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- "Tá uisce ag an gcailín."
72 Comments
I'm not sure if you're still looking but this video is excellent, and the little printable sheet is great for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIokUII7LX0&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=stwidgie
http://www.standingstones.com/gaelpron.html this website helps me a lot and there's others that have spoken samples like this one: http://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/
Gcailín is pronounced as if it were gailín.
Bhfear is pronounced as if it were vear, i.e. as if the "bhf" were a "v".
They (ag, aici/aige) are not interchangeable.
If you are using a pronoun you use aici/aige.
Tá uisce aici = She has water.
Tá uisce aige = He has water.
If you are using a noun you use ag.
Tá uisce ag an gcailín = The girl has water.
316
I got what it meant, but why at the start of the sentence is there an 'am', is it just a grammar thing?
46
Can anyone explain why a g and an h is added to beginning of many of these words like gcailín and bhuachaill?
258
Yes, you're absolutely correct.
In particular, 'agam/ agut/ aige/ aici' etc. are versions of 'ag'. In Irish we combine prepositions with pronouns, so 'ag í' becomes 'aici', for example.
Tá is a form of the verb "to be". In Irish, to say that someone/something has something, you're actually saying it's at/with them. So here you're saying "The water is (tá) with the girl". Irish sentence structure is Verb-subject-object, so you're looking at the equivalent of "Is water with the girl".
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm still learning, too! I had trouble with this one at first because the only drop down for "ag" is "have", which is a verb in English, not a preposition, and I knew that I was supposed to actually be saying the water was at/with the girl!
2211
Thank you for this explanation. I also wrote "the girl has the water", I understand now why the second "the" is incorrect.
258
It will depend on your dialect of english, but I would type it as 'gol-een' perhaps. The first syllable is the same as the first syllable of 'golliwog', and the second syllable is like the end of 'seen' without the 's',
No, it wouldn't. The format of the Irish sentence is:
- Tá + (possessed object) + ag + (the possessor)
- possessed object = water = uisce
- the possessor = the girl = an cailín
So you get Tá uisce ag an gcailín.
Note that ag an causes cailín to be eclipsed to give ag an gcailín.
Well this is confusing!
In the table list explaining when words take the eclipsis we see :
d doras becomes n ndoras
yet later on we are told
'' An exception to this rule is that the word should not be eclipsed if it begins with d or t.
Examples: ag an doras at the door ''
Any explanation or is this a typo?
Tá uisce ag an gcailín
Uisce (water) is the subject.
But in the English sentence 'water' is the object.
No, the Irish sentence is constructed differently to the English one.
The Irish construction is:
"Water is at/with the girl".
Hence you get Tá uisce ag an gcailín.