credit crunch	staing creideis	‘Staing’ (crisis) + ‘creideas’. The Gaelic word ‘creideas’ (originally ‘credibility’) has been ‘stretched’ to match English ‘credit’ (as in ‘credit card’): this is referred to as a ‘loan shift’.

Now that you have read about the origin of these words, listen to how they are pronounced.

triantan

Download this audio clip.Audio player: triantan.mp3

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