Hey all,

Someone asked me the other day why "droch" as a prefix is hyphenated sometimes, and not hyphenated other times.

For example, we have:

Drochuair
drochmheas
drochbhlas
Etc.

But

Droch-lá
Droch-bhlasta
Droch-íde
Etc.

I had to confess that I didn't know, but I knew where to ask!

Redwolf

According to what I see in FGB, they put a hyphen:

- when the 2nd element begins with ch, so that you don't get chch in the word,
- when the 2nd element begins with a vowel that might be pronounced unproperly otherwise : droch-araí, which is /'drox 'ari:/, but if it were spelt drocharaí you'd pronounce /'droxəriː/.

Btw all the words you've written in your message, have no hyphen in FGB: drochíde, drochbhlas, etc.

I don't know where you saw them with a hyphen, but either they were in pre-1950 texts, or they contain mistakes...

_________________
Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

It's possible they were in older texts (I'm repeating this second-hand).

Thanks!

Redwolf