Dia dhuit,

I've been trying to decide on a phrase for our little Irish learners group and came up with "Irish Speakers on the Great Plains". For those of you not familiar with the Great Plains, it's a vast short-grass area stretching from north to south down the center of the US and Canada.

Anyway, I came up with the following possible translations:

Gaeilgeoirí ar na Machairí Móra
Gaeilgeoirí ar na Mánna Mhóra

Gaeilgeoirí ar an Machaire Mór
Gaeilgeoirí ar an Má Mhór

I'm a little conflicted about whether to refer it to the singular or plural since "plains" is obviously plural, but generally the Great Plains would be thought of as a single entity.

Then again, I may be completely off base with my overall translation too.

Given that,

a) Which one would you recommend? Or, if I'm completely off, what would you recommend instead?

b) Does this convey something that would actually be meaningful to an Irish speaker (outside of possibly not being familiar with the Great Plains), or is it one of those crappy meaningless word-for-word translations? If that's the case, what would you suggest that has both meaning to the Irish speaker and keeps the spirit of what I'm trying to say?

Go raibh maith agaibh.

Searlas

Searlas,
Unknown to yourself you've opened a bag of cats. You'll see.

For what it's worth, here's mine (less words for the T-léine and more capital letters):

Gaeilgeorí An Machaire Láir.
Roughly: Irish speakers of the Central Plain.

Ádh mór.

Brilliant way to greet some-one new!

I'm not fluent in Gaeilge so I can't suggest a specific word for "plain", but in all the dictionaries I've looked in, they give:

machaire
má

"machaire" seems to be the main one, because if you look up "má" in a Gaeilge dictionary, it just gives you "machaire", while if you look up "machaire" it gives a proper explanation.

Once you've decided on one of them, you'll have to pick a word for "great". I'd use the prefix "oll", which means "vast", "massive".

My suggestion:

Gaeilgeoirí ar Na hOllmhachairí


Or if you want posession, "The Great Plains' Irish Speakers" or "Irish Speakers of the Great Plains":

Gaeilgeoirí na nOllmhachairí


I myself prefer the former, it has a nice feel to it.

I would just go for the most direct translation; Machairí Móra.

Gaeilgeoirí ar na Machairí Móra.

or

Gaeilgeoirí na Machairí Móra.

Go raibh maith agaibh for all your suggestions. It gives me a few good options to mull over. Seems I didn't open up too much of a can of worms, eh?

Thanks again,

S.

I would recommend:

Gaeilgeoirí ar na Machairí Móra

It's nice and simple.