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- "Éistim leis an mbean a labhr…
"Éistim leis an mbean a labhraíonn fúibh."
Translation:I listen to the woman who speaks about you.
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Putting the last word (fúibh) into Audacity and analysing minutely, the last syllable is close to the "TH" in English "the" (not to be confused with the "th" in English "faith"). But from a 70-year-old native Irish speaker in Kerry I'm assured that "fúibh" should be pronounced "fwoo-iv" in Munster, not "fooTH" used in this audio. I get agreement from https://forvo.com/word/ga/f%C3%BAibh/#ga. (Maybe the audio is Ulster?) If anyone is interested, I also got these best approximations of Munster Irish for cases of "faoi"/"fé": fúm [fwoom], fút [fwoot], faoi [fwee], fúithi [fwoo-heh], fúinn [fwoo-in], fúibh [fwoo-iv ], fúthu [fwoo-huh].
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I admire anyone who is willing to make these audios and subject themselves to endless minute criticism of every detail of their pronunciation. In other words: give her a break.
The fúibh that I hear on this exercise very clearly ends in a "v" sound.
You can access the audio directly here, and slow it down in your browser or a media player like VLC.
Can anyone explain why the sentence is structured this way? It appears to me the literal translation of the answer is "I listen with the woman her speak about you"
The a in this sentence is the relative particle a (here translated to the English relative pronoun “who”) rather than the possessive adjective a.
Whereas in English you 'listen to',in Irish you éist le something. It's leis because it's followed by the article. mbean because leis an eclipses. a labhraíonn is a direct relative clause. futhú is faoi sibh
These are so difficult. All the "fu" words sound the same. Would have never gotten the spelling of "labhraionn" right and "mbean" I can't even recognize that one just by sound yet. And these ones with "listen" in them, UGG! Are there any good books on just Irish verbs? I need one where they already have them conjugated not one that says add this ending except for in these "special" cases.
The "grammar" section on Teanglann.ie gives the full declension of verbs (and nouns, adjectives and prepositions). https://www.teanglann.ie/en/gram/labhair https://www.teanglann.ie/en/gram/faoi
Standard Irish Verbs by Pádraig Ó Maoilréanaigh (ISBN 1467582336) has every Irish verb fully conjugated in its 1,920 pages.
Lots available free on archive.org. Google "TYI1961" and follow link to archive.org for a start. You can download book with enbedded sound files, legally and free of charge, thanks to an English chap who put in loads of work and got permission from publisher.
The recording uses the form "labhrann" (http://www.teanglann.ie/en/fgb/labhrann), but this form is not accepted in the answer.
Why '...who speaks about you' and not simply 'i listen to the woman speak about you'?
Because of the a in the sentence. It is a relative particle and is used to allow you to give additional information about the object of the previous verb - Éistim leis an mbean just tells you that you listen to the woman, to say which woman you are listening to, you say "the woman who speaks about you" or "the woman that speaks about you".
To say 'i listen to the woman speak about you' in Irish, you have to use the progressive - "I listen to the woman speaking about you" - Éistim leis an mbean ag labhairt fút. Note that this is different from "I listen to the woman that is speaking about you" - Éistim leis an mbean atá ag labhairt fút.
To me, it seems like "I listen to the woman speak about you" should also be an acceptable translation. Am I wrong?
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Did the same. Speak=labhair speaks=labhraíonn. So this sentance has to use speaks. It has to be "i listen to the woman (insert here) speaks about you". So it kinda makes sense to use "who" by process of elimination. Imagine using that process in conversation though!
I really don't think anyone would say this sentence in English. They would say "I hear the woman talking about you" or "I hear the woman who is talking about you". I am now left wondering if anyone would ever say this in Irish....
Imagine you're on a visit to the zoo, and the zookeeper is telling you all about the elephants. Would you say "I listen to the woman who speaks about the elephants"? That's what this exercise is teaching you how to say. Duolingo isn't a phrasebook , so it really doesn't matter that it uses the pronoun "you" instead of "the elephants" - that just gives you a chance to practice your prepositional pronouns.
"I listen to the woman who talks about you" is also accepted, which seems a natural way to say the idea in English: I listen (at this moment, or often) to this lady - she is the same lady who often talks about you.
Do the tenses being used allow for this interpretation?
That is the normal interpretation. Both of the verbs in this sentence are in the simple present which has can be used to convey a habitual meaning, in both English and Irish.
The present progressive ("I am listening") requires the use of the verbal noun, which comes later in the course.
I assume you wrote fut and were marked wrong..? That is partly because it is wrong and partly due to DL as far as I can tell. I could be wrong but I assume that fúibh was arbitrarily selected as the 'you' form they wanted. I take is that, had you have written fuibh you would have been warned about missing the fada. Had you have written fút, you would have been advised that fúibh was an alternative correct answer. Your spelling mistake in a form arbitrarily selected as an alternative made DL mark you wrong.
I could be mistaken but, whilst fút is perfectly OK here, as is fúibh, neither fuibh nor fut are correct.
This is an Irish to English exercise. The only time you will write the answer in Irish is if you get it as a "Type what you hear" exercise, and you have to enter fúibh rather than fút because that's what the speaker said.
She is saying fúibh rather than fút because she is referring to a group of 2 or more people - "you lot", "ye", "youse", "y'all", etc. You use fút when you are referring to a single person. While standard english uses "you" for both singular and plural "you", fút and fúibh are not interchangable - only one of them can be correct in any given circumstance.
Éistim leis an mbean a labhraíonn fúm - "I listen to the woman who speaks about me"
Éistim leis an mbean a labhraíonn fút - "I listen to the woman who speaks about you (on person)"
Éistim leis an mbean a labhraíonn faoi - "I listen to the woman who speaks about him"
Éistim leis an mbean a labhraíonn fúithi - "I listen to the woman who speaks about her"
Éistim leis an mbean a labhraíonn fúinn - "I listen to the woman who speaks about us"
Éistim leis an mbean a labhraíonn fúibh - "I listen to the woman who speaks about you (2 or more)"
Éistim leis an mbean a labhraíonn fúthu - "I listen to the woman who speaks about them"
These are the prepositional pronoun forms of the preposition faoi.
If I misunderstood your question in the way SatharnPHL suggests, then I apologise and he is correct.
If there is, as I assumed, multiple-one mapping going on here in relation to a sentence that could be in English for translation, Irish for translation or read out for dictation practice, then I am right and either form should be accepted (assuming it is spelt correctly).
Also please note that you may come across the word mnaoi as the dative singular of bean (i.e. leis an mnaoi). It is slightly dated though not yet dead and it is used frequently in songs, etc.
Look at the top of the page, where it says:
"Éistim leis an mbean a labhraíonn fúibh."
Translation: I listen to the woman who speaks about you.
That's an Irish to English exercise. If you get it in a "Translate:" question, Duolingo will read out the recording when the question opens, and your answer will be in English. If you get this sentence in a "Type what you hear" exercise, your answer will be in Irish.
The English to Irish version of this exercise is:
"I listen to the woman who speaks about you."
Translation: Éistim leis an mbean a labhraíonn fúibh.
You will not hear the audio when this loads, because you are being asked to translate a sentence from English into Irish. Éistim leis an mbean a labhraíonn fút has probably been added as an alternative answer. You can only hear the audio after you have submitted the answer, and choose to open the Discussion page.
