"Chuaigh sé lena athair."
Translation:He went with his father.
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It says that the translation for this sentence is "he went with his father", but when it gave words to arrange as a translation, it didn't give the words you could use to make that sentence, and said that the correct translation was "he takes after his father". Does it mean both?
Apparently, though it seems an unusually idiomatic phrase to be the required answer for this exercise.
How would this sentence look if if were "her/their father"? I'm not sure what happens with nouns starting with vowels after possesives.
"a hathair" - "her father", "lena hathair"
"a n-athair" - "their father", "lena n-athair"
If you are asking 'how come a past tense in Irish is translated/rendered as a present in English', the answer is: it is not a literal translation but an expression.
A bit like "the apple did not fall far from the tree (past) = he took from his father (past) = he takes after his father (present) = the son is like is father (present) = like father like son (verbless). Those 5 in English are more or less equivalent expressions... in different tensed/mood...
Duolingo offers 2 translation depending on device and exercise... "he went with his father" (literal, for which present is indeed 'téann sé...') and "he takes after his father" (idiomatic expression, where the Irish is using the past 'he took from/went with...' if you will)
1181
So, the prepositional pronouns can also show possession? If you took "athair" out of the sentence, would it translate to "He went with him?" By the same token, does that mean "Chuaigh sé liom" is "He went with me," and "Chuaigh sé liom mathair" is "He went with my mother"??? Would it also be acceptable to use "le mo..." or "le a...", etc.? Trying to make sure I understand this correctly...
You are mixing up the possessive adjective "her" with the pronoun "her". The masculine equivalents are "his" and "him". So lena isn't a prepositional pronoun - the 3rd person singular prepositional pronouns for le are leis and léi.
So you have:
"I went with him"-chuaigh mé leis
"I went with her"-chuaigh mé léi
"I went with his mother"-chuaigh mé lena mháthair
"I went with her mother"-chuaigh mé lena máthair
lena is just a concatenation of le and a.
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GRMA! So it's "le + a" combining and becoming "lena," isn't it? That makes much more sense than what my brain was trying to come up with.
edit I see you answered that exact question. Thanks!
That's all it is. And it's worth mentioning that if you wanted to say "with the parents" (or any plural noun), instead of saying le na tuismitheoirí you would say leis na tuismitheoirí - that le na becomes leis na.
The word e-arranging exercise is a smart place to put an idiomatic turn of phrase: it is less frustrating than having to guess out of nowhere, and it helps build your language imagination.