Ok, so my grammar book is stating that you must eclipse the dependent forms of verbs after cá. Anyhow the verb tóg doesn't have a dependent form but can someone confirm for me if I am doing this correctly with the past habitual tense? "Cá dtógtá cith?" means "Where did you used to take a shower at?", right?

And "Cá mbíteá tú ag tógáil cith?" means "Where were you taking a shower at (habitually/on a regular basis)?", right? This is kinda the same thing but expressing it in a habitual progressive tense kind of way, right?

Much thanks in advance.

Hi, you are mostly right - that is how the eclipsis works. If the verb doesn't have a separate dependent form, you just eclipse the only form it has.

Verbal nouns take the genitive - so it is - ag tógáil ceatha [at least in the Standard - most of the dialects don't use the genitive religiously anymore]

I'm not sure I like the past habitual like that - and especially the progressive past habitual - because it has a very specific meaning of constantly being in the middle of doing something repeatedly in the past. Cá dtógtá cith? Is already habitual in the past - you used to repeatedly take a show there. To make it progressive as well - would mean "you used to repeatedly be in the middle of taking a shower there", like some Groundhog day where you were in a loop where you kept finding yourself back in the shower.

Also it is not bhíteá tú - just bhíteá

Cá háit go dtéitheá chun cith a thógaint ann?

Thanks, Patrick. I see what you mean about using the progressive tense like that. Was just curious because I have seen it online. Heh.

I guess I got a little confused with the verbal noun part because the grammar book I have claimed that direct.objects were placed after verbal nouns in the genitive case if they also had a definite artical but that just the accusatice/nominative form was used if they didn't. So "buying the house" versus "buying a house." But that isn't the case?

Asenion, this was recently discussed on the Daltaí forum. What you are referring to is when the object of the verbal noun is qualified by an adjective. Ag tógáil ceatha would take the genitive. But once additional adjectives are added into that, it turns the object of the verbal noun into a noun phrase that can stand on its own without been declined. The problem is the Gaeltacht use of the genitive is patchy to start with - and so if we only talk about Standard Irish rules here (but bear in mind the Gaeltacht usages are right too), the recommended pattern is as Carmanach recently put it on Daltaí:



You will notice that Gaelainne or Gaeilge, while being a genitive of the language name - performs an adjectival function, so the rules over "leabhair Ghaelainne" are the same here as for "leabhair mhaithe". I edited my quote from Carmanach - to comment in each line above why the choice was made.

Oh, I see. Thanks for the clarification. This helps a lot. The book did have an example with an adjective on it but it didn't go on further to say what should happen if an adjective and article wasn't present so I got confused. Sorry about not seeing the previous discussion. I'll give it a look. Much appreciated.

Carmanach's post did not cover all the 8 possibilities, so here they are:

buying a house: ag ceannach tí GEN
buying the house: ag ceannach an tí GEN

buying houses: ag ceannach tithe GEN
buying the houses: ag ceannach na dtithe GEN

buying a big house: ag ceannach tigh mór NOM
buying the big house: ag ceannach an tí mhóir GEN

buying big houses: ag ceannach tithe móra NOM
buying the big houses: ag ceannach na dtithe móra GEN

So it is only indefinite nouns qualified by an adjective this applies to - and you will find the genitive in older literature anyway. It's not wrong to say: ag ceannach tí mhóir, although some teachers may say it is wrong.

I think this sort of thing might be more important with 1st declension nouns. So because leabhair could be genitive singular or nominative plural, it makes sense to stick to the Standard rules, to avoid confusion. That doesn't really apply in the case of tí vs. tithe.

Another key point is that the more the object of the verbal noun seems to be a whole phrase, the less likely it is to be declined.

Ag déanamh a chuid bróg - "a chuid bróg" is a phrase
Ag bualadh gach fear (dá raibh ann) - where gach fear is a phrase (EDITED to say: it should be ag bualadh gach fir dá raibh ann, but you wouldn't raise eyebrows by dropping the genitive.)

And this phrase-noun principle overrides most other things in Irish - the more something is a whole phrase in itself, the more you can forget about trying to decline it.

Wow. This is cool. Thanks for spelling out all these possibilities. I'm going to start practicing these this week.

Just to clarify, you were saying that it should be "Ag bualadh gach fear" and not "ag bualadh gach fir" even with the "dá raibh ann" omitted?

No, not exactly, I just meant it was "less likely" to be used in circumstances where is should be used if the phrase seems independent. I mean - you can see it not used. And the longer the phrase, the more independent it feels.

It should be "ag bualadh gach fir", but the genitive is not used each time in the Gaeltacht, and so you have to get used to seeing it used and not seeing it used, without assuming it's a "mistake" if it's not.

If someone wrote: ag bualach gach fear - it would show that in his mind "gach fear" was being viewed as an independent phrase.

Also, it means that if you forget to use the genitive, or forget how to decline the genitive - it won't be a serious thing. Most of the time no one would notice because it is **one possibility** to leave it out even when it's meant to be there, especially when it's part of a phrase that could be viewed independently.

I know this sounds vague...

Ag déanamh gach aon rud - "gach aon rud" is in particular unlikely to be declined as "ruda".
Ag déanamh gach aon tsaghas ceartúcháin (or whatever) - "saghas" comes up so often that it has become frozen as "saghas". You don't say "ag déanamh gach aon tSAGHAIS..."