Is it "ag foghlaim an pianó agus an fheadóg stáin" or "ag...... na feadóge stáin"? It says this in "pota focal".
E.G.

"Ag múineadh na feadóige stáin"
Maybe because it follows the verb directly and in my sentence it does not.

I wonder which is right for my 1st sentence. Thanks

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{Is geal leis an bhfiach dubh a ghearrcach féin}

My personal opinion is you should use the genitive:
an pHianó agus na feadóige stáin

The genitive technically cannot be wrong in any genitive instances, because it is only a tendency for the genitive to be used less in colloquial speech - if you go back far enough this was never done.

There is a theory that if the noun is qualified you shouldn't use the genitive. I think this is because of the clunkiness that can result.

There is also a theory that you can't have two genitives side by side (a concatenation of genitives), but this is a made-up rule that corresponds to most modern speech, but doesn't match all Gaeltacht literature.

I think you will have to wait for Lars to reply, and he will tell you what is recommended.

or

... ag foghlaim an pianó agus an fheadóg stáin a sheinm
... á fhoghlaim an pianó agus an fheadóg stáin a sheinm

Labhrás, how would you feel about putting conas in there:

ag foghlaim conas an pianó agus an fheadóg stáin a sheinnt? (sheinm, sheinnim, sheinnt)

á fhoghlaim - seems like it is proleptic (learning it, ie. the it equals how to play instruments), but I don't see the need for prolepsis here.

You could argue that the genitive "an phianó" is odd - as everyone knows this word is a borrowing from piano in English, and should have a p.

Usually, interrogatives ("c-words" like cad, céard, cé, cathain, etc.) can only be used in direct/indirect questions.
They aren’t used as relative pronouns (as they are often in English or German)
You can’t say: D’fhoghlaim mé cad a dhéanamh / I learned what to do.

Conas seems to be an exception to this rule.
You can say D’fhoghlaim mé conas an pianó a sheinm. It is used so very often (and even PUL did it )
Either it isn't really an exception and indirect questions with conas just have a much wider range of occurences (and so even following verbs like foghlaim) than indirect questions with cad , or it is a now common anglicism.



It isn’t necessary but at least possible with most verbs.
However, I learned in "Ceart na Gaedhilge" that some verbs don’t allow it: féachaint, leogaint, tathant



No, masculine nouns should be lenited after genitive article.
(Many, if not all, nouns with initial p- are borrowings. But leniton of p - ph has been common since Old Irish.)

Well words like Pharao used in PUL's Bible are static, always lenited. FGB has faró, with an fharó in the genitive, but with no likelihood that the word is found frequently enough in speech to really claim that "an fharó" is a Gaeltacht form. I expect you're right and that pianó has been accepted as a normal word in Irish unlike Pharao. What I meant above was that it is possible in Irish to use a sprinkling of English words, and you could have an Irish sentence with the English word "piano" thrown in there, without even pretending it's "pianó".