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- "Bíonn sceitimíní air nuair a…
"Bíonn sceitimíní air nuair a théann sé go dtí an Ghearmáin."
Translation:He does be excited when he goes to Germany.
34 Comments
I live in Ireland. 'does be excited' would be considered bad grammar. It could be used when making fun of someone/slagging too - 'ah he does be getting excited about things'.
I dont have a problem with "do be", I have a problem with the fact that it is used inconsistently. there is a phrase in the travel section that uses the word "Bionn" however it accepts the use of the word "is/I am" (infact I think it even marks one wrong for saying "do be").
When I learned and spoke " Sean- Ghaeilge " in Ireland ( in the 1950's ) the use of Do be or does be was a serious offence and if translated as such was always marked as incorrect with appropriate comments, which I cannot repeat here
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Duolingo, you cannot force me to incorporate "do be"/"does be" into my dialect of English. Other dialects of English can express the habitual present tense just fine. "He is excited when he goes to Germany" can convey a habitual sense.
- 385
I just realized that the way we say it is "He gets excited when he goes to Germany", and that means he habitually gets excited in that situation. I think that's a pretty natural translation, and less confusing for english speakers.
- 994
Does not "He gets excited when he goes to Germany" also convey the habitual present sense that using bíonn implies? Using "does be" would make all the English speakers here in Ohio give me a strange look.
Here are two articles from the Irish Times that include direct quotations of ordinary people saying "I do be" and "She does be". This construction is not often seen in written English, but it is absolutely a normal part of the vernacular for many Irish people. It is worth nothing that both of these examples reflect urban speech, not rural speech. This construction is not restricted to rural areas.
Further up the street, florist Dee Curry was parked in a loading bay making one of her many deliveries around the city: “Most of the time, I do be dreading trying to get parking,” she said.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/look-the-place-is-empty-rise-in-parking-charges-hits-ranelagh-businesses-1.3957400She does be sobbing going home from visits and it’s horrible to be looking at your child like that. https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/parenting/the-mothers-spending-christmas-in-prison-1.3331306?mode=amp
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"Does be" is said, but so is the gramatically correct version "is" which is used by vastly more people worldwide, and in ireland, rather than examples above which are closely linked to a particular socio-economic group. I live in Ireland, accept we have variations of saying things but this is too far from the daily reality of most English speaking Irish people to be the sole accepted answer.
If the course was trying to teach English to Irish speakers there might be a point to your objection, but the course is trying to teach Irish to English speakers, and English speakers need help to understand and reinforce the difference between tá and bíonn, a concept that does not come naturally to most English speakers.
It's one thing for English speakers who aren't from Ireland to complain that they can't understand what "does be" really means, because the concept is entirely absent from their worldview, but for an Irish person who actually comprehends the concept of "does be" and how it is used, to fall back on socio-economic snobbery as a reason for extinguishing the distinction between bíonn and tá when translating from Irish to English is, at best, unfortunate.
The computer can't tell whether someone who enters "He is excited when he goes to Germany" understands the difference between bíonn and tá, so it requires "does be" to ensure that the difference is at least acknowledged.
Why not accept the fact that this is an Irish construction of speech and translate it accordingly? "Does be" sounds foreign to English speakers because it is.
I think expressing this with whenever - he is excited whenever he goes, or always - he is always excited when he goes - gives the sense of a continuous action without the problem of remembering to use a tense that is not common in other standard englishes.
"does be excited.." I figured out what it had to be, but could not make myself type it:-).
- 604
Ah sure he does be doing this and he does be doing that...I'll tell you what he doesn't be doing: learning grammar off Duolingo
You are not here to learn English grammar. This is a construct of Irish grammar, not English and should be treated thusly.
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If I am translating into English, it ought to be proper English grammar. Which "he does be" is not. If I am translating into Irish, yes, it should be Irish grammar, but that's a different thing.
No, it is still an Irish grammar construct because it is used by the Irish when speaking their version/dialect of English. I have friends from Yorkshire in England that use terms you would probably not consider proper English either, but in their dialect, it is correct.
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Again, I don't expect the English translation to be that of a "dialect" of English, but standard English, which this is not. It is nice that Duo has the translation to English done by an Irish speaker, but it would also be nice to have the final translations run by a native English speaker who would definitely say he does be is not standard, as opposed to dialectical English. I'm trying to learn Irish, not a dialect of English that appears, from the comments, to be problematic for British, American and even some Irish speakers, who also agree it isn't correct
- 658
I'm struggling with the reason it seems like there are two ways of saying "he goes to" in the second part of the sentence. "Théann sé" and "go dtí" seems like there is redundancy by saying, "He goes" and "go to". What am I missing?
"go dtí" just means "to", you use "go dtí" when the place name has a definite article, like "An Ghearmáin", otherwise you just so "go". The Irish word "go" has nothing to do with the English word "go"!
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Another objection to 'does be'... please could we have the option of 'is' from the word choices? While I could translate the Irish no problem, it took me a while to figure out how to rearrange the words I had to express what I wanted to say.
I'm from Monaghan and 'does be' is used. I've also heard 'he bes' meaning 'he is' as part of local dialect.
That the Christian Brothers kicked lumps out of us doesn't make this less a fact.
Using the phrase "he does be "is often regarded as a ridicule of how Irish people speak English.
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What about "he is frequently excited..." or something like that to convey the present habitual? Would that be correct?
Bíonn sceitimíní air go minic nuair a théann sé go dtí an Ghearmáin
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In general (e.g. not in Duolingo"), could I use "is ... whenever" here instead of "does be ... when" or is the former expressed differently in Irish?
That may be a direct translation into English but is not how English is spoken. A more correct way of translating the sentence in my opinion is-He is excited when he goes to Germany.
This is not a valid English construction - perhaps it's how Americans think Irish people speak begarra sure to be sure
The Americans are even more confused by it than you are.
The people who have no problem with it (because it is a perfectly valid construction in their English) are the Irish people who wrote the exercise, and the Irish people (from all parts of the country, urban and rural, North, South, East and West) who either use this construction, or who encounter it being used by other Irish people.
