Irish Translation Forum

Go raibh maith agat, a Whombat. I will study this for awhile before attempting any more. Feel free to continue to correct. Sorry about trying the past tense AND comparitives at the same time, but it was ncessary in this instance.

Go raibh maith agat, a Whombat. I will study this for awhile before attempting any more. Feel free to continue to correct. Sorry about trying the past tense AND comparitives at the same time, but it was ncessary in this instance.

springpaws wrote:Tá mé ag scriobh faoi na is spéiciúil na fear bhí aithne agam, Ruairi. Bhí sé mo chara fearr. Bhí sé cailliúil mar a féile. Bhí maith leis is sásta tú i tigh sé. Bhí deaise Ruairi na mé.

One more question: the last sentence says: An chroí Ruairi bhí mó chroí.
I think that says Roger's was the biggest heart. If it does, does that translate in an emotional sense, or would it be seen as a physical statement. Would it mean lots of love, or CHF?

Let me see whether I've learned anything. Bhí Ruarí níos deise ná mise. From your text. B'é an cara ab fhearr liom. Also yours. Bhí maith leis an sásta tú i tigh sé. I changed the comparitive, but the longer the sentence, the greater the room for errors. Also,I've never turned I prefer into he preferred.

mhwombat wrote:Yeah, that post ended up being far more complex that I thought when I started. But sometimes it's good exercise to analyse a sentence in gory detail like that. Even if you didn't understand all of what I wrote, you'll probably remember some of the things to watch out for.

The computer game isn't finished yet, but I hope it's only a few months more.

I really like your descriptive posts. It is easier for me to remember when I have an explanation of why something is the way it is.

And welcome back. We've missed you.

springpaws wrote:Bhí maith leis an sásta tú i tigh sé.

Is that meant to say "He wanted you to be happy in his house"? Or something else? Let me know and I'll work it out step-by-step for you.

springpaws wrote:Go raibh maith agat, a Whombat. I will study this for awhile before attempting any more. Feel free to continue to correct. Sorry about trying the past tense AND comparitives at the same time, but it was ncessary in this instance.

Don't feel bad, and remember you did very well with the past tense. It's good to try something that's too advanced once in a while, as long as you don't let it discourage you when it turns out a bit messy.

Yes, sort of: it was meant to say "he wanted you to be happiest in his house". I did notice that I uses Bhí instead of bí, but I think I might have gotten more than that wrong if you had to ask. This is a good one to fix because it show up more than once in my paragraph. I really like how you take a sentence step by step so I know why and can apply the rules to other sentences. GRMA

That's a complex sentence.

Yep.



It's one of those sentences where you have to really think about precisely what it means before you can translate it. The possibilities that occurred to me are:

1. He wanted you to be the happiest person in his house.
2. He wanted you to be happier in his house than in anyone else's house.
3. He wanted you to be happier in his house than in any other place.
4. He wanted you to be happiest when you were in his house.

I'll assume that #4 is the closest to what you want to say. Just looking at this, I see a conditional/past tense of the copula, an infinitive construct, a relative clause, and a comparative form. Sure you wouldn't like a side order of irregular genitives with that?

All right, enough slagging. I just wanted to make the point that although it looks like a simple sentence, advanced students would find it challenging. So you will probably find my explanation a bit overwhelming.

Let's start with "You were happy in his house."

Bhí tú sásta ina theach.
You were happy in his house.

Note that i (in) + a (his/her/their) = ina

Now let's make it "You were happy when you were in his house." The word nuair (when) introduces a relative clause. I'm not going to go into detail on that in this thread, because I think it's too much too soon. For now, I will simply give you this very useful and common phrase:

...nuair a bhí mé... ...when I was...
...nuair a bhí tú... ...when you were...

And so on for the other pronouns. Before you run wild using this, notice that the verb there is a form of bí (tá). So that means you can use it to say something like "when I was young", but not "when I was a child". (You can describe something with bí/tá, but you need the copula to equate two things. The more complex the sentence structure, the easier it is to make a "Tá sé fear" error.) Anyway, let's try saying "You were happy when you were in his house".

Bhí tú sásta nuair a bhí tú ina theach.
You were happy when you were in his house.

And now let's try "You were happier when you were in his house". Remember that in the past tense, níos becomes ní ba

Bhí tú ní ba sásta nuair a bhí tú ina theach.
You were happier when you were in his house.

*** deireadh cuid a haon ***

(part two to follow)

Tá brón orm, a Whombat. I didn't know what I was doing when I started this. Go raibh maith agat for teaching this. We need to nominate you for sainthood. Anybody got the Pope's number?

I think my habit of swiping chocolate chip cookies when no one's looking might disqualify me. That, and being alive. But I appreciate the thought!

As a learner, I have found that it's far more difficult to write about a subject that I care deeply about, because when the thoughts come from deep in the heart, I want them to flow easily. It's frustrating to have to settle for saying something in a different way because you don't know how to say it the way you really want to. (It's only in the past year that I've felt able to write on any topic I want, without restriction. Sometimes I still have to simplify what I originally intended to say, but I often find the simpler version to be an improvement.)

I think it's easier to write something where the story is told through events rather than through feelings. Whether the story is funny or sad doesn't matter so much, as long as the humour or sadness comes mostly from the events themselves. For example. when I wrote the story of learning to shear my alpacas, the paragraph where I described my worries was the most difficult part. Once I started talking about the shearing itself, the story flowed more easily. And the punchline was having a busload of Japanese tourists stop to take photos of me learning to shear. That event was going to get a smile no matter how I described it.

Anyway, before we go on to part two, you might want to try this sentence:

He was happy when you were happy.