Hi everybody,

As some of you might have seen in my listening comprehension thread, I'm preoccupied with English words in Ros na Rún at the moment.

I now came across an adaptation of an English phrase that seems strange to me:

Níl mé gléasta sofeiliúnach le gabh le cruiseáil an talent i nGaillimh.

My impression is that you couldn't put it this way in Irish, that you'd rather say "le gabh leis an talent a chruiseáil" or something like that.
What do you think? Does any of these sentences feel right? Or is there a third construction that you'd prefer?

Níl mé gléasta sofeiliúnach le gabh le cruiseáil an talent i nGaillimh.
I think what you might have here is:
Níl mé gléasta sách feiliúnach le gabháil ag crúiseáil an talent i nGaillimh

the ag being joined to the word gabháil and the g silent as is often done in this dialect.

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Bí cinnte de go nglacfaidh triúr le gach aistriúchán a thabharfar.
Be sure to get three in agreement with a translation given.

Well, it would have to be the verbal noun form 'gabháil'. You could say "..le gabháil leis an talent a chrúiseáil."
(Chaith mé deireadh seachtaine i nGaillimh thart fá 20 bliain ó shin. Talent ní fhaca mé.)

I'd say Braoin has it right:

Oh my God, that never even occured to me.
That makes perfect sense. Go raibh míle maith agaoibh!

For some reason I thought 'gabh' was the form of the verbal noun as well.


B'fhéidir go bhfuil sé ann sa lá atá inniu ann?

Isn't the g of gabháil lenited after "le"? In Donegal, "bheith", "theacht" and "ghabháil" are always lenited except after "ag"... I thought it was the same in Connemara

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

..it sounds like 'le ghoil'...

I'd say you're right there about the buailte but for the life of me I can't say if we should actually write a 'h' - even though it is said all right... ??

I have often heard 'le teacht' and 'le goil (gabháil)' without the buailte, though.

I will have to bow to those with better hearing than mine for this one...

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Bí cinnte de go nglacfaidh triúr le gach aistriúchán a thabharfar.
Be sure to get three in agreement with a translation given.

why not since it's what Gaeltacht speakers say? In the Donegal pre-CO literature, you'd find "a theacht" and "a ghabháil" everytime...
Btw in the CO they always write "dul" even though they are from Ulster or Connachta, and they teach it and it's damaging the real language and dumbing it down.
"Dul" is very minoritary among native speakers so why should everybody use it instead of the most common form which is "g(h)abháil"?



"le teacht" to say "in order to come"? Because "le teacht" is normal when you say "with the coming of..." (le teacht an tsamhraidh srl)

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

Hi again,

I need to get back here, because I got confused with the different constructions again.

How do you know whether to put the object in front of the verbal noun or put it in the genitive case after the verbal noun? What's the determining factor? As far as I know pronouns always precede the verbal noun. But what about lexically filled objects? Is it because of the "ag" that the object follows the verbal noun? Does it have to do with objects vs. adjuncts?
Or am I mixing up lots of different things? :confused:

I know the Caighdeán has reasonably complicated rules for when you use the genitive after verbal nouns, but I honestly don't know them (the rules are simpler in spoken dialectal Irish).

However the reason that you use the genitive is pretty straightforward. I'll just take one example:

Remember that verbal nouns are nouns. Most of them can be used as just a noun in a sentence (with no "verbal" meaning). For example, from a book on Munster folk tales:

Do thugas fé ndeara déanamh na bróige sin I noticed the make of that shoe.

So here we see déanamh being used as a normal noun meaning a make.

So, if we take the sentence:

Táim ag ullmhú an dinnéir

What you are actually saying is:
I am at the dinner's preparation.

ag ullmhú literally means at (a) preparation, not preparing.

Hence you have to say whose/what's preperation you are "at".

Now let's say you wished to say, He is pulling me. You would have to say:
He is at my pulling.

And we see the Irish is (the am' and tarrang can have a different form in different dialects):

Tá sé am' tharrang = He is at my pulling.

I hope that makes some kind of sense!

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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

That makes perfect sense and I understand every word of what you're saying. But I still wonder in which cases the object precedes the verbal noun (with 'a' as a connection) rather than follow it.

To use your example: In which grammatical context would you get a construction like '....an bhróg sin a dhéanamh'?
My intuition says it's when a whole sentence is used as a complement of, say, an adjective: 'Bhí sé deacair an bhróg sin a dhéanamh.' Is that right?

Your tarrang-example is another construction that is troubling me.
If I understand you correctly, one should always imagine the English translation to be a noun. Hence the person the action is done to (grammatically the patient) has to be expressed with the use of the possessive pronoun.
Now, one of my examples is: 'Níl sé féaráilte mé a teaseáil mar seo.' (teaseáil being derived from the English tease)
Would you say that is ungrammatical in Irish? Would it have to be 'Níl sé féaráilte bheith ag/do/? mo teaseáil.'? Or is mé okay because there is no ag-construction?

BTW, I don't care much for the Caighdeán here, anything that people would say in any dialect is good for me.