Teach Me to Say "Taoiseach"

A Word to Ponder
as I Wander
the BBC site

The vocabulary word of the day is taoiseach.

I click on a story about Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern’s resignation and read that he has been taoiseach since June 1997 and a member of the Parliament in the Republic of Ireland for more than three decades.

Just before Kathy leaves with her walking weights, I call her over to the screen and point to the lead paragraph. Together we puzzle over it.
She suggests the mystical religion, Taoism. I suggest the equivalent of the term majority whip, a phrase that only leaves my lips but once in a blue moon (but more often than taoiseach.).

It is trivia we will store away. She’ll maybe try it in Scrabble sometime, or more likely buffalo people with it in a game of Balderdash. Another news story has more practical implications for us in Ecuador. The US image has improved a bit in the world.
I print the article and later walk it down the hall to my boss, a Canadian. It allows him to smile broadly, but not so much about the less warty image of the US.

Rather, about the New York retired teacher’s comment that “me and my husband sometimes pretend we're Canadian when we travel.” (He might mention that a retired Canadian teacher would begin the sentence in the subjective My husband and I instead of the objective case, me and my husband.)


In my office building are nine Ecuadorians, four US citizens, three Canadians, (technically all Americans, but somehow the term now receives limited use) and two Germans.

Recently I passed on to our staff an advisory that warned all Americans in Ecuador to keep a low profile and to remain vigilant during strained diplomatic relations with a neighbor. Moments later Richard walks in, his US-flag necktie filling my office with color. “Just wanted you to know I’m keeping a low profile,” he says smiling.

“You maybe carried your flag to work, too?” I ask. We are like that, we Yankees. Or as Ken started his account about the mass demonstrations several years ago: The embassy told us not to go, so of course we went.
The Taoiseach has broadly similar powers to the UK prime minister. http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Taoiseach It is apparently a title unique to the Republic of Ireland.

Oh gee. Too bad. I thought it was a word I could use when pretending to be a Canadian.