Root Words

GuanYin

Tá sé seo beagánín deacair agus níl móran am agam, mar sin, táim chun an fógra seo a scríobh as Bearla.

I was wondering about root words in Irish. Words that are derived from another word altogether ie. in english "concentration" and "concentric" come from "centre".

Does this happen in Irish. For instance, Eagla and Eaglais.. are they related?

Inspector Gadget

Hmm...

It's difficult to compare any other language to English, as there are no other languages on the planet that can compete with it for the sheer number of languages it draws words from, as well as the fact that it (more or less) attempts to preserve the original pronunciation of the words.

However, it's almost inevitable that words to describe more specific items and terms stem from more general ones. It wouldn't surprise me if, for example, the word for writing (scríobh) is an evolution of scríb/scríob (sp?) - which describes scraping/scratching.

Just my 2c...
Gadget
P.S.> Bill Bryson (yes, that Bill Bryson) wrote a great book called "Mother Tongue" about the origins of English, if you're interested in that sort of thing. Worth picking up if you can find it.

Lukin Black

As far as I know, there is quite a bit of words of Latin origin in Irish (whereas there's much more French in English), scríobh comes from scribere, leabhair comes from liber, etc.

I had a bit of a laugh about the eagla/eaglais. I can't say I think they're related!

Of course there are obvious derivations like leabhar - leabharlann, bia - bialann, but I can't think of any examples offhand, of the type that skyeirl is talking about..

Gael

Eaglais is a borrow word from latin ecclesia.
Eagla I presume is just an ancient irish word that's been around for yonks. I'm quite sure the two are not linked.