Mechapuppy wrote:
Hi All!
I am designing my next tattoo and would like something to pay homage to my Irish ancestry. I would like the phrase to mean "From Pain comes Wisdom and Strength", but am also interested in some traditional sayings and phrases that you may know that are similar in meaning.
Looking forward to hearing what you guys have to suggest
Editing to note that Bríd's response hit before I finished typing mine (slow typer here). She's a native speaker, so I'd place much more weight on what she thinks.
There was a previous discussion on the forum about a shorter version of that, which you can find at this link:
http://www.irishlanguageforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=5613&p=43924&hilit=pain+strength#p43924The consensus there was for the following:
Leis an bpian a thagann an neart[It's] with pain that strength comes
If you add in "wisdom", you could have:
Leis an bpian a thagann an ghaois 's an neart[It's] with pain that wisdom and strength come
Some notes (about which others may have further thoughts):
-- There are several words for wisdom in Irish. I opted for the shortest one, since it's for a tattoo.
-- The 's (apostrophe plus the letter "s") before the words
"an neart" is a shortened form of the word
"agus" ("and"). It can also be written as "
is", so you can choose among those three variations in terms of what sounds best to you.