"Is é Pól uachtarán na hÉireann."
Translation:Paul is the president of Ireland.
42 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
While we all appreciate Pól, the true Uachtarán na hÉireann is Miggledy Higgins.
Can it not be just "is Pól uachtarán na hÉireann"? Is the "é" after "is" necessary?
So, I'm going to describe this in the way my class was taught. It'll be watered down, because y'know, we were first semester Irish students without much grammar knowledge. So, your word order is going to be VANTP.
V = verb
A = Indefinite nouns
N = Names
T = Definite nouns
P = Pronouns
So that's your general order. If you use a definite noun, a proper noun, or a name, you need to include the pronoun (é, í, iad, srl - note, after ní, these prefix an "h") before the first one.
So in your first sentence you have and indefinite noun (araicnid) and a definite noun (an damhán alla). So, putting these in order (A before T), you get Is araicnid an damhán alla. However, you need the pronoun before the definite noun. Since damhán alla is feminine, you use í. This giving you Is araicnid í an damhán alla.
Your second one you have a name (Pól) and a definite noun (uachtarán na hÉireann). So, putting those together, you get Is Pól uachtarán na hÉireann. Yet, you still need that pronoun. Is é Pól uachtarán na hÉireann.
Hope that helps explain it a little. And note, this is really basic, and barely scratches the surface of the copula.
How do we know, besides Duolingo's preferred method of trial and error, that araicnid is feminine?
In general, you need to memorize gender and declension. teanglann.ie is a great dictionary resource that will tell you this.
Despite that, sometimes you can guess the gender of nouns to a pretty high degree of accuracy. One heuristic I use is that nouns that end in a slender consonant (that is, preceded by a slender vowel like i or e) are usually feminine.
You can find a more detailed guide to gender heuristics here: https://thegeekygaeilgeoir.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/making-sense-of-irish-gender/
There is slightly more concise description at http://nualeargais.ie/foghlaim/nouns.php
The article that you referred to does suggest that single syllable words ending in -cht are masculine and multi-syllable words ending in -cht are feminine (which is more detail than the page that I linked to), but then it says that bunreacht is an exception, because it's a multi-syllable word that is masculine, but bunreacht is a compound word, taking it's gender from the single syllable reacht .
Thanks, I was looking for that but couldn't remember where it was. It's a great tool.
Taking sentences like "Is múinteoir (é) Pól", etc. as a pattern, could we reverse the order? "Is uachtarán na hÉireann é Pól"? As far as I understood the copula works a bit like the "=" (equals) sign.
It'd shift the meaning a little, and you'd need to move é to right after the copula.
Thanks. Could you elaborate a little - in what way does the meaning change? Is that only a matter of emphasis?
I tried to find some info online and turns out that Wikipedia adds in another detail that I missed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_syntax): 'If the predicate is indefinite, it follows the copula directly, with the disjunctive pronoun and subject coming at the end: Is múinteoir í Cáit. "Cáit is a teacher."'
I guess in this case it's not really indefinite as there is only one president of Ireland (shouldn't there be a definite article?).
There is an article - the na in Uachtarán na hÉireann. Since it'seems a genitive phrase, the article goes between the two.
And the meaning changes from Paul being the subject to the President of Ireland being the subject. So instead of labeling Paul as PoI, you're labeling the PoI as Paul.
@galaxyrocker: I can't reply below for some reason. Thanks for the answer, I haven't looked at genitive yet, so I didn't recognize the structure. It all makes sense now.
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Sorry if this a stupid question, what's a copula? Are they; Is, tá, ní, níl? The verbs at the beginning of the sentence?
The copula, as used in Irish, is the (defective) verb is and its forms. No others are called that
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Hi galaxyrocker Thank you so much for that info on the, copair iv been at this since the lockdown finding, Im finding it tough going.
galaxyrocker just cut and pasted that answer from the original post that contained that explanation, without updating the examples to conform to this particular exercise.
Good on Pól, considering Duolingo doesn't even capitalize his name half the time
Every single occurrence of Pól in the exercises is properly capitalised.
In fact, a search of the Duolingo discussions showed 759 occurrences of Pól and just 18 occurrences of pól, so even the vast majority of users capitalise his name properly.
Whenever I see "Pól" inside a box, such as in the matching exercises, it's always lowercase "pól" Is it just me?
I guess it must be a phone thing. I tend to go back and forth between the website and the phone app. The exercises give you five Irish words to match to five English words. They also lowercase "pól" in the exercises where they give you an Irish sentence and you translate it by selecting the English words from the boxes below the sentence.
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Great to see that PÓL is now accepted as a correct answer. No need to change it to Paul