Táim measartha maith, buíochas le Dia. Agus tusa?

Tá mé go maith freisin!

I'm just going to type a little random chatter, playing with what I've learned lately. Could you correct it for me?

Dia dhuit! Is Tyler ainm dhom. Tá amhain chat agam. Is Robin ainm dhim. Is cat riabhach í, agus tá sí ramhar. Bhí dhá mhadadh agam, ba Hemi agus Ginger ainm acu. Thug sibh iad do mo mhamó. Bhí Hemi dubh, agus bhí Ginger donn agus dubh. Ba siad dachshund.

Quick question, how should I pluralize dachshund there? Dachshundaí? Dachshuind? Or maybe I should stick with the plural in the original language and say dachshunden?

Maith go leor, coinnigh ort!

Some notes:

1. Madadh is a Gaelic spelling. Perhaps there are Irish dialects which use this form, but I've only ever come across madra and (in the South) gadhar.

2. Native speakers prefer the copula to forms of bí when the trait is a permanent or inherent one. (Those familiar with the ser/estar distinction in Spanish should readily grasp this.) So ba dhubh Hemi é sounds much better to me than bhí Hemi dubh, which seems to imply that he didn't remain black all his life. On the other hand, tá sí ramhar is fine since presumably the cat wasn't always this fat.

3. Sibh is "y'all". So thug sibh do mo mhamó iad actually means "Y'all gave them to my gran". Somehow, I don't think this is what you intended to say here.


You could avoid the whole problem by using the Irish name, broc-chúnna (singular broc-chú). This is a literal translation, i.e. "badger hound". If you did want to use the borrowed term, I would definitely employ a so-called "strong ending", e.g. dachshundaí or dachshunda(ío)cha.

Oh, and by the way, in German, Dachshunden is only the dative plural form. In all other cases it would be Dachshunde.

Not that I plan on learning Irish but can someone explain to me how you can learn a language without learning the declensions? In all the languages I know you couldn't even make simple SVO (or whatever the order is in te language) sentences without the declensions. I mean, its chapter two in my Latin textbook.

Ok, while writing this I realized that Irish might have written declensions but not spoken ones. Is it something like that?

Where did anyone talk about learning Irish without learning the declensions? If that was in this thread then I missed it.

Ah, I'm learning Connemara dialect, and Learning Irish give madadh for dog, but Irishdictionary.ie gives madra. I think I'll use madra from now on though, more people will understand me, eh?


Oh no! I meant muid, "we gave them to my gran." That was shameful.

Thank you so much Linguoboy

If your primary textbook is Learning Irish, then that's debatable, since not everyone considers Cois Fhairrge part of Connemara. Moreover, the Irish spoken there diverges from that of the rest of West Galway. But I have my own copy of Ó Siadhail's book and I'm happy to consult it first before offering corrections.


Ó Siadhail's book has much to recommend it, but its most conspicuous failing is the spelling. Instead of adhering to the modern standard (Caighdeán Oifigiúil, commonly abbreviated to "CO") he modifies it in the direction of Cois Fhairrge dialect. Unfortunately he does this inconsistently, leading to such oddities as driofúr for CO deirfiúr "sister". Driofúr actually represents the Munster pronunciation rather well, but given that the CF pronunciation he supplies is [d'r'aur] (i.e. as if spelled dreabhar), it's hard to see how this is any improvement at all over the standard spelling for this dialect.

This might not be so troublesome for the learner if he gave the standard equivalents in the glossary or somewhere. (There is an appendix on spelling differences, but it only includes a rather limited number of examples.) Instead, you have to suss them out yourself. Madadh is an especially odd example because the r reappears in the plural form madraí. Wouldn't it have been easier to teach you the CO spelling and simply mention that the /r/ drops in singular?


Incidentally, it's common in other dialects and in CO to use a synthetic form here, i.e. thugamar. Either this or thug muid will be generally understood, however.

Bhuel a linguoboy,

Tá sé deas an ábhar seo a fheiceáil.

Conas atá cursaí leat?

Tá a fhios agam nach raibh tú ag caint liomsa, ach táim ag iarraidh glacadh pairt sa chomhrá seo arís.
Tá sé an deas an t-ábhar seo a fheiceail, mar gan cleachtadh, gheobhaidh an teanga álainn seo bás.

Cinnte!

Cad as duit a Declan?