Negative numbers

Deghebh · **Posted:** Tue 26 Mar 2013 2:45 pm

Redwolf wrote:

Rossaí wrote:

Ambaist...Éistigí leis an nuacht ar uairibh agus beidh an freagra agaibh gan teibíocht...

Ten below zero...deich gcéim faoin reophointe. The reophointe is always used when discussing the weather. Lúide a deich is a Maths saying meaning minus ten..as in twenty minus ten- fiche lúide a deich.
Reophointe is always used on RTE 1, RnaG, TG4...try not to complicate things guys.

Yes, but you're talking about Ireland, which uses Celcius, at which "zero" is the freezing point (reophointe). The person for whom I'm trying to find an answer to the question lives in the U.S., which uses Fahrenheit, at which "zero" is considerably BELOW the freezing point. We say something is "below freezing" when it's lower than 32 degrees Fahrenheit...we mean something quite different when we say something is 10 below zero.

I suspect that TG4, RnaG, etc., if they found it necessary to report on U.S. weather, would convert it to Celcius, since they are addressing an Irish audience, but when two people who live in the States are discussing the weather, that isn't going to happen. Hence the specific need for "below zero" (which Bríd has supplied twice now...GRMA, a Bhríd!) and not just "below freezing."

Redwolf

Sorry, I missed the point.
I recall, in tales of the Gold-rush, When referring to temperatures below 0°F, they simply said x° below.
So would that not simply be, '10° faoi' ?

Bríd Mhór · **Joined:** Sun 28 Aug 2011 8:29 pm **Posts:** 2994

Deghebh wrote:

I recall, in tales of the Gold-rush, When referring to temperatures below 0°F, they simply said x° below.

Why would they say that? That is equal to -18C. Why is that significant? -17C is nearly as cold, and without a good thermometer I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Deghebh wrote:

"deich gcéim faoin reophointe" as ten degrees of frost

Yes, that is ten degrees of frost in any temperature measuring scale.

Deghebh wrote:

That might translate better into an Irish idiom.
How would you say 'ten kilos of potatoes' ?

I don't see the comparison.
deich gcílo/gcileagram fataí (or - do fhataí)
That's 22lbs of potatoes but in the imperial scale we'd ask for 2 stones of potatoes
dhá chloch fhataí.

And I don't believe that is an idiom.

Deghebh · **Posted:** Tue 26 Mar 2013 9:24 pm

Redwolf wrote:

Spend a few minutes listening to any weather broadcast in the northern U.S., and you'll hear plenty of negative numbers. Why do you constantly feel the need to pontificate about things you know nothing about? :rolleyes:

Redwolf

Your weatherman is giving scientific information in scientific shorthand.
I still affirm that ordinary people, referring to ordinary things very seldom use negative numbers.
Indeed, for normal things, negative numbers are inappropriate.
Correct science now only uses negative numbers sparingly.
Temperature in Kelvin has no negative value.
It is no asserted that with the correct datum, time has no negative value.
A negative value usually means that you are looking the wrong way!

Let us try to keep this friendly.
Yes, I tend to oversimplify.
The whole idea is to Keep It Simple.

Le meas,
Deġeḃ.

Saoirse · **Posted:** Tue 26 Mar 2013 10:59 pm

Deghebh wrote:

I still affirm that ordinary people, referring to ordinary things very seldom use negative numbers.

You want to see a negative number - I'll show you my bank statement! :twisted:

Negative numbers go a lot further than just temperatures!

Rossaí · **Joined:** Sat 01 Oct 2011 12:03 am **Posts:** 231

Rossaí wrote:

Ambaist...Éistigí leis an nuacht ar uairibh agus beidh an freagra agaibh gan teibíocht...

Ten below zero...deich gcéim faoin reophointe. The reophointe is always used when discussing the weather. Lúide a deich is a Maths saying meaning minus ten..as in twenty minus ten- fiche lúide a deich.
Reophointe is always used on RTE 1, RnaG, TG4...try not to complicate things guys.

Yes, I'm talking about Ireland. Afterall, that is where Irish is most often spoken.

Redwolf · **Posted:** Wed 27 Mar 2013 4:51 pm

Rossaí wrote:

Ambaist...Éistigí leis an nuacht ar uairibh agus beidh an freagra agaibh gan teibíocht...

Ten below zero...deich gcéim faoin reophointe. The reophointe is always used when discussing the weather. Lúide a deich is a Maths saying meaning minus ten..as in twenty minus ten- fiche lúide a deich.
Reophointe is always used on RTE 1, RnaG, TG4...try not to complicate things guys.

Yes, I'm talking about Ireland. Afterall, that is where Irish is most often spoken.

Yes...but as I said, this guy is in the U.S., talking to Americans, which is why he needs to know how to say "below zero" and not just "below freezing."

Redwolf

Deghebh · **Posted:** Wed 27 Mar 2013 9:07 pm

Saoirse wrote:

Deghebh wrote:

I still affirm that ordinary people, referring to ordinary things very seldom use negative numbers.

You want to see a negative number - I'll show you my bank statement! :twisted:

Negative numbers go a lot further than just temperatures!

Yes, I agree,
But do you say "I have minus €1000 in my account.", or do you say, as others would, "My account is overdrawn by €1000.".

I repeat my answer to Machtíre Rua, I have heard of negative Fahrenheit temperatures being referred to as x degrees below, without saying below what.
Let us face it, 'minus ten' implies 'zero minus ten'
So I would expect a form of '10° faoi' to carry the same meaning.

Rossaí · **Joined:** Sat 01 Oct 2011 12:03 am **Posts:** 231

Redwolf wrote:

Rossaí wrote:

Ambaist...Éistigí leis an nuacht ar uairibh agus beidh an freagra agaibh gan teibíocht...

Ten below zero...deich gcéim faoin reophointe. The reophointe is always used when discussing the weather. Lúide a deich is a Maths saying meaning minus ten..as in twenty minus ten- fiche lúide a deich.
Reophointe is always used on RTE 1, RnaG, TG4...try not to complicate things guys.

Yes, I'm talking about Ireland. Afterall, that is where Irish is most often spoken.

Yes...but as I said, this guy is in the U.S., talking to Americans, which is why he needs to know how to say "below zero" and not just "below freezing."

Redwolf

Then i suppose it would be something like.....deich faoin a náid> deich féna náid

Deghebh · **Posted:** Sat 30 Mar 2013 7:25 pm

As an aside,
The Centigrade scale was very useful to school children when physics used the old cgs system, and energy was measured in calories, when the specific heat of water was 1 calory per gram, per degree Centigrade.
Those days are passed.
The Centigrade scale has no intrinsic value greater than the Fahrenheit.
The Fahrenheit scale, though seemingly illogical, though, is, I believe, based on an approximation to blood temperature, and the lowest temperature which can be achieved in a freezing mixture.
Though neither of these values is an easy temperature to set up, the result is a temperature scale which approximates well to a comfort scale of 0 to 100.
Round about the middle is comfortable, and as the extremes of 0 and 100 are approached, discomfort becomes very noticeable, and indeed threatening to survival.
So Centigrade is an obsolete scale, and is now, in physics, replaced by Kelvin, leaving an inconvenient relic from France as a burden, while Fahrenheit, having a somewhat natural comfort scale has been sidelined, or at least it has by many.
The claim that there is no absolute Fahrenheit scale, is of course false, the Rankine scale is an absolute scale of Fahrenheit degrees, and was still in regular use in Britain until we had the SI take-over.
Incidentally, SI is Not completely consistent, but that is another story.

Braoin · **Joined:** Sat 17 Sep 2011 11:52 pm **Posts:** 460

Deghebh wrote:

Redwolf wrote:

Deghebh wrote:

Redwolf wrote:

Someone asked this question on Eoin's Bitey Shamrock forum, and I'm not finding an easy answer in Baldy, so I figured I'd ask here. How does one express negative numbers in Irish?

For example, in English I might say "It's 10 degrees outside, but it feels like -10." Or "3 - 5 = -3"

GRMA,

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.

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.

I'll have to study hard to get the cloigeann round some of this LOL...

Anyway, for the record, I would put 'It is minus 10 degrees tonight' as:
Tá sé lúide a deich anocht. if I wanted to be 'exact' about it
or just something like
Tá sioc an diabhail amuigh anocht.

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