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- "Tá uisce ag an gcailín."
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Does anyone know where i can go to learn the phonetics of this language? Its frustrating when i hear a word and completely spell another based on the sounds. Also i didnt even recognize gcailín when it was spoken. I really wish Duo Lingo had some more spoken Gaelic/Irish.
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
Many thanks for the YT link. Really clear, I'm sharing it with loads of people who were stuck.
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/
If you can access it Radió na Gaeltachta (RnaG) is the best source for listening to Gaeilge or else TG4
In the sentence Tá uisce ag an gcailín .. is it the same/simliar if you used aici without having cailín in it?
like .. Tá uisce aici Does that makes sense to anyone or do I fail at this haha
No, that's right. The word ag means "at", and the expression "X is at Y" is the Irish way of saying "Y has X" (a bit like Russian does).
The thing is, you can't just say "*tá uisce ag sí" to mean "she has water", since "ag" and "sí" obligatorily combine to "aici", so: tá uisce aici.
Why is it ag an and not aici gcailín? I read the tips, but just wondering.
aici is only used when it would be 'at her'. Otherwise you stick with ag regardless of the gender of the noun. So ag an bhfear, ag an mbean, ag an mbuachaill, ag na madaí. The an is there because it's 'the girl'.
Is gcailín and bhfear pronounced the same/similar way as cailín and fear? The sound doesn't seem to be working for me on these exercises and I'm curious as I've been told mbean is pronounced like bean
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.
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I got what it meant, but why at the start of the sentence is there an 'am', is it just a grammar thing?
Read over the tips and notes that go with this lesson! The word by word translation would be "Water is at the girl."
I don't think the Tips and Notes are accessible in the mobile app. Sure make things a lot harder, a bad as Rosetta Stone. :( I hope they add them to future versions.
Same; no notes on the app for Android for mobile. Didn't know there were any!
What we have to do is go to the website on mobile, and view as full site. It is clunky, but works for periodic check in on the tips.
did you photoshop some extra languages onto your page. Holy (expletive here)!
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Can anyone explain why a g and an h is added to beginning of many of these words like gcailín and bhuachaill?
On the day that the lesson notes become available on the mobile app, suspect I'll burst out with an uncontainable audible cheer. The other people in the coffee shop / library / waiting room / etc. will be so startled! :-)
Could someone talk me through the difference between this "Tá uisce ag an gcailín", and "Tá uisce aici". I am assuming that the first one uses 'ag' b/c it has a named subject ('the girl')? Is 'ag' just another form of the 'agam/aige/aici' verb? I always get confused about which one to use.
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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.
Thank you. Thinking about it in terms of the combination is really helpful! Language mutations are fascinating...
As said, you're correct. Just one little point: ag is a preposition. agam, aige, aici are called 'prepositional pronouns'. Basically, they're inflected prepositions; something Irish is unique for among European languages.
I don't understand the point of Ta in all these sentences... -_- Can anyone explain?
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!
That's true. Keep in mind, though, that "ag" is "at" and is used for having. "With" is "le" in Irish, and is used with the other verb for "to be" for owning. (This probably appears in a latter lesson somewhere.)
yep. And there's a difference between bí ag, which signifies possession, and is le, which signifies ownership.
How is 'gcailin' pronounced. Since this course hardly has any audio or pronunciation guides I have no idea how it should sound
Change the /k/ to a /g/ (c to g sound):
I get a bit mixed up now and then due to it looking like "water has the girl"
Shouldn't it accept "the girl has the water" because the sentence includes "an"?
The 'an' refers to the 'gcailin' - the girl. Word for word translation would be 'there-is water with the girl'
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Thank you for this explanation. I also wrote "the girl has the water", I understand now why the second "the" is incorrect.
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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',
If feminine nouns normally lenite after an (i.e. an chailín) am I right in assuming the ag overrides this and causes eclipsis instead?
Yes, you're right. However, in Donegal Irish, it still eclipses (in fact, they all eclipse after ag an up there).
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?
@poblach. No it is NOT a typo..when D is preceded by N it (D) is not eclipsed. If you are able to look up the Eclipses notes it is explained quite well. Good luck with it -Ádh mór leis.
Is it true that with the verb to have the sentence order is verb object subject?
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.
Why would this not use "aici"? Is it because the subject is a noun, not a pronoun?
Essentially.
Tá uisce ag an gcailín - "The girl has water"
Tá uisce aici - "She has water"
I actually realize that now, but when I made that comment I had went to a Irish to English dictionary, grammar, and pronunciation website and it read gcailín as "Shee".
If have questions about content on another website, you'll have to provide a link to that content.
I don't have a question about it, but thanks. Looking back on it, it was probably an error because I can't seem to even get any results when I type in gcailín to the search bar. BTW, the pronunciation was given to me verbally, not through writing.
