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- "An bhfuil tú as do mheabhair…
17 Comments
Is this Bearlachas (accents are not trivial in Ubuntu so I don't use them)?
Why do you think it's béarlachas, and not a borrowing from Irish into English?
I didn't think it was necessarily béarlachas. I was just curious. I wasn't accusing the people who put this in of using béarlachas. I just wanted to know if it was a phrase that is used by Irish speakers or if it was one that was put on here as a test of knowledge of grammar and vocab.
It is a phrase that is used by Irish speakers, nowadays often applied to someone who is "under the influence". It is included in de Bhaldraithe's 1959 English-Irish Dictionary and in Ó Dónaill's 1977 Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla. Definitely not a "made for Duolingo" phrase.
Ah. I probably should have looked it up somewhere like Teanglann before I questioned it.
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It's really cool when idioms translate across languages -- for instance, being "out of your mind" to mean crazy/irrational in both English and Irish! It would be awesome if Duolingo included more tips/explanations for the Irish course to let learners know when something is a common idiom in Irish, and when it's just a weird bot-generated sentence that sounds as bizarre in one language as it does in another.
You repeat the verb to give an affirmative reply. As An bhfuil is the interrogative form of Tá, you reply with Tá or Táim to say "Yes".
A new one for me, normally would use An bhfuil tú amach as do cheann .. are you out of your head
Dinneen included as a a mheabhair in his 1904 dictionary, so it's certainly not a new expression, but his translation was a somewhat milder "distracted".
