#irish101

[gaeilge101]

Hello! I'm new to Irish, been learning it for a while on duolingo. Could you please explain the difference between "dheartháir" and "deartháir"? I can't seem to figure which one to use where.

Thank you!

Hi there!

It's definitely one of those things in Irish that can be tricky to get a handle on. Here's a good description of it:

Séimhiú (lenition) literally means "a softening" and involves adding the letter "h" after the first consonant in the word that is being changed. The séimhiú changes both the sound of the word and its spelling. Some examples of when a séimhiú is used with nouns include: ● after some possessive pronouns (e.g. mála (bag) > mo mhála (my bag)) ● with the definite article an (the) before a feminine noun (e.g. fuinneog (window) > an fhuinneog (the window)) ● after "a" in the vocative case, used when calling or addressing someone (e.g. Bríd (female name) > a Bhríd) [source]

Here's a more comprehension explanation on wikipedia which looks a bit scary but it will explain things more fully. Don't worry about not understanding/remembering everything! I'm a learner too and I certainly don't!

In your question you use deartháir (brother). So if you wanted to say my brother you would use mo dheartháir (my brother) because 'my' is possessive.

Real life example:

sráid = street caisleán = castle sráid an chaisleáin = castle street (lit. street of the castle).

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Online Irish Series 1: Intro

Hello! So since I’ve heard back and you are interested indeed, here’s the first class! I will try to make these short and daily at 3pm! I have somewhat of a rough plan, staring from the bare basics of the Irish language and I want to be going over topics and grammar points as well. I am going to try and make it somewhat interactive, too. Bí linn!  Today I’m doing just an introduction to the language. I’d be very happy to get some feedback or questions, if you have any. Please send me an ask with your reasons why you’re learning Irish!  It’s a new format, so let’s see how it works.  Irish, or Gaeilge comes from the Celtic branch of Indo-European languages. It is very closely related to Scottish Gaelic and Manx and more distantly related with Welsh, Cornish and Breton. As for Indo-European languages, it does not classify within the so-called SAE (Standard Average European) languages and is quite different, which is to be kept in mind while studying it. There are certain grammatical and morphological features, which make it stand out, especially compared to languages like French or German. Irish is the first language of the Republic of Ireland and a recognised minority language in Northern Ireland, where Irish is protected under the European Charter for Minority Languages (for now). In Ireland, Irish is taught throughout the entire school education, however, only 73,803 speak it daily; 111,473 speak it weekly and 586,535 speak less frequently (out of population of ca. 5 million). Most Irish people do have some knowledge of Irish, but usage depends on different factors. There are three main dialects of Irish - Munster, Connacht and Ulster. They are mutually comprehensible with most differences being small in pronunciation and some minor grammatical differences. Due to media spread, they all are well-represented and most Irish speakers understand all of them to some degree. The oldest Ogam inscriptions (ancient writing system) of so-called Archaic Irish come all the way from the 3rd century AD. Irish as a language has faced countless attempts to be silenced and is currently going through revival efforts. I hope you enjoy and I’ll see you tomorrow. We’re going to look at how to read Irish!

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Online Irish Series 2: The Alphabet

Welcome back! Today we’re going to embark on a journey to read Irish! We’re going to start with looking over the letters and their qualities and then tomorrow, we’re going to get down a bit deeper on those rules. Reading Irish is what many people can get quite overwhelmed with and there are quite a few rules, but approaching it right from the start will hopefully make it seem a little less daunting! I hope you like today’s lesson. In Irish, we have the same letters as in English (minus the old font) - except for j, k, q, v, x, y, z (unless they’re borrowings)

One of the most important things to remember is that every consonant has two qualities, slender (caol) and broad (leathan).

These are determined by the vowel - a, o, u -> broad, e, i -> slender. Which is easy to remember as you have to ‘smile’ to pronounce the slender vowels. Which will then influence the consonant you’re saying with it. Compare - saying ‘cat’ ‘key’, notice how your mouth shape changes when you say these.

This comes in later in pronunciation rules.

Vowels, besides being markers of broad and slender, also have a little diacritics mark, an acute accent, if you will, called a fada. In general, it makes the vowel longer. Sometimes even to the point of creating a diphthong (a two-vowel sliding sound), especially in case of ó - which becomes an /oh/ sound and é - which ends up sounding like /ay/. There are also dipthongs and something you could call vowel clusters which create one sound, you will learn them as you go.

Have you noticed how Irish names are often going to be pronounced way differently than what they’re spelled?

Saoirse Sean Aisling 

-> click on the name to be taken to teanglann.ie, a super handy website where you can listen to the pronunciation - see the dialects we talked about yesterday?

Irish has quite different spelling rules from English. When you have learned these rules, you can read virtually anything. Remember the broad and slender rule? Some consonants change quite a bit when slender. For example s - look at Saoirse again and notice the different sounds with the letter S. We’re going to look at more of that tomorrow.

I would recommend you watch this video  as your ‘homework’ to get familiar with the Irish sounds, it basically gives you a good overview of how to read! I hope you liked today’s lesson! My ask is always open for questions and suggestions. Tomorrow’s lesson at 3pm Irish time (GMT) again.

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Online Irish Series 3: How to Read Irish!

More info-dump! I also would like you to know that obviously, there’s no exam, there’s no pressure, you don’t need to know all the rules all at once, all by heart. You can refer to this post later on when you follow up with the lessons as well. In general, getting comfortable with reading Irish does take time. I am, however, a strong believer in learning with context and teaching the whole thing at once. I don’t want to look over every single letter, I want you to see how the letters come together to create words and maybe even go on a little journey to discover those combinations for yourself! Okay, here we go, How to read in Irish!!

First of all, pronunciation can be quite dialect-dependent. For dialects - I am trying to teach in the most dialect-neutral way I know. If you’re starting out fresh, you’re free to choose whichever dialect suits you the best or whichever you like the most! Of course, if you’ve already spent time learning a certain dialect, I would suggest you stick with it, but maybe it would also be interesting to learn some of the differences.  I would like you to look at this list of words and put them into teanglann.ie or focloir.ie and listen to their pronunciations. You should be able to hear some difference (some are bigger, some are quite small) between the two pronunciations of the same letter! (Just a note - I personally find that Ulster dialect makes a more prominent distinction there, so if you cannot hear it, try Ulster! Especially for t and d!) Bó (cow) - Bia (food) Cú (hound) - Ciúin (calm) Doras (door) - Deoch (drink) Fuar (cold) - Féach (look) Guta (vowel) - Giota (piece)  Halla (hall) - Hiopnóis (hypnosis) Lón (lunch) - Leithscéal (excuse) Mór (big) - Milseog (dessert) Nua (new) - Neart (strength) Post (post, job) - Pian (pain) Rollóg (small roll) - Riamh (before) Sean (old) - Sú (juice) Tóg (take) - Tirim (dry)

Next step: (only read once you’re comfortable with the sounds and the differences!) A handy rule to help you remember the spelling, especially when it comes to many vowels being next to each other and ‘which one you should read’ is caol le caol, leathan le leathan, meaning slender with slender, broad with broad. Which means that means that the vowels on either side of a consonant (or group of consonants) should agree; they should both be broad or both be slender. This rule should help you with more complicated words like Bealach (way) - you pronounce a slender B, influenced by the E and then follow with the As. Conspóideach (controversial) - Ó will have its way because of the fada. The I is only there because there is an E. After a slender -D-, you follow along with the now seemingly broad ending -ACH. 

In general, knowing these rules should help you ease your way into starting to read Irish. A good way to listen to the pronunciation is with music. Siúil a Rún or Báidín Fheilimí are very good songs to look into. Read the lyrics (only the chorus is in English for Siúil a Rún) out loud for yourself. Look up the words on teanglann if you need help. Then you can listen to the song to see if you were right/where you made mistakes. I really hope this helps you in some way to gain a bit of understanding of Irish orthography and pronunciation. Remember, it’s always best to listen to the language and then read over the rules, gradually, it will start making sense. Reading Irish then becomes quite straightforward. However, don’t worry if it takes some time. You might spend a couple weeks on it. Next lesson tomorrow at 3pm Irish time again!  My ask is always open if you have any questions or suggestions!

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Online Irish Series 6: Basic Sentence Structure

Hope everyone’s doing alright today! I’d like to look at some basic sentence structure and grammar points. I’m going to try my best not to go too far linguistically and to utilise some of the phrases we’ve looked at already. I kind of struggled with how to present and convey everything, so feel free to ask follow-up questions. 

Irish follows a VSO (verb-subject-object) sentence structure. (Like other Celtic languages!) So verb has to come first! There are some exceptions, but for now, just remember, VERB comes FIRST! Let’s compare an example sentence to an English one. 

I read a book. I (pronoun - subject) read (verb - predicate) a (indefinite article) book (noun - object) Léim leabhar. (sounds a little awkward, but it’s grammatically correct and it will serve our explanation well) Léim (verb - predicate + pronoun included - subject) (Irish does not have an indefinite article, only definite) leabhar (noun - object). Note: This tense specifically (we’ll talk about tenses later) contracts the verb and pronoun together, but only in 1st person singular and 1st person plural (except for Ulster Irish) Let’s look at the phrase we know already: Tá mé go maith. (I am well, literally: is me well), this one is ‘the other’ present tense, so it’s not contracted, however, Munster Irish does contract Tá mé into táim. Tá (verb - predicate) mé (pronoun - subject) go (a particle used to change an adjective into an adverb) maith (adjective -... my syntax knowledge only goes so far… modifier? But pretty much an object) 

Important - if you’re confused about tá and is (as we saw in Is mise), just like in Spanish, Irish has two different forms of ‘to be’. The is - the copula, is mostly used for fixed and permanent statements. Tá - is used for all the other cases. One more grammatical point for today: Irish uses so-called mutations to express some grammatical properties. We’re going to look at one of the mutations tomorrow. They can be confusing, but in turn, Irish doesn’t have as many crazy inflections like some languages do! Pronouns: Mé        I Tú        You Sé (é)   He (him, used as Object) Sí (í)     She (her, used as Object)

Muid (more rarely now Sinn) We Sibh       You Siad (iad) They (them, used as Object) 

With these, you can now learn to conjugate the verb Bí (To be!): Tá mé/Táim Tá tú Tá sé Tá sí Tá muid/Táimid/Tá sinn Tá sibh Tá siad I feel like this one was a little all over the place, so do take some time and make sure that you understand everything before you check back in tomorrow! Hope you enjoyed and as always, the new class will be posted at 3pm Irish time tomorrow.

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Online Irish Series 8: Numbers

Today I’d like to look at numbers. Irish has quite a few counting systems. The numbers change slightly whether you’re counting people or years, which is fairly complicated, but today we’re only going to look at cardinal numbers 1-10, because today we’re taking it easy! 0 a náid 1 a haon 2 a dó

3 a trí

4 a ceathair

5 a cúig

6 a sé

7 a seacht

8 a hocht

9 a naoi

10 a deich Here’s a pronunciation video I suggest you learn to say these by heart, as quickly as you can, from the top, from the bottom,from the middle, upside down, you learn to say your phone number or your address. It’s quite useful! Luckily, Irish is not as ridiculous with the numbers as other languages, so even as you’re counting onwards, they’re all decimal and they make sense (I’m looking at you, French and Welsh). Hope you enjoyed today’s slightly calmer class and I’ll see you tomorrow at 3pm!

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Online Irish Series 9: Basic Questions

Today we’re going to look at some of the question words you are going to encounter while reading/speaking Irish. 

We already have looked at questions such as Cad é mar atá tú? Cé as tú? Conas atá tú? All these questions are pretty much the same as Wh- questions in English. There’s quite a few and this comprehensive list comes from: https://brianlambe.wordpress.com/irish-the-question-forms-ca-ce-cad-etc/ 1. Cá – where

Cá fhad – how long

2. Cad – what Cad a tharla ? - what happened? 

Cad as duit – where are you from

Cad chuige – For what, Why ?

Cad leis – with what ?                   

3. Céard – what - more dialect-specific to Munster

4. Cé hé Pádraig – who is Pádraig?

5. Cé acu – Which of them

6. Cé mhéad – how much, how many

7. Cén – which

8. Cén fáth – why 

Cén áit – where  ( which place )

Cén uair –  when  ( which time )

Cén chaoi -which way, how,   ‘Cén chaoi ina bhfuil tú ?

9. Conas – how

10. Cathain – when It’s not a requirement for you to know these at the moment, but knowing these is very helpful, especially when you’re reading something!

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Online Irish Series 4: Greetings

So after looking at some big starting points - I hope you feel a bit less intimidated by the language! Remember you can always look up the correct pronunciation or ask! I am not sure about your knowledge of the IPA, but I could add a somewhat modified IPA version in the beginning chapters! Today we’re going to be greeting each other! A very formal greeting in Irish is Dia duit (when you’re greeting one person) Dia daoibh (when you’re greeting more than one person!) Note: Duit/daoibh - This is dependent on something called the prepositional pronouns. It basically means - ‘for you’ in singular and in plural. The preposition for is do and you can inflect prepositions in Irish! Dia duit/daoibh, however, is very formal. At least that’s what I was taught. Loosely translated, it’s like God be with you. And the answer back is also very formal. Dia is Muire duit. God and Mary be with you. Usually, in a conversational setting, people will usually just say Hi! But it’s stylised as Haigh! After haigh, you usually ask or get asked how you are. Each dialect has got their specific one. Cad é mar atá tú? (Ulster. Honestly, once you say this, everyone will know you’re from the north!) Cén chaoi a bhfuil tú? (Specific to Connacht) Conas atá tú? (Munster, and also the most widespread one in general, especially in Leinster) The reply usually goes Tá mé go maith! (I am well), maith pronounced either as mah (with a quite open a) in Munster and Connacht or you even add a little -ih sound in the end for Ulster -> Compare with teanglann Tá mé - means I am. Tá is the verb and mé is the pronoun. We will talk about Irish sentence structure in one of the following lessons! You can substitute go maith - well - with other words, too! Go breá - great Go dona - poorly Maith go leor - okay Go hiontach - amazing If you want to say thank you and ask the same question - Go raibh maith agat, agus tú féin/tusa?  - Thank you, and you/yourself? As an exercise, if you like, do send me an ask, asking how I am! We didn’t cover that much today, because I still feel like some of these explanations are necessary! Let me know if you enjoy this info dump approach!

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Online Irish Series 7: Where do you live? + mutations

Today marks a week of our classes! Can we please take some time to evaluate?? Have you got any questions, any suggestions, is it going well, am I going too fast, am I going too slow, am I understandable? Please if you could take time to send me a short ask with how you’re getting on, I’d be very grateful. I’ve never done anything like this and I’d like to know what to improve. 

Today we’re going to look at saying were we’re from and where we live now! For asking where you’re from, there’s, once again, three questions, one for each dialect. Cé as thú? - Connacht Cé as tú? - Ulster Cad as duit? - Munster

However, your reply here is more or less universal: Is as _____ (country) mé. Countries list: http://nualeargais.ie/foghlaim/tiortha.php (sometimes they require an article)

Now let’s get onto the real deal - the mutations and where you live. Cá bhfuil tú i do chónaí? - Where do you live? (Lit. where are you in your living/dwelling) Tá mé i mo chónaí i _________ (city/town). Now, i is a preposition for in. However, it causes a mutation. Mutation is a change to the beginning of the word to mark a grammatical or morphological meaning. You can understand it as a - some languages have endings and suffixes and Irish has mutations. There are two types of mutations (and some other little things that change), Lenition (séimhiú) and Eclipsis (Urú). They both have their own rules and their own functions. Today, we’re going to look at the latter. The letters that eclipse and their result/pronunciation is: b -> mb /m/ c -> gc /g/ d -> nd /n/ f -> bhf /v or w/ g -> ng /nasal n/ p -> bp /b/ t -> dt /d/ Note: if there’s a capital letter in the initial word, it stays capital, but the eclipsis is lowercase! -> mB, gC, etc. Dublin in Irish is Baile Átha Cliath (pronounced very loosely and quickly as ˈbʲlʲaː ˈklʲiə (from Wiki), honestly it’s quite messy). So if you live in Dublin, you say: Tá mé i mo chónaí i mBaile Átha Cliath. Kerry: Tá mé i mo chónaí i gCiarraí. Wateford: Tá mé i mo chónaí i bPort Láirge. Etc. A good way to remember these mutations is to take those that sound quite ridiculous to you and use them as mnemonic device. Berlin -> i mBerlin (MERLIN!) Paris -> i bPáras Fukushima -> i bhFukushima (wukushima!) Now that you’ve learned how to eclipse, every time we come across some grammatical feature that uses an eclipse, that’s what’s going to happen! And here we go. That’s the first part of the mutations in Irish. I hope you enjoyed today’s class and if you like, you can send me an ask where you introduce yourself and tell me where you’re from and where you live now as an exercise. I’m sure it will help others as well! See you tomorrow at 3pm for another class!