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- Topic: Irish >
- "Táim."
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This may be a silly question, but I'm wondering what the difference is between 'Táim' meaning I am, and 'Is ... mé' also meaning I am. :)
I see you're studying Spanish. The difference is akin to ser vs. estar. Generally, "ta" is used to describe something that's changeable ("I am happy"), and "is" is used as a copula to tell what something IS ("I am a teacher").
Thank you, we also have the ser and estar thing in Portuguese (my native language) so this helps.
Why isn't táim spaced like tá sé and tá sí? Is it because tá mé exists anyway?
It's kind of a contraction but not really. It is like most Indo-European languages there are personal forms of verbs. There were also for the other persons but in modern Irish only the 1st person singular and 1st person plural retain the personal forms, in which case no pronoun is needed. These were replaced by the forms endin in -ann -eann -ionn etc for the other personson on verbs other than ta/is (bheith) This is not possible in English because, even if we maintained the 'thou' form, all the plural forms are the same: am, art, is, are are are. If we say the first three without pronoun we know clearly what person (at least number-wise) the verb refers to. another example is to have (Old-English infinitive = habban): have, hast, hath/has, have, have, have) German conjugation of 'haben': habe, hast, hatt, haben, hat, haben. Here we see that the English lost endings in the plural: ic hæbbe þū hafas/hafast/hæfst, he/heo/hit hafaþ/hæfþ, we habbaþm. ge habbaþ, hio habbaþ (þ = th which corresponds to the t at the end of the other Germanic and Romance languages). And we see even then the plurals are the same in the Old English period. if there ever were different forms for the plurals it had to be during the archaic period
I from Ireland, the rest are correct, it is a contraction, however, you should not have to use it, in Donegal we always say 'Tá mé'
JasonMurra12, you will find that many Donegal forms are not accepted by Duolingo. Just keep reporting them.
Thank you. I used to understand the Donegal dialect and wonder if this Irish is really just school Irish and not the Irish that people really speak. What dialect ARE we learning then?
Because it's present tense and you're talking about yourself.
Instead of saying 'Tá mé' we just shorten it to 'Táim'
:D
This is way better than google translate. Goolgle translate makes it sound like the word, like i typed in hi for irsh, and it said hoi. Google translate is a rip off
According to Wiktionary, [t̪ˠɑːmʲ]. So, that's a velarised dental t, a long "a" towards the back of the mouth and then a palatalised m.
does anyone have adivice? i am confuseed by the way things are ordered in irish. also, anyone heard aislings song from the secret of kells or amhran na fairrage from song of the sea? these have sparked my interest.
So from what I've gathered so far, being also a beginner at this language (some of this is also in the Tips & Notes section for this skill).
Irish uses the word order of [verb] [subject] [object]. In case you don't know what those are, the verb is the action, the subject is the one doing the action, and the object is what the action is being done to.
There is distinct conjugation in Irish, meaning a different form of a verb based on who is doing it. It's much like the forms we have for "to be" (I AM, he IS, they ARE, you ARE, it IS). Some of the forms have weird exceptions (especially with the form for 'we' and 'I', from what I can tell), like 'táim', which means in and of itself "I am", but it's really in the order "Am I".
So think of sentences like this. "I eat an apple" = "Eat I an apple"
Hope this helps a little! I'm still getting used to it, too.
It says to pay attention to accents but my phone doesn't have accented letters. How do I type accented letters with my phone? I have a Samsung 8.
Have you tried holding down the 'regular' form of the letter you wish to accent? That works on most mobile devices, I am of current using a Samsung Galaxy j5. Hope that helps :)
No, being a woman isn't a state, it's a characteristic. The difference is more or less the same as that between "ser" and "estar" in Spanish.
