Under the Holyrood electoral system, 73 MSPs are elected to represent constituencies under a first-past-the-post ballot, with the SNP expected to win most of those seats in May. The remaining 56 MSPs are elected by a regional list system, designed to make the seat distribution more representative of the overall vote. In 2016, the SNP did so well in constituency voting that it won list seats in only two of the eight regions, south of Scotland and Highlands. Alba candidates will run only on the regional lists, which Salmond has argued would scoop up previously “wasted” list votes for the SNP. It is possible to search the poetry, so perhaps if you search on the Scots word “lad” or “laddie” you might find something suitable. (But if it contains words you dinnae ken, then best to confirm it with the Scots Facebook group above!) Reply Beul-aithris means “oral tradition” and so perhaps this person thought that aithris just meant “tradition”, but aithris means “report,”“account,”“recitation,” or “narration.” For example, Aithris na Maidne (Morning Report) is the name of the BBC’s Gaelic morning radio news program. However, Mr Salmond insists it is legitimate to seek to take advantage of the existing voting system and claims the Prime Minister would find it harder to say no to an overwhelmingly pro-independence parliament. Apart from the problem that the cultural concept does not translate, this tattoo has fatal spelling and grammar problems. In Scottish Gaelic, “drug” is druga or droga and the plural, “drugs,” is drugaichean. In Irish it’s singular druga and plural drugaí. Gaelic words don’t have apostrophes in the middle, and “-ail” is not a plural suffix. So “drug’ail” is not a Gaelic word.

According to opinion polls the SNP will win the election easily. However, a nightmare scenario for the First Minister would be the SNP falling short of a majority and Alba winning enough seats to force her to turn to Mr Salmond to pass legislation and govern. That scenario is highly unlikely as even if she fails to win a majority, she could look to the pro-independence Greens, who are polling above Alba. Ms Sturgeon has said that she would not work with Mr Salmond under any circumstances.

Navigation menu

A proliferation of bad Gaelic tattoos also weakens the language. How? Every bad bit of Gaelic that is put out there becomes an exemplar that other people may follow. It propagates mistakes (Soar Alba!), spreads ignorance, and makes the language more and more like a bad copy of English, and less and less like Gaelic. Change happens to every language whether people like it or not, but when the direction of change is taking it into convergence with a juggernaut like English, that’s called language death. Thanks for your comment! As explained in the last paragraph of the post above, I can’t do Scottish Gaelic tattoo translations. There is also a second post that explains what to do if you have your heart set on a Gaelic tattoo despite the pitfalls. Another commenter pointed out that in the dictionary where the tattoo bearer looked it up, drugáil was defined as a transitive verb, in the sense of “to drug (someone).” More precisely, it is a verbal noun which means “drugging.” Additionally, apostrophes are not used as substitutes for accent marks in Irish or Gaelic (or in French or Spanish for that matter). Hanvey’s was one of a handful of high-profile moves from the SNP to Alba over the weekend, including the former MP Corrie Wilson and two councillors, Lynne Anderson and Caroline McAllister, who were both elected to the national executive committee last November as part of an internal rebellion against Sturgeon’s leadership style and have been outspoken critics of policy on transgender issues.

Election debate will be centred on independence and how to get it and not on the record or current internal difficulties of Scotland’s major party.”

Search

This blog focuses mainly on Scottish Gaelic, and not on Irish. For a bit of insight on how those languages are different, see my blog post https://gaelic.co/what-is-gaelic, or Chapter 2 of The Scottish Gaelic Tattoo Handbook. However, from your question it sounds like maybe you are interested in getting a tattoo in the *Scots* language and not the *Scottish Gaelic* language? They are two separate languages: Scots is more closely related to English, German, and Dutch, while Scottish Gaelic in contrast is a Celtic language related to Irish, Manx, Welsh, and Breton. I explain the differences a bit more in this blog post: http://emilymcfujita.com/what-is-gaelic/ I also beileve the above are masculine. Is there a varation for Stephan/Stephani both M/F ? I saw Stiana which is aparantly a very old and rare Irish way to spell Stephan/Stephani both masculine and feminine, but can’t confirm the authenticity of the information. At a stroke, the entire dynamic of the election will change. The focus will no longer be on how many SNP seats will be lost to Labour, but how many of the ten remaining unionist seats will be lost to the Scotland United coalition. In a word - independence. Mr Salmond is hoping to win support from hardcore independence supporters who believe Ms Sturgeon has been too cautious in her plan to break up of the UK. Despite twice announcing plans for a new referendum in the last parliament, both attempts failed after the UK Government refused to cooperate, leading some independence supporters to question Ms Sturgeon's ability to achieve her party's founding aim. Alba has made overtly emotional and nationalist pitches to Scots - even claiming the support of Robert the Bruce in a campaign video.

So you want to get a tattoo — in Scottish Gaelic. You want to honour a family member, or your Scottish heritage, or you just think the Gaelic language is cool, but you don’t speak Gaelic yourself. What should you do? Curtice said: “The risk to the SNP is that if Salmond gets 4% or 5% of the vote, particularly in those two crucial regions, and those come from the SNP, he may put them down a peg, lose them one or two seats and as a result make all the difference between an overall majority or not.”Oh, and just in case, we use a different word for “sister” if we’re speaking of a nun (just in case that ever comes up). There are eight electoral regions in Scotland, and parties generally need around six per cent of second votes in a region to secure an MSP. Asked by the BBC’s Andrew Marr on Sunday whether the Alba party could take votes from the Scottish Greens, who have benefited in the past from SNP constituency voters giving them their regional list preference, their co-leader Lorna Slater said: “We are not competing for the same voters”. I do hope it’s not just another boring frustrating question that gets put your way. I would just really like expert advise before I start the procedure of changing my name legally for paperwork etc. As you can imagine, that would be an embarrassing predicoment on formal legal documents if I have the Incorrect info. Although this particular tattoo was intended to be in Irish, I’ll discuss it here because bad Scottish Gaelic tattoos have the exact same problems.