Irish Translation Forum

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Weak vs Strong Plurals

First, the bad news
All the effort you put into learning how to guess the declension of a noun does help you to figure out the genitive singular, but it's of limited use in figuring out the plural. Oh, there are rules, and sub-rules, and I will give them to you, but it's my personal opinion that the rules are so involved that it's not worth memorising them. (It is worth reviewing them, though.) Also, plural forms do vary from one dialect to another, and they are subject to change; there is a general trend in the language toward "strong plurals", which I'll explain in a moment.

Now the good news
Plurals seem to have a way of finding their way into one's memory. By the time I started worrying about the genitive, I had already absorbed a lot of plurals without really trying to learn them. If I know a word, there's a fair chance I know the plural without even thinking about it. (In contrast, I usually have to think about the genitive form unless it's a common noun.) When I don't know the plural, I simply apply this simple rule:

Wombat's Golden Rule for Plurals Think of a very similar word whose plural you do know. In this case, "similar" means ending in the same sequence of letters. Chances are the plural for the "new" word is formed in the same way.

Weak Plurals vs Strong Plurals
There are two basic patterns to the way a noun changes. In "weak plurals", the genitive plural is the same as the nominative singular. In "strong plurals", all the plural forms are identical: the genitive plural is the same as the nominative (common) plural and the vocative plural. To summarise:

weak plurals: gpl = ns
strong plurals: gpl = npl = vpl

This information isn't usually that helpful in figuring out the npl, because if you don't know the npl, you probably don't know the gpl or vpl either. But it certainly comes in handy for figuring out the gpl or vpl. So it's worth knowing the difference:

Weak plurals usually end in: -(a)igh, -a, or -e
Strong plurals usually end in: -(e)anna, -ta, -te, -tha, -the, -(a)í, -(e)adh, -(a)í, í, -(e)acha, -lte, -lne, OR they're formed by syncopating ("scrunching") the ns and adding -e or -a.

As Promised, the Rules
Here are the "rules" for forming plurals. Learn them if you want. I haven't bothered to memorise them because Wombat's Golden Rule for Plurals seems to do the job nearly as well. But I do find it helpful to read through this list periodically.


Weak Plurals
__________
Most m1 nouns:
To form the plural:
* Make the ending slender
* -(e)ach -> -(a)igh
__________
m1: beart, bruas, cág, ceap, ceart, cleas, cuibhreach, creatlach, fiach, fithrach, giall, nod, úll
f2 nouns ending in -eog, -óg, -lann
Multi-syllable f2 nouns ending in -each
f2: binn, deoir
3ú: béas, dreach, coinsias, deasghnáth, dol, tréad
4ú: neach

To form the plural: broaden the ending, add -a
__________
f2: súil, dúíl, glúin
To form the plural: add -e

Strong Plurals
__________
Only one-syllable nouns!
m1: bás, carr, cas, frog, gléas, luas, marc, nós, rós, spás, spórt, saghas, stad (mostly loan words)
One-syllable, slender f2 nouns
One-syllable m3 nouns
4ú: ae, bá, bia, bogha, bus, club, fleá, tae, ceo, cnó, dó, cú, fia, fogha, liú, nia, pas, seans, stop, sú, togha, tram, tua

To form the plural: add -(e)anna
__________
Only one-syllable nouns!
One-syllable m1, f2, 3ú declension nouns ending in l, n preceded by a diphthong or long vowel
To form the plural: add -ta or -te
__________
One-syllable m1, f2 nouns ending in r preceded by a diphthong or long vowel
4ú nouns ending in -í, -aí, -aoi, -é

To form the plural: add -tha or -the
__________
Only multi-syllable nouns!
m1 nouns ending in -(e)adh, -(e)ach
slender f2 nouns
f2 nouns ending in -ach
3ú nouns ending in -éir, -eoir, -óir, -(i)úir, -cht, -áint -úint, irt
4ú nouns ending in -ín or -a, -e

To form the plural:
* add -(a)í
* -(e)adh, -(e)ach -> (a)í
* -e -> í
__________
Two-syllable m1 nouns ending in broad -l, -n, -r
f2: craobh, fréamh, iall, iníon, nead, splanc
carraig, ceirt, cistin, clúid, coirm, colainn, féith, feirm, foirm, maidin, muintir, stoirm
3ú nouns ending in -il, -in, -ir
4ú: ainm, cine, easna, teanga

To form the plural: add -(e)acha
__________
m1: bóthar, cloigeann, doras, solas, uasal
To form the plural: syncopate, add -e
__________
3ú: gamhain
To form the plural: syncopate, add -a
__________
4ú nouns ending in -le,-ne
To form the plural:
* -le -> lte
* -ne -> lne

GRMA Wombat. The Wombat rules will be easier to memorize, and the rest come later. Just the word "scrunching" makes the whole thing less scarey and more understandable. I love Wombat rules!

springpaws wrote:GRMA Wombat. The Wombat rules will be easier to memorize, and the rest come later. Just the word "scrunching" makes the whole thing less scarey and more understandable. I love Wombat rules!

I agree with you, I have PMed you for a contact. Please check it.

Okay, quick question..think it may be too late for a reply but oh well:

The genitive plural takes an urú, right? Am i wrong in now thinking that the only difference between forming the genitive plural and the ordinary plural is an urú?

m.sh; na fhuinneoga [normal] & na bhfuinneoga [in genitive context]

or am i completely off the mark?

There are two separate things going on here. The genitive form of a noun has nothing to do with eclipsis. Any time one noun follows another (with or without the article in-between), the second noun takes the genitive form. For example:

deireadh seachtaine

No eclipsis involved. However, it is true that in the genitive plural case, you eclipse a noun that follows the article.

Now if you reread the post at the start of this thread, it may be clearer how to form the genitive plural.

Weak plural = when the nominative plural has the same form as the genitive plural. Ok.

Strong plural = when the genitive plural is different from the nominative plural (it doesn't always have the same form as the nominative singular!).

Eg. lacha, na lachain, na lachan. Weak plural although the ns is lacha and the gpl is lachan...
There are other words, and even more in certain dialects (Ulster).

Ok, very good information. Spanish Translation

I'm sorry, I'm still horribly confused. How many plurals does an Irish word have? In English, if I learn that the plural of "man" is "men", that's that. If I learn that the plural of "teanga" is "teangacha", is that the same? I'm all for the "learn as you go" approach to plurals, but only if there's only one plural per noun. Does the plural change form depending upon case? I don't understand how strong and weak plurals fit into the equation. If you are saying, for example, that the plural of "éireannach" is "éireannaigh" yet the plural of "áit" is "áiteanna" and the different endings bit is the hard bit that everybody wants regular rules for, and that's what this is about, then I'll agree to just gaining an ear for it as I go along. But if it's the case that there's some big mad complicated system to do with multiple plurals for each word depending upon the case their in, then I haven't learned to navigate such a system from the explanation above. It's may fault I'm sure, but I just want to understand what the system is so that I can come up with the best way of learning it.

ciaran12 wrote:I'm sorry, I'm still horribly confused. How many plurals does an Irish word have? In English, if I learn that the plural of "man" is "men", that's that. If I learn that the plural of "teanga" is "teangacha", is that the same? I'm all for the "learn as you go" approach to plurals, but only if there's only one plural per noun. Does the plural change form depending upon case? I don't understand how strong and weak plurals fit into the equation. If you are saying, for example, that the plural of "éireannach" is "éireannaigh" yet the plural of "áit" is "áiteanna" and the different endings bit is the hard bit that everybody wants regular rules for, and that's what this is about, then I'll agree to just gaining an ear for it as I go along. But if it's the case that there's some big mad complicated system to do with multiple plurals for each word depending upon the case their in, then I haven't learned to navigate such a system from the explanation above. It's may fault I'm sure, but I just want to understand what the system is so that I can come up with the best way of learning it.

I'm not sure I understand your query. Dialects aside, of course, a plural is a plural. Example: (a) man = fear men = fir. Simple as. But! If you are saying something like of the men, you are involving yourself with the genitive case, in which case a different from of the word "men" must be used. I don't think it's productive to go into this territory at such an early stage, though.

ciaran12 wrote:I'm sorry, I'm still horribly confused. How many plurals does an Irish word have? In English, if I learn that the plural of "man" is "men", that's that. If I learn that the plural of "teanga" is "teangacha", is that the same? I'm all for the "learn as you go" approach to plurals, but only if there's only one plural per noun. Does the plural change form depending upon case? I don't understand how strong and weak plurals fit into the equation. If you are saying, for example, that the plural of "éireannach" is "éireannaigh" yet the plural of "áit" is "áiteanna" and the different endings bit is the hard bit that everybody wants regular rules for, and that's what this is about, then I'll agree to just gaining an ear for it as I go along. But if it's the case that there's some big mad complicated system to do with multiple plurals for each word depending upon the case their in, then I haven't learned to navigate such a system from the explanation above. It's may fault I'm sure, but I just want to understand what the system is so that I can come up with the best way of learning it.

Each noun (usually) only has one form per case in the plural. It doesn’t work so that all nouns can make both strong and weak plurals from any category.

However, just as the genitive is different from the nominative in the singular, they are sometimes different from each other in the plural, too. The nominative plural of Éireannach, for example, is Éireannaigh, as you say. But the genitive plural is Éireannach, like the nominative singular. And if you need the vocative (“O Irishmen!”), then it’ll be a Éireannacha. So you can’t just say that a noun that’s plural will always have just one form, just like you can’t say that a noun that’s singular will always have one form: each case is a form unto itself.

The point of the whole system detailed in Wombat’s initial post in this thread is to help you remember what nouns do what things when making them plural. Naturally, you don’t have a system where every word just takes some random ending or change to make a form in the plural—that would be impossible to learn or manage. Instead, there are a relatively small set of abstract patterns that a word can follow, and the vast majority of nouns fall into groups that are based on what those patterns are.

And the good thing about these groups and patterns is that if you see one form in the plural, you can usually figure the other ones out quite easily. So if you see a plural that ends in -aigh, you’ll know (as Wombat wrote above) that this must be a masculine noun that morphs itself according to the pattern that nouns in Group I (aka the first declension) all use. And then you know that this pattern forms simple weak plurals where the nominative plural is the same as the genitive singular (made by making the final consonant in the noun slender), the genitive plural is the same as the nominative singular, and the vocative plural is the nominative singular with an extra -a at the end.

It’s all relatively systematic, and the thing you just have to remember for each noun is which group (i.e., declension) the noun fits into. If you remember that, and you remember how the cases and numbers are made in each pattern, then you don’t have to remember each individual plural for every single word in order to make it.

The only problem is that sometimes, a word follows one pattern in Munster, another in Connemara, and a third pattern in Ulster. There’s no guarding against that, unfortunately—you just have to get used to it.