Hi Everyone

This is my first post here. My Dad is from county Claire. I haven't been to Ireland since I was 12, I am 43 now. I live in Canada with my wife and two kids. My wife is from the Philippines.

I would like to speak some Irish with my Dad. I actually find the word order in Irish pretty natural, it is the same as in Tagalog.

Irish seems to use inflection to mark /nominative/genitive/dative cases. Tagalog has the same or there is a particle that marks it as so.

People say that you need to "think" in the target language. That is all well and good but assuming you are an English speaker, I think you have to rearrange English a bit at first and start trying to think in mixture of the two as an intermediate step.

Could you help me, I am trying to form a list of mismatches between the two. Could you correct me if I am wrong, or tell me where I can expand on these. I understand that I have left out all of the inflection.

Here are some English to "Eng-Rish" sentences:

I have a car-> car to me.
I am tall -> is(permanent) me tall.
I am tired -> is(transient) tired me.
I bought an egg-> bought I egg. ( no indefinite article)
are you tired? -> are tired (particle a/ata) you?
The nice dog-> the dog (particle go) nice.
I am not good-> not I (particle go) good
Sean's house -> house Sean(Genitive case)
son of Bill -> son Bill(genitive case)

Do you know where I might find more of this sort of thing or is there a different way to go about this?
Thanks for reading-Pat

Hi Pat, I've lived in Clare a few years now myself! Though I'm a Limerick man really.

I've never heard of this method you are using... But it's interesting. So what you are doing is translating to Irish, and then back into English but in a very literal Irish way vocab and word order wise?


I have a car = Tá carr agam = Is car at me / car at me

I am tired = tá tuirseach orm = tiredness on me


Am I understanding that correctly?

Hi Oisin

Thanks for responding to my post.

Yes

So I am not fluent in Tagalog or any other Philippine language but I have tried very hard to learn and I am hoping to avoid falling into the same pitfalls I had with Tagalog(and similar languages) when trying to learn Irish.

The resources to learn these Philippine languages are terrible(Irish has much more) but one of the things that has really been hard for me is that there is no documentation to help overcome the large mismatch between English and Tagalog even with word order corrected for and often the books don't even cover the word order differences and such.

In Tagalog there is no verb "to be";
"I am tall" is just:
"tall I".

You don't say "do you ski?",
it's just :
"ski you(question particle)"

There are quite a lot of these. When we go from English to French, much of the time, we are just swapping word for word. Not so with Tagalog and it seems to be very much not so with Irish too. I figure that all languages solve the same problems but they can solve these in very different ways. Tagalog is quite easy now that I know it but there is one very tricky part, switching between "I am eating an apple" and "I am eating the apple" changes every word in the sentence except "apple", again no one explains this in a clear manner.

A literal translation of one would be:
"Eating I (particle) apple", so it is pretty similar to Irish.

So Irish has two forms of the verb "to be", this is a mismatch, I need to correct for word order but I also need to know that I can't use the wrong form of "to be". In Irish we don't answer yes/no.
:Have you eaten?
:Eaten

I need to think this through and I can think through much of it in a sort of intermediate language. Perhaps Hiberno English will give me hints too.

I figure that I need to think this all through so that as I build up vocabulary(my Irish is close to zero)it all goes in the right place and I start forming my own unique sentences ASAP. Again, I had a terrible time here with Tagalog. I struggled so badly with the grammar that I did not build up vocabulary quickly. I can now read a book and understand 50-70% of the words in it but I still struggle to speak. I want to start speaking in Irish right away.

I want to finish Tagalog but I have lots of time, my Dad is 75 so who knows how long he will be around, I hope he will enjoy hearing me speak Irish.

Does this make any sense? -Pat

Are you trying to surprise your father?
Are you sure he speaks Irish?

Irish died out in Clare centuries ago, there weren't any native speakers when your father was young. So any Irish he has would be what he learnt in school, which for most people sadly is very little.

There was actually some native speakers around Doolin up until the 1990's, though their language might not have been as strong as the older west Clare speakers who died in the seventies and eighties.

West Clare was once a strong enough Gaeltacht area so I wouldn't say centuries.


(But yeah, unless his dad was from one of these small western coastal villages chances are the only Irish he'd have is whatever he might remember from school.)

Hi Brid, Hi again Oisin

Yes, Dad's Irish is really bad and he left Ireland 50 years ago. However, I have asked him questions about the language and he seems really happy when we talk about it.

I have spent all of 12 weeks of my life in Ireland and again, the last time was 31 years ago. Born and raised in Canada and married to a Filipina for 16 years, I am not sure if I identify as Irish, Canadian or Filipino now but I do have a strong sense that the Irish language must not die. I would also like to learn it and if possible, teach it to my children.

I downloaded a lot of Irish language videos and my son likes watching them. We will likely never move away Canada and for medical reasons we are unlikely to travel in the next 10-15 years but who knows....

-Pat

I think most people would still be delighted to be surprised like this, regardless of their own level of Irish.

it is "tá tuirSE orm", tuirseach means tired (adjective) not tiredness. Tiredness is "tuirse".

_________________
Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

Lughaidh thank you.

So tuirse is for the feeling or state of tiredness, and tuirseach is like when a thing in general is tired?

Or no, tuirseach is for describing other people/things/places who are tired, but tuirse is just for when you're saying you yourself (I) am tired?


(Sorry for this very minor hijack of your thread Pat)

No.
tuirse is a noun, tuirseach an adjective.

The idioms mean the same. (Tá X tuirseach = Tá tuirse ar X)

Tá mé tuirseach. I am tired.
Tá tú tuirseach. Thou art tired.
Tá sé tuirseach. He is tired.
...

Tá tuirse orm. Tiredness is upon me.
Tá tuirse ort. Tiredness is upon thee.
Tá tuirse air. Tiredness is upon him.
...