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[kittydesade]

The word for year is bliain. After the number dhá (two) which causes lenition, it becomes bliain (pron. vlíen). A special counting form bliana is used with the numbers from 3 to 10. Following 7 to 10 an m is put before year to give mbliana (pron. mlíana). You add in déag to get the numbers 11 to 19, but aon is added in 11 and causes lenition.

Which is all too complicated, so, numbers!
bliain - a year
dhá bhliain - two years
trí bliana - three years
ceithre bliana - four years
cúig bliana - five years
sé bliana - six years
seacht mbliana - seven years
ocht mbliana - eight years
naoi mbliana - nine years
deich mbliana - ten years
aon bhliain déag - eleven years
dhá bhliain déag - twelve years
trí bliana déag - thirteen years
ceithre bliana déag - fourteen years

You ask a person's age as follows - cén combines cé? (What/Who?) with an (the):
Cén aois tú? What age are you
Cén aois é? What age is he?
Cén aois é Seán? What age is John?
Cén aois í Máire? What age is Mary?
Cén aois iad? What age are they?

The answer in years is followed by d'aois (of age) - de (of) and aois (age)
Tá mé fiche bliain d'aois.
Tá m'athair caoga bliain d'aois.
Tá mo dheirfiúr tríocha a cúig bliain d'aois.
... so, Tá mo dheirfiúr fiche a trí bliain d'aois? My sister is twenty three. ... no, wait. fiche a haon bhliain, twenty one. AUGH.

Two useful expressions are os cionn (over)( and faoi bhun (under)
Do lucht féachana os cionn 18 bliain. For audiences over 18.
leanaí faoi bhun deich mbliana d'aois. children under the age of ten.

There are special forms of the numbers for this purpose, mostly ending in -r. It is sufficient for the moment to know the forms from 1 to 3, and to be able to recognize the otehrs. In counting people in a group or in counting their names on a list, you say:

duine (one) person
beirt - two people
triúr - three people
ceathrar - four people
cúigear - five people
seisear - six people
seachtar - seven people
ochtar - eight people
naonúr - nine people
deichniúr - ten people

Here is how you count sons and daughters. Notice that amháin (one) follows the word, when it is used (it isnt always necessary).

mac amháin - just one son
beirt mhac - two sons
triúr mac - three sons
iníon amháin - just one daughter
beirt iníon - two daughters
triúr iníon - three daughters



Picked up a Yuletide pinch-hit. Yes, already. I know how it's going to play out and after a couple of hours of racking my brain over how to get the event and item/person arc to match the character arc I finally found what I think is the perfect event arc matching and now I know what I'm going to do on Thanksgiving. Be thankful for my Dragon, among other things, but also write the hell out of both my Yuletide stories so I can send them to my betas and get them uploaded next week sometime. Which might be the earliest I ever have anything finished and uploaded. I've figured out how to budget my writing time, it's like a Christmas miracle.

Anne McCaffrey passed, which I'm sure most of my flist knows by now. Rest in peace, dear lady. You provided many a good start for many a girl and boy in science fiction and fantasy. Particularly for the lady authors of today.

Also in depressing (but less depressing!) but somewhat inevitable news, one study rejects the faster-than-light finding, based on the fact that the particles didn't shed as much energy as they should have if they had gone that fast. On the one hand, BOO. Do not take my dream of FTL travel from me! And on the other hand, the scientist in me knows and is glad that this is a necessary step in the process. As fun as groundbreaking, view-changing new discoveries are, they should be tested to make sure they're true and not just a mistake. So, we'll see what happens with that. The experiment was replicated, and so far two mistakes have been found, one eliminated and one still existent, so we'll see whether or not there's anything to this.

Blah stuff. Things. I am, now that I think about it and now that I've gotten here, very glad that I'm off tomorrow. I can sleep in, I can get a pile of writing done, I can relax and clean up a bit and have a breather. Although really, the mail order sale hasn't hit as hard as I expected. Which is, no doubt, its cue to sock me in the face somehow.

Oh lordy, that was the other thing. Sons of Anarchy, I hear, was renewed for a season 5 but at this point I don't even know where they're going to go with it, considering what happened last night. I can't say I was surprised by any of it, but Kurt Sutter has a habit of really hammering down on the actions have consequences button. Once again, mostly I just want to curl up around Tig and hold him and pet him and let him cry it out or what have you.

Oh, and there really are only 500 people in the world, and 400 of them are on the internet. Science says so.