"Tha am preas dearg."
Translation:The cupboard is red.
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I was wondering if anyone could tell me how I would say "the red cupboard" rather than "the cupboard is red"? Would this simply be "am preas dearg"?
Yes, it would be am preas dearg. :)
But notice that the adjective would change if the noun were plural, eg. tha na cait beag the cats are small vs. na cait bheaga the small cats, or if you had a feminine noun: tha a’ phàirc mòr the park is big vs. a’ phàirc mhòr the big park.
Many thanks for your help! I have a follow on question from the examples you've given. Am I right in saying that a’ causes lenition in pairc and the feminine noun pairc then causes lenition in the adjective mòr. But then I'm having trouble understanding why would pairc not cause lentition in the adjective mòr when tha is involved?
You are right, the article a’ causes lenition of the following feminine noun, and feminine nouns cause lenition of their attributive adjectives.
The thing is that in Gaelic only attributive adjectives change. Thus when the adjective predicates a verb (is connected to tha rather than to the noun) it stays in its base form. So pàirc causes lenition of mòr only when they together form a unit meaning (a/the) big park. In the sentence the pretty park is big the park and the adjective big are not a unit, but the pretty park is a unit, thus in Gaelic you have: tha a’ phàirc bhrèagha mòr (and if there were more adjectives, all of them would get lenited: a’ phàirc bhrèagha mhòr the big pretty park).