46 Comments
I wrote "A man, woman, girl and boy." and it said I was wrong, but in English it's okay to use one indefinite article in the beginning of a list if all the things in the list use the same one...
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This is Irish, not English :P It at least makes it easier to type it without having to remember to use the in/definate articles.
That's not a terribly helpful answer. If the translation is correct then it should count it as correct, but it counted it as wrong, so it should be fixed. It seems from a reply further down that it has been corrected.
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It either A man, a woman, a girl and a boy or man, woman, girl and boy
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I'm a beginner too, but from what I understand, pronunciation and phonetics in Celtic languages differ immensely from those in Romance or Germanic languages - "broad" and "slender" consonants, glide vowels - like "ea" in "fear" being pronounced as "farr" - and a fun little trick "h" does where it isn't actually a letter, but a function which changes how consonants around it are pronounced.
In this case, it may possibly have to do with the initial consonant sound of the words... or it could be a quirk that one just has to get used to - unintuitive as it all may sound to Sasanach ears.
Keep at it!
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Of course, the 'h' is down to difficulties in producing diacritics in typing. Originally, the lenition was shown by putting a dot (séimhithe`* not sure if it's standard but pronounced by my mother as 'shave-ih-huh') above the consonant (which goes back to Latin, it was the equivalent of crossing a letter out). bh, ch, dh, fh, gh, mh, ph, sh th should really be something like ḃ, ċ, ḋ, ḟ, ġ, ṁ, ṗ, ṡ, ṫ respectively. It looks better on the insular script. I suspect that's why the top of the B and D slope down and the F, G, S, and T have flat tops. It's not as pretty but it's easier just to tack on a 'h'.
`*séiṁiṫe?
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The mark is called ponc séimhithe (“dot of lenition”). Séimhithe itself is the genitive declension of séimhiú (“lenition”).
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Check out erinsweb.com it explains it. With different consonants in front or behind will change how vowels sound. Irish is really difficult.
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Erin's web sounded like a fourteen-year-old Canadian girl's webpage until I remembered that Erin is a poetic name for Ireland. Sorry, just struck me as funny.
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with and without! Irish doesn't have indefinite article, so where you'd put a in English you don't put anything in Irish. When you translate from Irish in English you should think if in English you need the indefinite article or not.
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go raimh maith agat
Lingotín faoi do choinne
FTFY :D
(Anyone know if there's a more informal thank you to match with 'cheers'? Welsh has 'ta' but I think they just nicked that from English...)
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Proper Irish uses polysyndetic coördination — each pair of items in a list of items should be separated by an agus (or is ) without any commas.
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Plenty of people don't. I think it's the people who programmed it, rather than the Irish language itself. But, for this sort of sentence, the Oxford comma doesn't make too much of a difference, so it's fine either way. It's only when the sentences can get ambiguous that it really makes a difference.
I typed it with one and it accepted it, so whatever works, I guess.
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You don't. Irish only has a word for The. If you want to say A woman, you just say Woman (bean). It's the same in Welsh.
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Had a laugh here; don't know if anyone else is experiencing this - my Mac seems to know which language you're typing in and throws a red line under spelling errors. Works with all the Duo languages so far. Tonight finally introducing it to Gaeilge, and everything's getting a red line, incorrect or not. Computer's confused :)
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first non-germanic non-italic languange (on Duo), your mac is scurred
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I use predictive text on my phone so I can kind of cheat on spelling if the keyboad for that language is supported. And for Romance languages, you can often do a vague shape (swype-like input) of the English word (e.g. intelligence) and it will just write the Spanish word (inteligencia) anyway. On the Irish course, I don't have support for Irish so I have to type letter-by-letter. Which is probably better because Irish spelling is something I definitely need to get the hang of.
Searious, it didnt accept my awnser and the only thing I messed up on was spelling woman with a 'e'
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Well, then you've fouled up on the point of spelling, and grammar (single/plural), too :D
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There are no indefinite articles in Irish — no analogues for either “a” or “an”.
So is it bean or bhean? I've seen both but im really confused on which one it is
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The base word is bean. The application of lenition to bean to form bhean occurs in several grammatical situations.
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Said it was incorrect for me, yet the translation was the exactly the same as the suggested translation.
IrishAiden123, you mean Duo and it's method of teaching Irish is crap? If you think so, please offer us novices some help, I love the way the Gaelic language sounds, it's beautiful to the ear. I would like to learn the small amount I can here correctly.
