I'm doing one of the Memrise courses (amongst other things), and have come across some examples of questions that I don't understand. I'm an almost complete beginner, so this won't test any of you, but I'm confused about this, and would be grateful for an explanation:

Níl tú fliuch? You're not wet? I would have thought this was a statement, not a question; You are not wet. Should the question be Nach bhfuil tú fliuch?

Tá tú go maith arís? You are well again? It looks to me as if it should say 'You are well again.' A statement.

Níl sé an-tinn? He's not very ill? Again, is this correct?

Is it to do with the way it's spoken?

Amateur materials... sometimes you get what you pay for.

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A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

Said in a questioning tone, they are questions. Also common in English. It's not snowing? That man's still here? Depending on the manner said, they could be questions or statements

I don't know what Memrise is, but apparently, you already know more than the person who posted that stuff!

Needless to say, it doesn't do you any good to try to learn Irish from people who are not fluent speakers themselves – just sayin' …

It's on online beginner's course which is claimed to be based on Buntús Cainte, but yes, the person who created it isn't a fluent speaker. I hope Buntús Cainte is a solid course - I've ordered Part 1 and decided to use it as my main resource.



And the Memrise courses are free.



Is that likely to be the case on a beginner's course?

I had sort of suspected that they might be mistakes. Even if not, it's discouraging to learn one way of saying something, and then another. I'll probably not go further with it, but wait for my own books to arrive, and stay with those.

Thank you for replying.

Buntus is a good solid way to begin. Memrise seems to cover many languages and I'm not sure of their resources.

Are you sure? No-one's ever told me that before, and it's certainly not the case in Scottish Gaelic. (In SG, there is no such thing as a "questioning tone" as the question is expressed purely grammatically.

Besides, in English "It's not raining?" isn't a question, it's a statement of surprise and incredulity.

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A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

The sentences are straight from Buntús Cainte. Like beagle above, I can also assure you that it is a good solid course.

The sentences did strike me as strange when I first saw them (thinking like a beginner and trying to be hyper-logical), but they certainly don't sound out of place when you hear them in context.

I think most languages have these borderline statement/questions. The tone is often one of disbelief or doubt or anger - like the mother telling her child "(tell me) you're not wet!" (or there will be hell to pay.)

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[hr]Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher[/hr]
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

As others have said, these are perfectly acceptable expressions in Irish. If you watch Ros na Rún, you will occasionally hear sentences like this. The reason why these are written with a question mark rather than a period is to express the rising intonation that marks the speaker is surprised or is unsure but hopes the statement is true. For something like Níl sé an-tinn? you would hear this in the recording which really helps give better context to what's going on. This sort of nuance is an aspect of spoken language that is very difficult to convey in writing.

If you think about this in English, you'd probably never ask someone, "Is he very sick?" not because of grammar but because it's almost kind of rude. Usually you'd say something we consider a bit more polite like, "Well, I hope he isn't too sick?" with a rising intonation to show we expect an answer from the person to whom we are speaking that will confirm our statement.

I want to go a bit further on this point and say that people have certain notions of how they speak a language and how a language should be spoken and that very frequently the way they actually speak the language or the way it is actually spoken is far more flexible and nuanced than their perceived opinions would allow. Once I had a discussion with a well educated person about "standard English" and expressed my opinion that educated, middle class Americans do not speak standard English to the degree that they actually think they speak it (circa 1996, to give some context). She, however, thought that she spoke English very much the way she wrote it and couldn't even understand how I could take such a stance. My reply was, "Well, 5 minutes ago you just asked Jim, 'Where's my keys,' but you'd never allow a verb to disagree with the subject like that in writing."

My point is that, while there are certainly things that are clearly ungrammatical, making categorical claims about a living spoken language can be a really sticky thing to do and it's far too easy for people to disparage others based on an opinion that is itself not necessarily correct.

Well, most people might not agree with this, but here's what I think:

If I were teaching English to somebody, I would not teach them to say "Where is my keys?" – I'd go with "Where are my keys?"
If I were teaching Irish to somebody, I would not teach them that "Níl tú fliuch" is a question – I'd go with "Ná fuileann tú fliuch?"

Just my personal opinion …