an-spideog

[an-spideog]

Duine a fhreastalaíonn ar choláiste samhraidh, sin a tugtar orthu in áiteanna

Tuigim go bhfuil cosúlachtaí eatarthu ach pioc an ceann atá is tábhachtaí duit féin

[an-spideog]

ISO best place to find possible recordings of urú (or eclipses) spoken in Irish? (specifically for the West Ulster dialect)

I’ve got them written down in a chart but am struggling to know how to pronounce the words they’d pair with - sorry I can’t be more specific, hopefully someone knows what I mean!!!

🤲🇮🇪

[an-spideog]

Tadhg is one!

Tadhg an mhargaidh - the man in the street, Tadhg Ó Ródaí - Mr. So-and-so

See: Tadhg

In English the word for a generic person is John Smith is there an equivalent in Irish I'm very interested to know! Also in my native language fulano is the word for random person and I just learned that it's the same in Arabic:DD so cool . I wonder if there is a word similar to that in Irish does it look like any other language? Okay

The Irish for John Smith is Seán MacGabhann, but we don't use that to mean a generic person. I've never heard the Irish version of that but I guess there must be.

Suggestions from Irish readers welcome.

[an-spideog]

Dia dhuit! Is aoibhinn liom do bhlog! Chonaic mé go bhfuil "community" agat don ghaeilge, an féidir liomsa a bheith pairteach, le do thoill?

Is féidir, ach ní bhíonn mórán ar siúl i ndáiríre, tá na communities sórt ait, n'fheadar an bhfuilid ró-mhaith.

[an-spideog]

Níl ceist agam, ach tá áthas orm an go bh'fuil an Ghaeilge in usáid!! ❤

grma!

[an-spideog]

I finished watching Crá yesterday and now I need to try to persuade as much of tumblr as possible to watch it too.

It's an Irish-language murder mystery TV series set in Donegal, though it's subtitled in English, so you don't need Irish to follow it. It's not a cheerful series - Crá translates to torment - and nearly every single character is in some way corrupt, compromised or morally grey. But it's extremely well-produced, it's gripping, it has an utterly stunning soundtrack (by a Breton composer!) and it's visually gorgeous:

This is the first ever Irish-language TV show to get a primetime slot in Northern Ireland. And I would utterly love for the BBC to invest in more of this kind of thing (it's a BBC/TG4 coproduction). So if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, please help make it a success!

[an-spideog]

deir tú sin cosúil nach dtarlaíonn a leithéid i Ros na Rón gach coicís lol

[an-spideog]

The Basics

You should be able to recognise what gender a noun is

You should be able to know when the genitive (tuiseal ginideach) is used (the simple cases anyway)

You should know how a noun of this gender is affected by an in the genitive.

(You should also know how a noun of this gender is affected outside of the genitive but I'm not gonna go into that to keep this a bit shorter, ask if you're interested)

You should be able to guess what the genitive form is like 70% of the time (genitive forms are not always fully regular, but there are a lot of patterns that you can latch onto.

What gender is a noun?

Like with a lot of things in Irish grammar, there aren't fully definite rules for this but there are a lot of patterns which can make you pretty good at figuring this out. Here is a diagram from the now defunct leargais.ie which is a good general guide.

You start at the top and work your way through the list going down. e.g.

cailín, start at the top, is it an abstract noun ending in -e, -í? no, move on. does it end in a vowel or -ín? yes - so it's m4, the numbers aren't super important here, but we know that it's masculine.

What is the genitive? When is it used?

Some languages, like Irish, have "cases", these are used to show a word's role in the sentence. In english, we usually indicate word's roles by their position, for example in the phrase "The cat ate the apple", we know that "the cat" is the subject because it comes before the verb. The genitive is a specific role in a sentence for a noun which is used to describe another noun. So when we say for example "Seán's Hat" we're describing whose hat it is.

So we put Seán into the genitive: Hata Sheáin.

This doesn't have to be possession, it can also be things which are just conceptually related, like "a school bag" the word "school" is describing the type of bag, so we would put it in the genitive: mála scoile.

As a general rule the genitive will be used whenever you have two nouns together without something else linking them.

Possession, (X's Y)

Description (school bag etc.)

Certain prepositions are constructed using nouns in irish, i measc (among) is literally "in the midst of", so you use the genitive.

When you're saying things like "I am doing" that uses a verbal noun so it also takes the genitive: Táim ag déanamh na hoibre (I'm doing the work).

How are nouns affected by an in the genitive

The important thing here is to know how the word "the" (an) is different in the genitive. In the nominative (the other case, which isn't the genitive), an lenites feminine nouns (an bhean - the woman), and it prefixes t- to masculine nouns starting with a vowel, but in the genitive the rules are different. This much is fully regular so you can just learn it.

Masculine

With masculine nouns, it lenites consonants and does nothing to vowels:

An bóthar (the road) -> i lár an bhóthair (in the middle of the road)

An t-úll (the apple) -> i lár an úill (in the middle of the apple)

Feminine

With feminine nouns, it becomes na and it does nothing to consonants and prefixes h- to vowels:

An chistin (the kitchen) -> i lár na cistine (in the middle of the kitchen)

An oifig (the office) -> i lár na hoifige (in the middle of the office)

Plural

With plural nouns, it's also na but it eclipses:

Na húlla (the apples) -> i measc na n-úll (among the apples)

Na páirceanna (the parks) -> i measc na bpáirceanna (among the parks)

How to form the genitive of a singular noun

These are some of the most common patterns. You don't necessarily need to memorise them all at once, you'll get them over time, the two at the bottom are the most common I would say.

Abstract noun ending in -e, -í? No change (foighne -> foighne, sochaí -> sochaí)

Ends in a vowel or -ín? No change (cluiche -> cluiche, cailín -> cailín)

Ends in -cht? Add an -a (eolaíocht -> eolaíochta, siopadóireacht -> siopadóireachta)

Ends in -éir, -eoir, -óir, -úir? Make the r broad and add an -a (feirmeoir -> feirmeora, siopadóir -> siopadóra, dochtúir -> dochtúra)

Ends in -eog, -óg, -lann? Make the final consonant slender and add -e (fuinneog -> fuinneoige, leabharlann -> leabharlainne)

Ends in a slender consonant? Add an -e (cistin -> cistine, scoil -> scoile, oifig -> oifige)

Ends in a broad consonant? Make it slender (úll -> úill, bóthar -> bóthair)

How to form the genitive plural of a noun

This part is a little bit confusing but essentially for some plural endings, ones like -í, -anna, -acha, the genitive form is the same. (páirceanna -> páirceanna, cluichí -> cluichí, leaganacha -> leaganacha)

However, for other plurals (called "weak" plurals), the genitive plural form looks the same as the normal singular.

úlla (apples) -> úll (of apples)

báid (boats) -> bád (of boats)

fuinneoga (windows) -> fuinneog (of windows)

This can be confusing but it's usually clear from context which is meant.

Conclusion

There's a lot of stuff there, so it might feel a bit overwhelming, but the main thing to understand is finding the gender of a noun and the rules with the article (an). The individual forms are something you can pick up over time and you can always check in a dictionary like teanglann or foclóir.

I tried to make this pretty brief but if you have any questions please let me know. And if you want more detail, the site Gramadach na Gaeilge is still available on archive.org here, and is a really solid resource.

dia dhaoibh does anybody have any good resources for learning & memorising an tuiseal ginideach seeing as my irish teacher has refused to teach it to us for years now

cabhraigh liom le do thoil x

[an-spideog]

Thinking of making a post and maybe some youtube videos under the title "a guide to irish sentence structure".

Is this something you'd be interested in? What about irish sentence structure do you have questions about?

[an-spideog]

[ID: Líne as an leabhar Jimín Mháire Thaidhg:

"Tánn tù ait," arsa Cáit, agus chuir sí osna codlatach aisti.

/deireadh an ID]

[an-spideog]

Gabh mo sheacht leithscéal as an moill, táim ana-bhroidiúil le déanaí. Léigheas an t-eagrán canúnach neamhghiorraithe, tá gaelainn chiarraí ag an Seabhac, rud a thaitníonn go mór liom.

Agus fun fact, sórt tagairt don seabhac is ea m'ainm féin, An Seabhac (éan) - An Spideog (éan).

An bhfuil fandom an do Jimín Mháire Thaidhg. An bhfuil aon duine chun labhair liom faoi Jimín Mháire Thaidhg

[an-spideog]

labharfad leat mar gheall ar Jimín!

An bhfuil fandom an do Jimín Mháire Thaidhg. An bhfuil aon duine chun labhair liom faoi Jimín Mháire Thaidhg

[an-spideog]

What's the difference between 'as' and 'ó'? I feel like I have an idea but I can't explain it to people.

Prepositions tend to be quite hard to explain, since really what matters is the unique contexts they get used in within any given language (e.g. we say "on a bus" but "in a car", "on Saturday" but "in the evening", "in the morning", "at dawn", "on the 5th of May")

"as" is often explained as being like "out of", and "ó" as "from", which can be true but again the context thing is important.

For learning when to use which I'd encourage you to just read and listen to lots of Irish.

See also, the teanglann entries for as and ó, (they're very long)

[an-spideog]

Hi! Have you any thoughts on YouTuber “Patchy” and how he feels about learning Irish from YouTube resources like Learn Irish, Bitesize Irish, etc. I’m an American trying to learn as well as I can but his critiques of their pronunciation in their teaching has left me wondering what to do. I wanna learn & speak the language well!

He's an interesting lad lol, he's generally correct that most people on YouTube don't use native Irish sounds when speaking Irish (broad slender distinction especially). If you still find those youtubers helpful that's fine but just try to find other sources for pronunciation

[an-spideog]

Took me ages to figure out how to do speaker colours but I've done it and there's subtitles for episode 3 now

[an-spideog]

Imeartaisí focal a chumas bunaithe ar "x-er? I hardly know her" ag tosnú ar an gceann is fearr agus ag dul in olcas

Leanaí?? Is ar éigean atá aithne agam uirthi

Eolaí?? Is ar éigean atá aithne agam uirthi

Maraithe?? Is ar éigean atá aithne agam uirthi

(le blas Connachtach)

Filí?? Is ar éigean atá aithne agam uirthi

Díolaí?? Is ar éigean atá aithne agam uirthi

Cuirí?? Is ar éigean atá aithne agam uirthi

Cannaí?? Is ar éigean atá aithne agam uirthi

Tacsaí?? Is ar éigean atá aithne agam uirthi

(Muna dtuigeann tú aon cheann acu, abair liom lol)

[an-spideog]

Short English post to spread the word!

Did you know that there is a network of Irish speaking discord servers that is, while currently not as active as the average english speaking server, has well over 100 people in it's servers? The goal of this project (known as the "Gaelspás") is and has been to create an irish speaking space on discord, for irish speakers. If you have any irish at all, perhaps we might be worth checking out! Curious what servers we have? Well: Sciortaí agus stocaí - Server focused on fashion, LGBTQ topics, and more, with the server focusing more on the feminine side of things Amhráin na dTonnta - Ever wanted to talk about music in irish? This is the server for that! Éirenime - Anime discussions, but in Irish and Japanese! (Yes, the only bilingual server thats in Irish, but doesnt speak english!) Túr Ghaeil Ghlais - Conlanging, but in Irish! All these servers can be found in our linktree!

And while you check those out, if you could share this post, do, it helps us out alot in creating one a space online in Irish, for Irish speakers!