Any scots gaelic speakers on here?

[david1976]

As the title suggests, if anyone using this board is fluent in Scottish Gaelic could you please drop me a pm for a very quick query.

Thank you

​David

 

[Sinistral]

Not bad on orthography, but not fluent in speech.

Your query ...... 'tracking dog'...... lorgaire (noun) is a tracker, or spy ..... lorgaich (verb) is to trace or track ..... lorg (noun) is a track/trace/footstep, etc.

Using the genitive case of the last noun & inflected, a canine word would be cu-luirge which is 'dog of the track'..... such as a bloodhound.

 

[limulus]

So did the term 'Cur' for a dog come from garlic then or was it latin?

 

[willie_gunn]

So did the term 'Cur' for a dog come from garlic then or was it latin?

Well, according to Wikipaedia (so it must be right ) it's from Old Norse or Old German:

From Middle English curre (compare Middle Dutch corre (“house dog”)), shortened from Middle English curdogge or kurdogge, a compound whose second element is clearly dogge (“dog”). The first element is probably from Old Norse kurra (“to growl, grumble”) and related to Middle Low German korren (“to growl”).

​willie_gunn