"Ciamar a tha thu? Tha gu math, tapadh leat."
Translation:How are you? Well, thank you.
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I got this wrong, too. I think the English translations confuse us learners sometimes. Like silmeth mentioned, if there is no word in Gaelic that means "really" and yet the English translation gives us the word "really," it can mess with our thinking. XD
Example: Tha gu doigheil apparently translates to "Really well" according to what Duolingo tells me.
Then I came across this one and translated "Really well, thank you," which it marked as wrong. I mistakenly assumed that "gu" acted like "really."
The thing I can't understand yet is why "tha gu doigheil" translates to "really well."
There is no word meaning really (or intensifying in any way) in the Gaelic sentence, so why would it be? In Gaelic it’s just tha gu math (I’m) well.
I'd based my assumption on other examples from the course of the use of gu and gle where the meanings seemed to be really for gu and very for gle (apols for absence of accent - can't work out how to type accented characters)
I don’t think gu is ever used to mean really – it’s just an adverbial particle here, it changes math good into gu math well.
You might be mistaking it with examples like gu math glic really clever (literally well clever – sb is clever, and how clever they are? well – really – clever) or tha e gu math dorcha it is really dark where gu math dorcha means really dark, lit. well dark.
But here it’s just tha gu math, (I’m) well, here gu math well is the answer, not an attribute of another adjective (as it would be eg. in tha mi gu math glic, I am really clever).
That makes sense Silmeth - thanks again. So much to learn!!
Are you a Gael yourself btw?
No, I’m not. I am a Pole who – for some reason – has always been fascinated by Goidelic languages, learnt a fair bit of Irish (Munster dialect), and now learns Sc. Gaelic as well. :) (I’ve also been reading bits and pieces on Manx grammar, but that’s not really learning).
And thus – you should be taking my answers with a little grain of salt – I might be wrong sometimes, I am myself just a learner (but then, I try to verify claims in my responses before posting, so hopefully I don’t mislead others that much ;-)).