So in school I was taught that Irish doesn't have a passive voice, but you can use the saor briathar to do a lot of what the passive does.

I just found this sentence and am trying to get my little head around how it works grammatically:

Tá sé á phriontáil faoi láthair = it's being printed at the moment

That's an interesting one because it seems like a passive is formed by "á"

How much use can I bain amach from this construction. Could I say, for "the cake was being baked", "bhí an cáca á bácáil". Or "the game will be played", "beidh an cluiche á imirt"

GRMA!

bhí an cáca á bhácáil, as cáca is masculine.

The construction means literally ‘the cake is at its baking’ (so á lenites if the subject is masculine, causes h-prothesis if feminine, and eclipses if plural – at least in traditional language, I think it’s common to use lenition everywhere in speech today, regardless of gender/number).

You could also say táim am’ chosaint ag an nduine ‘I am being protected by the person’ (lit. ‘I am at my protection by the person’) (or táim do mo chosaint in Connacht/Caighdeán); tá tú ad’ (do do) bhualadh ‘you are being beaten’, etc.

You get the passive meaning when the possessive am’/do mo, ad’/do do, á, etc. refers back to the subject (he is at his, I am at my, etc.).

This construction can be ambiguous, though. táim am’ chosaint might mean ‘I am being protected’ and ‘I am protecting myself’; tá sé á bhualadh might mean ‘he is being beaten’ as well as ‘he is beating it/him (sb else)’.

Thanks.

So it'd be:

Tá sé á phriontáil

Tá sí á priontáil

Tá siad á bpriontáil

?

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I found this PDF which might help some people reading this, though it's a bit jargon-heavy: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/cgi/viewconte ... ntext=itbj

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is am’ there short for ag mo?

Yes (although, as I wrote above, as far as I know, it’s possible that you’d hear phriontáil everywhere in actual speech today).



It’s the form used in Munster, pronounced /əm/ – and probably it is shortened from ag mo (although some people would claim that it’s from do mo), in Connacht it would be /ɡə mo/ written do mo (do and go are pronounced the same there), and in Ulster (I think? Lughaidh probably will correct me) it’d be either just mo or full ag mo. See the forms listed on GnaG: http://nualeargais.ie/gnag/gram.htm?progres.htm

This is the same á (or dhá or (a)ghá, etc.) as in regular active progressive: táim á bhualadh ‘I am beating him’, tá tú am’/do mo chosaint ‘you are defending me’, etc.

Tá sé seo ina ciúdiú mór, a shilmeth.

So then what's the difference between the construction with á and the version with do?

Would táim am’ chosaint be different from táim á chosaint?

The first sentence means I am being defended, the second one I am defending him/it.

The meaning is passive only when the possessive refers back to the subject:

• táim am’ chosaint or táim do mo chosaint
• tá tú ad’ chosaint or tá tú do do chosaint
• tá sé á chosaint
• tá sí á cosaint
• táimid (d)ár gcosaint
• tá sibh (do) bhur gcosaint
• tá siad á gcosaint