"Ithim nuair a rithim."
Translation:I eat when I run.
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Usually that gives me cramps, but whatever makes you sleep at night, I guess.
1153
'Nuair' is a contraction of 'an uair' (a form that was kept in Scottish Gaelic). 'A' in this context translates roughly as 'that'. Thus 'nuair a' can be though of as literally meaning 'the time that', i.e., 'when'.
No, når is related to English 'near' (itself probably borrowed from Norse, effectively a Norse form of "nigh-er"). I think the meaning was something like "as near as", to mean "as soon as", to mean "at the same time as" to mean "when". But I don't know.
Not quite. You have the English question form or "when", which is expressed with cén t-am, cén uair, cá huair, or (for your barbarous Munster speakers!) cathain. Then you have the other form of when (Think "when I run", "We will leave when he comes"), which corresponds to nuair a.
It's OK to have slightly odd practice phrases. Gets you in the way of constructing phrases you'd actually use for yourself.
- 1844
I eat when I run simply implies that when running happens, eating happens (but not necessarily at the same time). For instance, perhaps you mean you eat to take in carbs before your run or protein afterward, but that you eat tied to your workout. "I eat while I run" would imply that you are running with food in your hand, taking bites as you step.
Nuair can be translated as either your “when” meaning or your “while” meaning. (“When” can also have your “while” meaning.)
The a is needed because the conjunction nuair is followed by a relative clause, and a is the particle that introduces an affirmative present-tense relative clause. (“I eat when I don’t run” would be Ithim nuair nach rithim ; the a would normally cause lenition on the following verb, and the nach would normally cause eclipsis on it, but since rithim begins with an R, neither mutation happens.)
No, this exercise’s sentence would not be correct without that a ; see talideon’s reply to sualainnis above for the etymological reason.
a can mean a lot of different things (see https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fgb/a).
In this case, it doesn't mean "his", "her" or "their".
Seriously, I eat when I run? What is that supposed to mean. No one eats when they are running.
I agree, but maybe there is more to it: I've read the comment below where "Antaine1916" says that "nuair a" implies a kind of conditional relation between the two actions. Could we really interpret "nuair" the same way we might the English "when", expressing that "eating" necessarily happens each time I "run"? Edit: To add up, I've just had a sentence "Ma rithim, ithim.", so I may reformulate my question by asking: are these two sentences synonymous?
- 1153
'Nuair' means pretty much the same thing as 'when' in English. 'While' would be translated with 'fad', though there are other ways of saying the same thing. To say 'while I run, I eat', you could say 'fad a rithim, ithim'.
Do not question the logic, because my course had "the woman is in the fridge" in one lesson....
