"It is much bigger."
Translation:Tá sé i bhfad níos mó.
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Sigh, just when i thought I was getting the hang of word order. I had put "i bhfad" at the end, assuming it is like an adjective that goes after the thing it describes....
How would I normally decide if "nois mó" means "bigger" or "more"? Is it just a matter of context?
"more" is usually a determiner or an adverb, while "bigger" is an adjective. Adjectives typically follow the noun in Irish. So Tá níos nó madraí ná cait ann means "there are more dogs than cats", but Tá madraí níos mó ná cait means "dogs are bigger than cats".
In many cases "more" and "bigger" are basically interchangeable in English - "we need more staff"/"we need a bigger staff", "I want a bigger breakfast"/"I want more breakfast" but the adverb/adjective distinction still applies.
Could I answer this with either "Tá sé i bhfad níos mó" or "Is é i bhfad níos mó"? I used tá...
You would only use tá sé - "bigger" is an adjective, and the basic use of the copula is is for linking two nouns, not a noun and an adjective.
No. It'd be something like saying "greatly bigger" in English, you could say it, people could figure out what you meant, but it would be weird.
I looked here https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fgb/I_bhfad and found that the 'core' word is fad and that means far/ distant. So I guess that it's lenited because of 'i' (preposition meaning 'in').
Ok, but how does "i bhfad" (= "in far") become "much"?
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Could it be compared to these expressions in English: "way bigger", "heaps better/bigger"??? I can imagine THEM seeming illogical to learners of English...
I have the same issue, i will check with my Irish teacher but i thought both versions were acceptable