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- "Cuireadh fear ar an ngealach…
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It's also typical in Connacht (at least South Connemara) to use /u:/ for all past autonomous endings.
1942
Why ngealach instead of ghealach?
The previous word ends with an "n", why does the next one start with the same letter?
In this situation, Ulster Irish lenites (ar an ghealach), and the other dialects eclipse (ar an ngealach). Both should be accepted.
Note the preposition - ar. Without the proposition, you would have an ghealach, but after ar an, you get eclipsis (except in Ulster).
- 1751
Just curious ... how would you say, in Irish, "a man has been put on the moon"? Thanks!
It should be noted this construction has less in common with the English perfect than meets the eye, and should be used sparingly. The English statement "a man has been put on the moon" can be used either to narrate the occurrence of an event (Has a man ever been put on the moon? Yes indeed, a man has been put on the moon!) or to describe a state/the continuing relevance of a past action (A man has been put on the moon, and he's still up there). Irish distinguishes these two meanings.
For the former meaning the simple past is used, so Cuireadh fear ar an ngealach could just as well mean "A man has been put on the moon". The construction given by SatharnPHL is only appropriate if the latter, ongoing-relevance meaning. Even then it's not always perfectly comparable to the English perfect. Tá an leabhar léite agam comes closer in meaning to "I have the book read" or "I've finished reading the book" then "I've read the book".
There are also further restrictions on the occurrence and use of this past participle construction. It's very rare in Ulster, and there it's only used for certain transitive verbs déan. In the dialects where the construction's more common it's still really only used in the affirmative. Questions, negatives and before riamh the simple past or present are used. So "has a man ever been put on the moon?" is always Ar cuireadh fear ar an ngealaigh riamh? The past participle construction is less a full-fledged perfect tense than a free syntactic construction outside the verbal system of Irish.
In my defense, the "ongoing-relevance meaning" is the only interpretation of "a man has been put on the moon" that works for me, probably because my Irish English still understands the difference between Cuireadh fear ar an ngealach and Tá fear curtha ar an ngealach.
I didn't mean to imply your suggestion was wrong in any way, I just wanted to put up a warning. So many resources just label that structure the perfect and say no more, implying it's exactly analogous to the standard English perfect or French passe composé when in reality it's quite different and isn't used nearly as much as those other two tenses in their respective languages.
Irish English does have some interesting differences regarding usage of the perfect re "standard" England-English, though there is considerable variation across the island. Apparently some conservative varieties don't have (or didn't have) the standard perfect at all, instead making do with only "I'm after reading X" or the stative "I have X read".
totally unrelated to the Irish.. no, it wasn't a passive act.. those lunar modules were PILOTED down :D
- 1007
Totally unrelated to the Irish because Cuireadh isn't in the passive voice, even though the saorbhriathar is often translated into English with a translation in the passive voice.
