"They said that they swam."

Translation: Dúirt siad gur shnámh siad.

[khmanuel]

How do you say 'we said'?

[galaxyrocker]

Dúirt muid

[khmanuel]

No 'duirtimid' or anything like that?

[scilling]

Dúramar.

[Lancet]

We recently expanded the notes on the "Verbs: Past 1" skill to give more information on this.

[khmanuel]

Thanks, I'll take a look at that.

[oisinc]

why not gur snámha siad? can someone please explain the difference between gur shnámh agus gur snámha?

[pinkfreud]

You're thinking of the genitive case there, as in "linn snámha" (swimming pool).

[Acidmoxy]

Why not 'go raibh' instead of 'gur'?

[PookaGar]

Because go and gur correspond to "that" (present and past tense, respectively) while raibh is a verb (corresponding to snámh). If it were "they said that they were swimming," it would be dúirt siad gur raibh ag snámh. I think. :)

[Knocksedan]

dúirt siad go raibh siad ag snámh

[PookaGar]

Blast, I thought I was getting the hang of this. -__-

The siad drop was a miss on my part, but I did some more rummaging: is it only go here because the verb is irregular? Or is there something else going on?

[Knocksedan]

The FGB says that gur "Replaces go before past tense of regular verbs", so yes, it's go raibh siad, but gur shnámh siad or gur chan siad (that they sang) or gur ól siad (note - d'ól siad for "they drank" but gur ól siad for "that they drank").

[FearDorcha5]

In this exercise shnámh sounds as if it had not been lenited, unlike the same word in the audio of Shnámh siad inné ag an trá. I take it that there is a reason for the difference.

[SatharnPHL]

The reason is that you're mistaken - shnámh is very obviously lenited in this exercise. The sibilant s of an unlenited snámh would be hard to miss.

There is a mismatch between the text and the audio, though. She says Dúirt sí gur shnámh siad.