"An oibríonn an meaisín?"
Translation:Does the machine work?
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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"?
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If "Does the machine work?" means "Is it in working order?" then the Irish could be "An bhfuil an meaisín ar fheidhm fhónta".
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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?
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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
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Great, thanks! For some reason I hadn't been exposed to that sentence structure in all this time. Congrats on your year-long streak!
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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 ).