Irish Translation Forum

scoobytyson wrote:I'm interested to see Caffler's distinction between le hól and le n-ól. I was sure (well I had a vague idea!) that they just used the latter in Connemara as their dialectal version of le hól.

that thing about chun is something i read or someone told me once, and i must have seen a sentence where it was used in that manner shortly afterwards, otherwise i'd not have remembered it.
but there's also a distinct chance that it's only that dialect thing, although i'm sure i've seen le n-ithe in Séadna.

caffler and grammar explanations often come to sleep in the same bed....

Raic wrote: fio_smiles wrote:What happens when you are using "leis an" -- are the nouns in the Dative?


Le + An -> Leis an. Basically, you just add an urú, unless the word begins with D, T or S (Dentals rule).

Sorry to go back to harping on about this -- is it the dative also after leis an and leis na ? I know it doesn't make much of a difference except for the "exceptions" (in CO), but is it:

leis an mbróg or leis an mbróig ?
leis na mbróga or leis na mbrógaibh ?

Thanks for all the patience!

fio_smiles wrote:

Raic wrote: fio_smiles wrote:What happens when you are using "leis an" -- are the nouns in the Dative?


Le + An -> Leis an. Basically, you just add an urú, unless the word begins with D, T or S (Dentals rule).

Sorry to go back to harping on about this -- is it the dative also after leis an and leis na ? I know it doesn't make much of a difference except for the "exceptions" (in CO), but is it:

leis an mbróg or leis an mbróig ?
leis na mbróga or leis na mbrógaibh ?

Thanks for all the patience!

In the CO, the dative and the nominative are pretty much the same thing. It's "Leis an mbróg" (You just add an urú) and it's "Leis na bróga" (You do _nothing_).

Alrighty! Thanks Raic!

And one last thrash of the dead horse.... with prepositions like le, when you are using the possessives.... they have the same mutation on the following noun as just using the possessive pronoun?

mo theach - le mo theach
do theach - le do theach
a theach - lena theach (his)
a teach - lena teach (her)
ár dteach - lenár dteach
bhur dteach - le bhur dteach
a dteach - lena dteach (their)

And are these technically dative rather than nominative ?

fio_smiles wrote:Alrighty! Thanks Raic!

And one last thrash of the dead horse.... with prepositions like le, when you are using the possessives.... they have the same mutation on the following noun as just using the possessive pronoun?

mo theach - le mo theach
do theach - le do theach
a theach - lena theach (his)
a teach - lena teach (her)
ár dteach - lenár dteach
bhur dteach - le bhur dteach
a dteach - lena dteach (their)

That is correct.

fio_smiles wrote:And are these technically dative rather than nominative ?

Not really. Cases are constructs defined by languages in order to convey information via inflection. As such, the moment there is no separate
ending anymore the case ceases to exist. Old Irish used to have an accusative case designed to reflect the noun acts as object in the sentence.
Yet we wouldn't say that in a sentence like cheannaigh mé leabhar that leabhar is technically accusative case. This would be rather meaningless as definitions of cases differ per language (as I remarked earlier, the Irish dative doesn't typically work like an average dative in other languages), so saying that a word should be in a specific case has meaning if and only if the case has been defined by grammatical rules. This is no longer the case for accusative nor dative in irish. When a merger between nominative and another case takes place, the resulting case is invariably called nominative - even though its functionality expanded beyond that of the original nominative case.

fio_smiles wrote:Alrighty! Thanks Raic!

And one last thrash of the dead horse.... with prepositions like le, when you are using the possessives.... they have the same mutation on the following noun as just using the possessive pronoun?


And are these technically dative rather than nominative ?

yes that's correct.
technically they are dative but really you'd be better to just forget about nominatives and datives
the dative is basically an indirect object a preposition comes between it and the verb and that's it

scoobytyson wrote:By the way, I have definitely seen/heard the likes of le theacht in Connemara or thereabouts. Non-standard of course.

I've also seen/heard le dhul amach Dé Domhnaigh "for (the purposes of) going out on Sunday" in a song from Donegal.

In Conamara dialect you may also see/hear le bheith, le thíocht (theacht), and le ghoil (which can also be written le ghabháil.) The explanation for this is also a dropped possessive pronoun a, like le chéile.

Raic wrote:

fio_smiles wrote:

Raic wrote: fio_smiles wrote:What happens when you are using "leis an" -- are the nouns in the Dative?


Le + An -> Leis an. Basically, you just add an urú, unless the word begins with D, T or S (Dentals rule).

Sorry to go back to harping on about this -- is it the dative also after leis an and leis na ? I know it doesn't make much of a difference except for the "exceptions" (in CO), but is it:

leis an mbróg or leis an mbróig ?
leis na mbróga or leis na mbrógaibh ?

Thanks for all the patience!

In the CO, the dative and the nominative are pretty much the same thing. It's "Leis an mbróg" (You just add an urú) and it's "Leis na bróga" (You do _nothing_).

My impression is that this is one of the cases where the language has been simplified recently. So I guess if you're writing CO you'd use leis an mbróg and leis na mbróga. But if you're using a dialect where the special forms exist, then it should be leis an mbróig and leis na mbrógaibh.

mhwombat wrote:My impression is that this is one of the cases where the language has been simplified recently. So I guess if you're writing CO you'd use leis an mbróg and leis na mbróga. But if you're using a dialect where the special forms exist, then it should be leis an mbróig and leis na mbrógaibh.

It's a pity really. Nowadays we still learn the Irish language... but we've lost some of its richness.

These kind of recent reforms are no more the finishing touches of language reconstructing that took more than a thousand years. Old Irish had infinitely more structure and subtlety than the modern variant - with or without the dative. But as with all the Germanic and Romance languages all Celtic languages have been moving away from a synthetic structure to a more or less analytic one. The standard simply reflects the way in which the language is going. The dialects would have ended up there sooner or later anyway.