that's right, and actually it's not only at the end of words, it's because even in the middle of a word, a (theorically) slender r is broad before a slender d, t, l, n - it would be a bit difficult to pronounce a real slender r in these contexts.

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

Good to know I was on the right track.

Any extra help like that is always appreciated.

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

If you want to upload some soundfiles to the ILF server, just e-mail them to me at bw1(a)awyr.com and I'll send you a URL to quote in your posts.

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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 finished going through Lesson 1. Did anyone else make a start on this yet?

There's a lot of things covered in this lesson: the basic sentence structure, the articles an/na (the), some of the noun declensions.

I never liked grouping nouns into declensions. There's so many exceptions that it just seems easier to learn each noun individually. And if I stopped to think about what declension a noun falls into, I'd probably never get a chance to finish the sentence.

Most of the nouns listed in the lesson are fairly common words that I would put into the plural and genitive out of habit, without needing to know which group they are in. The one that tripped me up was scian (knife). I would have said sciana for the plural, but the book gives sceana (knives). Is sceana pronounced "shkana"?

Another thing I was wondering about: why are the the doors "dúnta" (closed) but the windows "ar oscailt" (open)? Why not "oscailte"?

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

It's just of those funny things about language.

Ar oscailt is a state. Oscailte is the result of an action. They overlap but aren't always the same thing.

Ask yourself also: 'Why do we usually use "the windows are open" in English instead of "the windows are opened" ?' (Well, actually we _can_ say "the windows are opened", but more in a "the windows are opened every morning and closed every evening" sort of way. In English you should be able to make a similar distinction for "close" versus "closed" but "close" has several other meanings that prevent that symmetry from happening.)

Not sure why the Irish lost that symmetry. Was there ever an idiom ar dhúnadh, I wonder?

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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).

Go raibh maith agat, a Bhreandáin. Tá an cheist ar dhúnadh anois.

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

Older authors like Peadar Ua Laoghaire use the "ar + verbal noun" idiom more than I think would be the case today.
The distinction is as Breandán said, in my experience. The verbal adjective describes a state resulting from an action, where as "ar + verbal noun" is just a state.

Tá sé crochta = He is "hanged"/He has been hung.
Tá an mealbhóg ar crochadh i n-aice an dorais = The bag is hanging beside the door.

It should be noted that "ar" does not lenite in this case. However I don't think the idiom applied to any verb, but only verbs where their states were "inactive". For instance a bag can be hanging "ar crochadh" or window open "ar oscailt" as a passive fact, if you get my meaning. However a door closing wouldn't be "ar dúnadh" since it involves an action. It can't just sit there being "closing", like a window can sit there being "open".

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Yeah, I went through it again.


I think it's useful to know the declensions in the sense that they describe all the possible ways a noun can be declined.

In general I find that the trickiest nouns are ones that turn out to be in the third declension (genitive = broaden + a), even though they look like they belong to one of the first two declensions. For example móin, looks like a typical female noun, which you'd guess would have the genitive "*móine", but it's actually "móna". (Of course in this particular case I would have already known from Bord na Móna.)

Also there are loads of odd nouns that just don't follow any of the declensions and declension five is a myth, really a collection of several other declensions. In my own notes, I usually follow the fifteen declensions (It's not as bad as it sounds ) Ó Sé gives in "An teanga bheo: Corca Dhuibhne". Other wise words like "olann" would really confuse you.

An olann
Dath na h-ola.

As a native speaker from Corca Dhuibhne said to me though, how many declensions you say there are really depends on what you consider obvious from the pronunciation rules.

For instance Gaillimh becomes Gaillí, which seems odd. However you could say this is just a typical second declension word:

Gaillimh -> Gaillimhe -> imhe = í (in Munster when the i is stressed) -> Gaillí


Yeah, that's how its pronounced in Cork anyway and it's still the plural.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Ok, I'm on lesson 2 now, the regular verbs. This one is fairly straightforward so I don't have any questions about it. Really, I'm just bumping the thread to see if anyone else is still going ahead with this.

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

yep, I am!

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Please wait for corrections/ more input from other forum members before acting on advice