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- "Is é seo an comhartha."
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How do you listen for the difference in sound between "comhartha" and "comhrá"? I cannot hear a difference.
Strictly speaking, comhartha is a 3-syllable word, but the middle syllable is so short, that the first two syllables are practically a diphthong - "cooer-huh". So it's like "co-war-huh" but the "war" bit is so quick that you can barely make it out.
The difference is clear in all dialects on teanglainn.ie (assume your links lead there - they won't open in the app) but not so clear here. Would have thought she was saying comhrá if comhartha weren't given.
The difference is clear here. a and á have two distinct pronunciations, and the last vowel sound in this exercise is clearly not á.
Unfortunately, some speakers of Donegal Irish don't differentiate between a and á. If you've had the misfortune to learn Irish from someone who can't or won't teach you to hear the obvious difference between a and á, you might indeed mispronounce comhrá, but this speaker does not make this mistake, and is clearly not saying comhrá, because the last vowel in this recording is easily recognizable as a, not á.
I remember someone asking a similar question and it was answered but I forgot where I found it and so... yeah I'm going to ask again. :D Is "Is e..." used when the "it" has a definitive particle ("an") and "Is ... e" used when the "it" does not have a definitive particle? Because I remember back in Basics 1, there was "Is fear e" and sentences that use the "Is...e" instead of "Is e...".
That's the case, but remember the definite article [an] won't be there where there is a phrase in the genitive case: e.g. 'Is é namhaid an phobail é' = He's an enemy of the people; where the final é refers to him, and the first é is there because 'namhaid an phobail' is definite but in the genitive case, so loses the first 'an'.
What is the difference between comhartha and comhartaíocht? (Is the first the noun, the second an adjective?)
They’re both nouns. To restrict their meanings around the word “sign”, comharthaíocht might be better thought of in the abstract, like English “signage”.
So which is strictly more correct: Is é seo an comhartha or Seo é an comhartha? Or are they interchangeable?
"Is é seo an comhartha" is more complete, but it's not much different than "this is the sign" and "this's the sign".
I wrote "it is this sign" and was marked wrong. Aside from that being an awkward sentence, is it actually wrong?
Is é seo an comhartha. = This is the sign.
Is é an comhartha seo é. = It is this sign.
That's my guess.
Listen to the á vowel in An comhrá - https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/6011660. It's not present in this recording.