31 Comments
This is what it says in the "Tips & notes" section about the is...mé forms (called the copula): "The copula is a special third form of the verb to be. It links the subject of a sentence with a subject complement, such as a noun or pronoun: for example, in sentences like I am a man, the woman is a cook, he is our friend, or that is a book. Therefore, bí is not used in these cases."
As far as I know it's similar to ser/estar usage in Spanish - is......e is used for something permanent (is fear e - he is a man). On the other hand ta se fuair ( he is cold) is something temporary and changeable. I might be wrong, but hope that helps. Also, i don't know how to do fadas ( the little accent above the vowels) on my ipad, so it looks weird when I type the Irish words without it.
Touching a character on the on-screen keyboard for a bit longer should open up a little window with all the accents and diacritics you can put on that character.
Not positive Mr. Macy, as I just started too. I do believe though, that you use the latter when you have some form of object/noun. Such as I am a woman.
Is 'ái' a dipthong or is Táim two syllables? I'm not sure of if I'm hearing aw-im or oym.
So are all of the verb conjugations in the first person going to be one word.
Could this not be: I and he are? Or would it be best to conjugate both modes of "to be" in English?
Soooo I wrote "He and I" and that is not correct? State of being would be understood yes?
In Ulster Irish you tend to palatalize your t's and d's a lot, giving lots of ch and j sounds. Nice regional feature.
AGH. Curse you romance languages teaching me that the letter 't' in a pronoun means 'you'!
In some of my teach-yourself books, "I am" appears as "Ta'im" (sorry, I can't get a fada over that 'a' for some reason, hence the apostrophe standing in for it). In others, it gets presented as "Ta' me'" (again, the apostrophes stand in for fadas over the 'a' & 'e' -- sorry). Is one or the other form more common / widespread / current, or are they interchangeable?
They're both fine. I think it's fair to say that all the dialects prefer táim to tá mé, but tá mé survives somehow - perhaps a relic of teaching.
I think that you should also be using "tá mé" as well as "táim" ; they both mean the same but in different dialects
