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Is this idiomatic? Does "oibríonn" mean "work" in the sense of "be functional" as well as "work" in the sense of "do one's job"?
If "Does the machine work?" means "Is it in working order?" then the Irish could be "An bhfuil an meaisín ar fheidhm fhónta".
Can someone confirm the beginning of this sentence is accurate? Don't want to learn inaccurately. As an experiment I tried Google translate for the English of this sentence, which translated to: a oibríonn an meaisín. Why does Google's version of Irish just use an 'a' while Duolingo uses the definite article?
YOU CAN NOT RELY ON GOOGLE TRANSLATE!!!!!
Those capital letters are not a mistake - it cannot be stressed enough that Google Translate is notoriously bad. At best it can be used to get a rough idea of what verbs and nouns are being used, (though even that falls flat when a word has multiple meanings) but it doesn't get grammar.
When you want to ask a question, you put "an" before the verb ("ar" in the past tense).
"oibríonn an meaisín" - "the machine works"
"an oibríonn an meaisín?" - "does the machine work
Great, thanks! For some reason I hadn't been exposed to that sentence structure in all this time. Congrats on your year-long streak!
Just to add that the negative form of an is nach.
- Both an and nach eclipse the initial consonant of the verb.
- If the verb starts with a vowel nach prefixes n- to the vowel.
- The 'dependent' form of the verb follows an and nach.
Examples
- An oibríonn sé = Does it work?
- Nach n-oibríonn sé = Does it not work?
- An dtugann sé = Does he give?
- Nach dtugann sé = Does he not give?
- Tá sé go maith = He is well, but An bhfuil sé go maith = Is he well? An dtá sé go maith is incorrect. (The dependent form of tá is fuil ).
