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- "The men read the newspaper a…
"The men read the newspaper and the women eat an apple."
Translation:Léann na fir an nuachtán agus itheann na mná úll.
52 Comments
The evolution of the plural form of ‘bean’ is actually regular. Over time, many pronunciation rules have changed the word and we end up with ‘mná’. We just have accept the plural as it is.
So is there some site with a pronunciation guide for every sound in Gaeilge? I'd rather not be going to forvo everytime I hear a new word.
If you can read the International Phonetic Alphabet, you can find the sounds in the Wikipedia article on Irish orthography.
I'm guessing this is an apple each? Or are the women collectively eating a single apple. (In other words, is úll referring to each of the women in mná?)
When I've heard it it's always been mraw but I've only really heard Northern speakers. scilling's link is good and there is also a site called Forvo for native-speaker pronunciations in various languages.
I'm a native speaker but I've never heard mraw, probably because I learned the standard Irish, in which it's pronounced mnaw, as opposed to any dialect.
Yeah I've never heard that ever and would be super confused! But maybe it's an Ulster Irish thing?
The vast majority of Irish speakers on Forvo aren't natives, however. So always take it with a grain of salt. The only native I know on there is Bríd Éilís
mná is pronounced with an "n" sound in some places and an "r" sound in others. Both pronunciations are valid.
Na is the definite article for plurals; an is the definite article for singular nouns.
I'm missing something on the articles. Why is it "an nuachtán" and not "an úll"?
an is the singular definite article - "the"
nuachtán - "(a) newspaper", an nuachtán - "the newspaper"
úll - "(an) apple", an t-úll - "the apple"
Why dont they introduce the plural form of apple instead of making a silly sentence like this?
11
Can 'agus' not be interchanged with 'is'? I have seen it shortened as such before (certainly in Scottish Gaelic at least - maybe it doesn't work the same with Irish).
In school in Ireland it's learned as "agus" initially, then they slowly sneakily just start using is or 's because it's more fluent, easier to say / write, etc.
Im getting this sentence right (3 times now) but it keeps saying its incorrect and will not let me move on.
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I've had this question three times in this lesson and each time I haven't been able to complete the sentence because there have been words missing from the selection at the bottom. It's been a different word each time but it prevents me from getting this question right. WTH, Duo?
This is a long-standing bug in Duolingo. You should take a screenshot that demonstrates the problem, and submit a bug report with the screenshot and a detailed description of the version of Duolingo that you are using (iphone app, android app, website, the web browser you use, etc).
You may be able to work around the issue by using the "zoom" feature in your browser to zoom out to 80% or 65%, or you can click on "Use the keyboard" and type the answer in instead of selecting from tiles.
How can I know when to select "na" or "an"? They both mean "the",right? So what's the difference?
an is singular, na is plural.
an fear - "the man"
na fir - "the men"
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I just want to be sure, is 'an' for singular nouns and 'na' for plural?
So 'an' means 'the', so why does 'an nuachtán' mean 'the newspaper' yet 'an úll' doesn't mean 'the apple'?
The exercise asks you to translate "an apple", not "the apple".
It is also the case that masculine nouns that start with a vowel get a t-prefix after the singular definite article an (in the nominative case), so you get an t-úll (masculine) but an ubh (feminine).
This is a very long sentence. It should be broken up in pieces and then put together
I don't see how i could have typos as i had to put the words in the right order which you supplied
Well, I chose two tranlations for.
The men read the newspaper and the women eat an apple
Léann na fir an nuachtán is itheann na mná úll and Léann na fir an nuachtán agus itheann na mná úll
The system counted it wrong because it only wanted the second but last I knew "is" is a short version of "agus". So why is it wrong that I chose both?
na is the plural definite article (like "los" or "las" in Spanish).
I answered "léann na fir an nuachtán agus itheann na bhan úll", having checked the spelling of "women" by hovering over the word and using the tip there. My answer was marked wrong and I was told that "Léann na fir an nuachtán agus itheann na mná úll." is the correct answer.
I have learnt that mná must be the more common plural than bhan, but why is bhan offered as an alternative if it will not be accepted as correct?
Having read the posts here, I see that a similar issue arises with the use of "is" instead of "agus".
I have reported this through the "My answer should be accepted" option. This note is to give a fuller explanation.
mná isn't "the more common plural than bhan"
Mná is the nominative plural of bean, ban is the genitive plural of bean, so due to the intracies of the way that people are counted in Irish, the Irish for "two women" is beirt bhan. But the genitive has no part in a sentence like "The men read the newspaper and the women eat an apple", so the correct answer is only itheann na mná.
You misunderstand the purpose of the "hints". They provide the equivalent of a dictionary lookup of a word, and where there is more than one word in the hints, it is up to you to recognize the context that the word is bing used in, and to choose the appropriate word - they aren't simply "alternative answers". If you want to see the "correct answer", you don't look at the hints, you click "Submit".
Thank you! :o) I haven't seen any genitives yet (only in the Basics) so hadn't picked up that. Is the change from ban to bhan similar to the mutations seen in Welsh?
In Welsh, there is a treiglad meddal (soft mutation) :
dog (m) =ci and two dogs = dau gi;
a cat (f) = cath and two cats = dwy gath.
Whilst I don't expect that Irish does exactly the same things (I can already see that it uses plural forms with numbers which Welsh doesn't) is the principle similar in that of the beginnings of words change after numbers?
i did leann na fir nuachtan but it said it had to be leann na fir an nuachtan??? :(
"The men read a newspaper" - Léann na fir nuachtán
"The men read the newspaper" - Léann na fir an nuachtán
definitely time to sleep -_-; i just typed "ólann na fir an nuachtán" lol
