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- Topic: Irish >
- "Tá leabhair aige."
19 Comments
Hear the correct contrast between singular leabhar and plural leabhair here:
http://breis.focloir.ie/en/fuaim/leabhar
http://breis.focloir.ie/en/fuaim/leabhair
Choose the Munster dialect, as that uses the plural 'leabhair' (and not 'leabhartha').
I realize this is the plurals lesson, but I chose the singular "leabhar" just to see if it would be marked incorrect. And it was. Is there something I'm missing? It seems ambiguous to me.
If your lesson looked like mine, then you chose "na leabhar". The article doesn't match the noun there - yes, Irish declines the articles, too.
ns. an
gs. m. an, f. na
pl. na
In Donegal the plural sounds very different, so it would be hard to confuse singular and plural.
Interesting that the Donegal accent/dialect has a "non standard" plural form for book/s "leabharthaí"
I've noticed something: Tá leabhair aige (is books at him) = he has books and ... Itheann na lucha úlla (eat the mice apples) = the mice eat apples
pluralizing luch and úll to lucha and úlla, yet pluralizing leabhar and cat to leabhair and cait. I'm trying to understand the pattern in this.
Leabhar and cat have broad r and broad t consonant endings, luch and úll ... also have broad consonant endings.
I seem to be missing something here, other than úlla sounds better than úill? Why not leabhara and cata?
2171
I'm on my mobile right now, so I'll have to track down the link later, but I think there's a resource somewhere that explains all this. It's kind of complicated.
Here's a link: http://www.nualeargais.ie/gnag/gram.htm You need to click on "noun", then "the cases", then "nominative plural".
Labhar = "lour". Labhair = "lourzh" (very soft & barely audible zh). The Duolingo voice don't seem to make a distinction between the two.
