"I run towards them with the cat."
Translation:Rithim chucu leis an gcat.
16 Comments
Le + an becomes leis an purely to avoid the sound of two vowels coming together.
You do realize that sounds rather ironic to those of us learning Irish - the place where god put all the extra leftover vowels when done creating the languages.
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All the vowel letters you mean. Irish is spelt with sequences of vowel letters to distinguish its large number of distinct consonants.
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Do all of the prepositions that are combined with pronouns tend to eclipse the noun that follows?
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Why is "cat" eclipsed in "Rithim chucu leis an gcat", whereas "mairteoil" is lenited in "is maith leat an mhairteoil"? Is it because the second sentence uses the copula? Or is it because "leis an"(="le"+"an" = "with" + "the"?) behaves differently to "leat an" (="with you" + "the")?
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I'm a beginner also, but I think I see your problem. If you look on the Tips/Notes section of the Eclipsis unit, you'll see that there are nine prepositions which, when followed by 'an', require that the next word after 'an' be eclipsed. 'Le' is one of these prepositions. I think the confusion for you is that, while 'Is maith leat an mhairteoil' could be changed to 'Is maith leis un mhairteoil' if it was 'he' who liked beef instead of 'me', and either way the meat would be lenited, this is not the same 'leis' that is used in 'Rithim chucu leis an gcat', where you have eclipsis. That should actually be 'le an gcat', but is changed to 'leis an gcat' because Irish doesn't like having two vowels together in adjacent words. So it really is 'le + an + noun', which requires the noun be eclipsed. But in the other example about the beef, the word 'leat' does not mean 'le an' or 'with the'; it means 'with you'. The cat sentence fits the eclipsis rule because it is saying 'I run to them with the cat', but the other doesn't have the same structure because it is saying, 'Is good with you the beef'. There is no 'with + the + noun' in that sentence. Even though 'leat' is right before the 'an' followed by the noun, the sentence is not saying 'with the beef' or anything with that structure.
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What if you're running towards them with something feminine?
"Rithim chucu leis an bhean" because it's a feminine single after a definite article, or
"Rithim chucu leis an mbean" because it's a definite singular after "le"?
I'm guessing the first, but ... ?
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leis an mbean in Munster, Connacht and the Caighdeán. leis an bhean in Donegal. The gender of the noun is not relevant when you have an immediately after a simple preposition.
Where in the sentence does it describe the cat as their cat and not just a cat?
