msv133 wrote:
Part of rev 19:10:
"Praise God, for the testimoney of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."
"Mol Dia, Óir is í spiorad na fáidheadóireachda fianaise Íosa"
(Verb-predicate-subject)
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Chapter 8 of "Teach yourself Irish":
'If the subject and predicate are definite nouns, e.g. "Tom is the old Man", "John is my son", "The big book is the prize", then the order is: is é Tomás an sean-duine; is é Seán mo mhac; is é leabhar mór an duais"
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Shouldn't I put the definite article "an" before fianaise so that we have:
"Mol Dia, Óir is í spiorad na fáidheadóireachda an fianaise Íosa"
Also, why does "na" mean "of" here? Usually na is the plural of an. Couldn't I use "o" instead?
No, you shouldn't put
an before
fianaise. Just because a definite article is used or required in English, does not mean it is appropriate in Irish.
In Irish sentence structure it is incorrect to use two definite articles in a row where two nouns come together in a genitival construction like "
spirit of
prophesy". Generally, the article is used with the noun which is in the genitive case, and not the one which is in the (typically) nominative case. Hence, you get
spiorad na fáidheadóireachda, lit. "spirit of the prophesy" rather than "the spirit of prophesy". In the case of
fianaise Íosa, because
Íosa is a proper noun, it doesn't take an article here even though it is in the genitive case, but if it were a regular noun the article would similarly precede it, not the nominative
fianaise.
I think this partly answers your second question also,
na does not mean "of" here, it is the definite article, "the". The English genitive marker "of" is built into the Irish noun
fáidheadóireachda which is in the genitive case. What I would stress, though, is that while
na is the plural of
an when used with masculine nouns, this is not strictly true when used with feminine nouns. With feminine nouns
an is the nominative singular form of the article, and
na is both the genitive singular form, and the plural form. What you have here with
na fáidheadóireachda is a singular definite article preceding a feminine noun in the genitive case, "of the prophesy". See
The Grammar Wizard on teanglann.ie for more.