I think it's hilarious that you said w(b)ankers instead of b(w)ankers. Subtle but very telling!!!

The Midwest is nothing! You haven't lived until you've experienced -42° Fahrenheit at night on top of a hill in winter in central Alaska (watching the Northern Lights), plus an unknown wind chill factor. Oddly enough, that's about -41° Celsius, since the two scales converge near that point. It was actually warmer than that when I went to Antarctica.

_________________
I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

I think I'll just stay in balmy California, where the worst I have to gripe about is an occasional frost!

Redwolf

If I remember correctly, the idiom you are looking for is, for 'it is minus ten', use 'there is a want of ten'.
That is the Hiberno English, I do not know the Irish.
Deghebh.

_________________
Is mise, le meas, Deġeḃ.
Is Sasanaċ mé.
Tá beagán Gaoluinn agam.
As Béarla:
I see things differently.
I see things other people can't see.
Sometimes what I see is not there.
Some people call me crazy, and some of them are right.

I know what the term is in English, Dave. It is my native language, after all.

Redwolf

A Machtíre Rua, a chara,

American English is your native DIALECT.
I am talking about the DIALECT of HibernoEnglish, which is the common NATIVE DIALECT of many regions of Ireland.
This DIALECT, and its variants use mostly the English vocabulary, but contains many words of true Irish, and a very large amount of Irish idioms.
Many of these idioms are necessary because the Irish vocabulary lacks the concepts which they need to convey.
When you understand these idioms, you can see how the Irish get around these missing concepts.
Negative quantities are expressed traditionally, according to my recollection, by expressing a need or want of a quantity.
Indeed, that is what the Latin word, from which we derive 'minus' means.

So, you can either import an English word into Irish, or you can try to restore the traditional idiomatic expression.
In Irish, you say 'Tá leabhar uaim', to mean 'I want a book', or 'I am missing a book'.
I would suggest that the negative temperature might then be expressed in this idiom as:
'Tá 10°C uaidh', 'It is lacking 10°C'.

Le meas,
Deghebh.

_________________
Is mise, le meas, Deġeḃ.
Is Sasanaċ mé.
Tá beagán Gaoluinn agam.
As Béarla:
I see things differently.
I see things other people can't see.
Sometimes what I see is not there.
Some people call me crazy, and some of them are right.

I have never heard 'there is a want of 10' in Hiberno English and the thing about idioms is that they have a context i.e. they tend to be used in very specific contexts. So I can't see how you could 'restore' the idiom you suggest to a context it was probably never used in. 'Tá 10°C uaidh' sounds ridiculous to me.

In the Dillon & Ó Cróinín (page 138), it has -

For substraction: a cúig óna deich, sin a cúig, 10 - 5 = 5; a deich óna daichead, sin a deich fichead, 40 - 10 = 30.

That's right. Used with normal arithmetic.

With mathematics you kinda have to use the more technical terms with plus and minus etc.




That would be a very strange way to denote temperature.

_________________
___________________________________________________________

It is recommended that you always wait for three to agree on a translation.
I speak Connemara Irish, and my input will often reflect that.
I will do an mp3 file on request for short translations.
___________________________________________________________

Yes, but that is exactly the same idiom as I was suggesting.
'a cúig óna deich' is 'Ten is lacking five' You are even using the same preposition.
As I see it, óna = ó na
so it is five of/from the ten.

Of course, you could always say ten from the zero!
a deich óna nialas.
óna nialas being the explicit where uaidh is being implicit.
Deghebh.

_________________
Is mise, le meas, Deġeḃ.
Is Sasanaċ mé.
Tá beagán Gaoluinn agam.
As Béarla:
I see things differently.
I see things other people can't see.
Sometimes what I see is not there.
Some people call me crazy, and some of them are right.