{"id":22665,"date":"2023-01-11T14:09:21","date_gmt":"2023-01-11T14:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=22665"},"modified":"2023-01-11T14:09:21","modified_gmt":"2023-01-11T14:09:21","slug":"half-a-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=22665","title":{"rendered":"Half a Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A way to say <strong>excuse me<\/strong> in Irish is <strong>gabh mo leithsc\u00e9al<\/strong>, which is pronounced [\u02cc\u0261\u0254 m\u0259 \u02c8l\u02b2\u026a\u0283ce\u02d0l\u032a\u02e0] or something like that. If you\u2019re talking to two or more people, you would say <strong>gabhaig\u00ed mo leithsc\u00e9al<\/strong>. There are similar phrases in Scottish Gaelic &#8211; <strong>gabh mo leisgeul<\/strong>, and Manx &#8211; <strong>gow my leshtal<\/strong>. These mean literally \u201ctake my excuse\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/excuseme.jpg\" alt=\"Gabh mo leithsc\u00e9al (take my half story\" width=\"1117\" height=\"511\"><\/p>\n<p>The first word in these phrases comes from the Old Irish <em>gaibid<\/em> [\u02c8\u0261av\u02b2i\u00f0\u02b2] (to grasp or receive), from the Proto-Celtic <em>*gabyeti<\/em> (to grab, seize, take or hold), from Proto-Indo-European <em>*g\u02b0eh\u2081b\u02b0-<\/em> (to grab or take) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/gaibid#Old_Irish\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Related words in other languages include <strong>gafael<\/strong> (to hold, grasp, grip) in Welsh, <strong>gavel<\/strong> (capacity, grasp) in Cornish, <strong>gable<\/strong> in English, and words for to have in Romance languages, such as <strong>avere<\/strong> in Italian and <strong>avoir<\/strong> in French [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European\/g%CA%B0eh%E2%82%81b%CA%B0-\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The second word in these phrases means <strong>my<\/strong>, and the third one means <strong>excuse<\/strong>. The words for <strong>excuse<\/strong> come from the Old Irish <em>leithsc\u00e9l \/ leithsg\u00e9al \/ leithsg\u00e9ul<\/em> (excuse), from <em>leth<\/em> (half, side, direction) and <em>sc\u00e9l<\/em> (story), so an excuse is a \u201chalf story\u201d [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/leithsc%C3%A9al#Irish\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>A related word in Irish is <strong>leithsc\u00e9alach<\/strong> (fond of excuses,  apologetic). There\u2019s a similar word in Scottish Gaelic: <strong>leisgeulach<\/strong> (excusing, apologetic) and in Manx: <strong>leshtallagh<\/strong> (apologetic, apologist, excuser, extenuating).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A way to say excuse me in Irish is gabh mo leithsc\u00e9al, which is pronounced [\u02cc\u0261\u0254 m\u0259 \u02c8l\u02b2\u026a\u0283ce\u02d0l\u032a\u02e0] or something like that. If you\u2019re talking to two or more people, you would say gabhaig\u00ed mo leithsc\u00e9al. There are similar phrases in Scottish Gaelic &#8211; gabh mo leisgeul, and Manx &#8211; gow my leshtal. These mean [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,104,107,111,127,128,10,23,35,43,45,56,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cornish","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-irish","category-italian","category-language","category-manx","category-old-irish-goidelc","category-proto-celtic","category-proto-indo-european","category-scottish-gaelic","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22665"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22670,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22665\/revisions\/22670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}