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something like 'with your will' but it'd be extremely rare to see it as anything other than 'please' as far as I know.
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"if you will" is a polite and archaic(?) way to say please in English.
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compare also to French "s'il te plaît/s'il vous plaît" which literally means "if you like"
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No, sorry, "s'il te/vous plaît" literally means "if it pleases you", but you are very close, and le do thoil (with your will) is quite similar.
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it really means : if it pleases you in French ( sorry Sean I did not see your post!) my mother tongue IS French.
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Nope. Not even close in Standard English. 'By your leave' is a formal, arguably archaic, expression for requesting permission. Often used idiomatically to mean someone who rudely has not asked permission to do something. eg. He barged right past me without so much as a 'by your leave'! The literal translation is close but not the idiomatic so translating this literally leaves an English speaker with a false friend that looks like 'excuse me' or even 'with your permission' and I don't think either of those are valid meanings for the phrase are they?
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Consider that English "please" comes from "if you please", meaning "if it pleases you to do so". Modern English please shows far less deference, so we use it a lot more than Irish le do thoil
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Thank you! So you mostly use the word "please" instead of "le do thoil", when you speak Irish?
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I mean English speakers say please more than Irish speakers say "le do thoil"
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Sounds almost exactly as the Russian word "ледокол" (ledokol) which translates as "icebreaker ship" :)
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Cutting through the ice of their objections with the politeness of Please!
It is similar to Croatian "ledolomac", "led" obviously meaning "ice" in both, "o" being an interfix and "-lomac" is literally "-breaker" (I presume that "-kol" is used in similar verb constructions and derivations). Just heard today that we have a very different language than Russians, glad to see there are still very similar word formation patterns!
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Le duh hell is how it's pronounced in both Connaught and Ulster dialects I believe. I actually thought más é do thoil é was more formal. An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas más é do thoil e? May I please go to the toilet... the refrain of my childhood.
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Poor little ones! That construction is fascinating but seems impractical for very young kids who need to go...haha.
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Yes, but I think this can often be found in languages which haven't been simplified too much during ages, for example French: "S'il vous plaît". And as NiallT said, Irish people don't use this expression too often.
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Even if it's the same number of syllables, French is longer (4 words vs 3).
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And in Irish, you'll often hear it with the 'o' of 'do' suppressed: led'thoil—even shorter!
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Before this was released in beta, I downloaded an app that's basically just an Irish phrasebook. It lists this as being the formal way of saying "please," and I guess they consider "más é do thoil é" as the everyday usage (there was no distinction given for this one, it just said "please"). Is this true?
I realize this might be covered later, so I'm sorry if I jumped the gun!
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Más é do thoil é is what I would encourage the children I teach to use, but both are fine in any situation, imo :)
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What is the name of the phrasebook? I'd like to see and use other resources for Irish. :-)
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When I originally learned this phrase, I heard "le do hell". Is that part of the Connaught dialect?
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That really confused me, too - "le do hell' was the only way I ever heard it pronounced. But then I lived in the west of Ireland, so probably in other areas it's pronounced like "hall", as it is here.
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"t" is very often silent in Irish, isn't it? Is it only when it's accompanied by "h" or are there other instances?
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't' and 'th' are never silent.
'th' is pronounced like English 'h'; otherwise, 't' is prounced as 't'.
(there is one two-letter combination in Irish that is truly silent: 'fh'. It doesn't sound like 'h', you just skip it completely.)
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Depending on the dialect there are different pronunciations but the two I would tend to use are "lead ah hell" or "lead ah hull" - a consequence of having so many Irish teachers from different parts of the country over the years. I swap between dialects all the time!
my grandmother would say something like mas le do thoil ("marsha da hulla") - is there a version like that?
Yes. Má's é do thoil é. This is what we learned as youngsters in school.
Literally it means: "If it is your will", but is generally translated as "if you please" or just "please".
Má's é is really Má is é but má + is is contracted to má's.
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I do not understand how Irish pronunciation works. In "Dia daoibh", "dia" is pronounced as how it's expected to be pronounced, as "dee-ah". "Daoibh", however, looks like "dao-ib" or "dao-eeb". In "Le do thoil", "le do" is straightforward. But how does "thoil" sound like "hull" when it looks like "th"+"oil"? Does Irish have some sort of vague spelling system like English with lots of odd rules that I don't see or is Duolingo's speaker not doing it right?
I thought that 'dia' should sound like 'j(y)a' since a slender d should sound like a j. Or is that only the case for Scottish Gaelic?
It depends on the regional dialect. In my part of the country it's a d sound but elsewhere it's a j sound as you suggest.
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The spelling system is probably more consistent than the English, but have to learn its conventions. Looking at it with English eyes won't get you anywhere.
The link scilling gave should help, but:
'th' is alway sounded like 'h' You say 'daoibh' looks like 'dao-ib'; you don't seem to be seeing the 'h': 'bh' sounds like 'v'.
You say 'daoibh' looks like 'dao-ib'
I think dpjoseph meant "sounds like" as the speaker pronounces it as "dao-ib".
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See the Wikipedia article on Irish orthography for its relationships between spelling and pronunciation.
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Can someone explain me pronounciation here? You write one and read completely different.
Check out this video for an introduction to the Sounds and Spelling of Irish / Fuaimniú & Litriú na Gaeilge
excuse me mates. Why is the pronunciation so different,like some say it with a ch and some with h ...like why ? The dialect maybe?
Consistency would be nice. It marked this answer as wrong because I didn't use punctuation, but it hasn't been requiring that, especially on a listening exercise.
I'm pretty sure that it wasn't marked wrong because of punctuation, but, unless you have a screenshot, there's no way to know.
