Good morning!

I was hoping some of you might be so kind as to read a post or two of mine and either correct them or respond in (relatively simple, lol) Irish so that I could focus on my immersion. I'm at home with a book and RTÉ which is great, but I thought maybe a little conversation would help me think in Irish since it would force me to see more, lol. Aspirations are my nemesis, at the moment, too, so hound on my incorrect (or note any correct) aspirations as possible, lol!

Note: My simplistic knowledge means some English thrown in until I can figure out how to say it in Irish, lol.

Is Meiricánach agus máthair mé. Is scoláire mé, freisin. Tá mé ag foghlaim Gaeilge agus [mechanical engineering]. Tá mé ag éisteacht Raidió na Gaeltachta. Tá mé ag léamh ceacht Gaeilge. Nach bhfuil siad mhaith? An bhfuil sibh ag foghlaim Gaeilge?

Tá an aimsir go thirim agus fhuar. Tá an aimsir go hálainn, freisin.

Mo iníon ag teacht ón scoil anios. Slán agat!

Hi. Nice effort.

Here are some pointers:

Irish spelling generally follows the rule caol le caol agus leathan le leathan "slender with slender and broad with broad". This means that consonants and consonant clusters will usually have either slender vowels (i or e) before and after, or else broad vowels (a, o, or u) before and after, but not usually a mixture. This means that Meiriceánach needs that e to keep the c slender.

I would remember ag foghlaim na Gaeilge "(at the) learning (of the) Irish" as a set expression. It's the way I have always heard it, anyway.

The objects of verbal nouns are in the genitive case, hence na Gaeilge "of the Irish language" and ag foghlaim innealtóireachta meicniúla "(at the) learning (of) mechanical engineering (I am not too sure of my genitives so that may need confirmation). The dictionary form of "mechanical engineering" is innealtóireacht mheicniúil.

The object of the Irish verb éist is indicated by le, i.e., ag éisteacht le rud, similar to English "listen to something".

I am not sure what the siad is referring to in this sentence. If it is meant to be ceacht "lesson" then it should be sé and if "Irish" is intended then it should be sí. If you meant "lessons" in the previous sentence, then that should have been ceachtanna.

Irish adjectives are only modified when attributive, so maith wouldn't change here, but in the predicate maith becomes go maith. Unlike Welsh, this only happens for a handful of Irish adjectives.

Since you are contrasting someone else's situation with your own, Irish adds an emphatic suffix to the pronoun, turning sibh into sibhse.

Like maith, álainn becomes go hálainn in the predicate. Normal adjectives like tirim and fuar don't.


You need tá here and mo changes to m' before vowels and sometimes before fh (which is silent).


Hope this helps. Please don't hesitate to ask for clarification.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
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).

Just a quick typo correction: Tá m'iníon

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Thanks, a Chaoimhín. Fixed above.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
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).

Absolutely beautiful and thank you so much!! Those corrections helped more than I can say, honestly. I'll likely make those same mistakes once or twice again, but I'm now on the look out for them.

Everything is pretty self-explanatory. And I now understand the "slender with slender, etc" phrase a lot better than before. Which is most definitely a plus!

The only question on that that I have left would be:

What is the difference between "maith" and "áilainn", and "fuar" and "tirim", as predicate adjectives? Is there a special reason why some adjectives, when in the predicate, change form?

I find myself studying English as much as Irish, now.

I totally lied in the last post: I do have another question, lol!

This is just about when you said sibhse is used to express the statement with the speaker's own as the primary: how does that fit in with, say "tú"? "tú se"? "An bhfuil tú se ag foghlaim na Gaeilge?"

And please don't hesitate to say: "You just need to hit the books harder!"

Attributive adjectives are like "good" and "red" in "good boy", "red book", etc. In English they mostly go before the noun, in Irish they mostly get put after and change according to the gender (masculine or feminine) of the noun and the case (where it is in the sentence).

Predicate adjectives are like "good" and "red" in "the boy is good", "the book is red", etc. They don't get changed to match the gender of the noun they describe in Irish, but about eight adjectives get treated as adverbs - we put go in front of them and the go causes an h sound before the following vowel, which is spelled with an h.

The eight adjectives are:

iontach "wonderful" which becomes go hiontach
álainn "beautiful" which becomes go hálainn
aoibhinn "pleasant" which becomes go haoibhinn
breá "fine" which becomes go breá
deas "nice" which becomes go deas
maith "good" which becomes go maith
dona "bad which becomes go dona
olc "wicked, evil" which becomes go holc

As you can see they are very common words and mostly are degrees of good or bad.

For these adjectives the pattern is tá sé go breá, etc. For any other adjective the pattern is tá sé óg, tá sí tanaí, etc.


The emphatic/contrastive forms of the nominative pronouns are:

mé becomes mise
tú becomes tusa
sé becomes seisean
sí becomes sise
muid becomes muidne
sibh becomes sibhse
siad becomes siadsan

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
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).

Just to add something concerning Ulster Irish:
Normally "go" isn't used before predicative adjectives as much as in the other dialects, you'd say:
tá sin iontach
tá sí álainn
tá sin aoibhinn
tá sé go breá
tá sí deas
tá sé go maith (=he is ok) // tá sé maith (=he is a good man)
tá sé go dona
tá sé go holc



that's standard but I'm not sure "muidne" is used anywhere. Munster has "sinne", Connachta has "muide" and Ulster has "muidinne.

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

Breandán and Lughaidh:

Thanks so much! I'm putting all of that down in my "Grammar Book" that I've started. I bought Learning Irish by M. Ó Siadhail, which I believe both of you recommended, and hopefully it will arrive soon!

None of this has been mentioned, yet, in my studies, but I'm only on Lesson 12 of 120. So here's to seeing it in the future!

Adding one item to Breandán's list of emphatic forms: If you use sinn for "we" instead of muid, then the emphatic form is sinne. Thus. in the national anthem: Sinne [Fianna/Laochra] fáil ...

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.