Dia daoibh!

Something that a lot of learners struggle with in Irish is when to translate "is/am/are" as "tá" and when to use "is".

Tá is a form of the verb bí in the present tense so anything I say about it applies to all of its forms. Is is something called the "copula" and again what I say about it applies to its other forms.

So for example you would say "Tá mé go maith" for "I am good" but you would say "Is múinteoir mé" for "I am a teacher". This kind of gets across the most basic rule which is that you use is when you're linking together nouns or pronouns:

Is múinteoir é - He's a teacher

Is múinteoir maith é - He's a good teacher

Is múinteoir é an príomhoide - The principal is a teacher

Is mise an múinteoir - I am the teacher

Is é an múinteoir é - He is the teacher

You can probably see above that the syntax can be a little bit complex there, the words aren't always in the same order as english and the structure can change depending on things being definite ("the teacher") or indefinite ("a teacher"). But I won't go into the details of that in this post.

Whereas you can use tá for other things, but not for linking nouns or pronouns together.

Tá sé anseo - He is here (adverb)

Tá sé go maith - He is good (adverb, kind of adjective)

Tá sé ard - He is tall (adjective)

Tá sé ar an mbord - He is on the table (preposition)

Something to note is that you can use the copula 'is' to link nouns and adjectives and nouns/pronouns like you can with tá, but it's less common and is more used for emphasis these days.

Is mór an fear - The man is big

Is láidir na mná - The women are strong

Or in another but more common structure

Is mór an fear é - He is a big man

Is láidir an bhean í - She's a strong woman

These two words look and sound quite similar and they're both negative so it's easy to mess them up. But what's the difference?

Níl

Is only one thing, it is the negative form of tá, if it would make sense to use tá in this place, you should be using níl.

Tá carr agam - I have a car Níl carr agam - I don't have a car An bhfuil tú anseo - Are you here? Níl tú anseo - You're not here

Níl actually comes from Ní fhuil, which is easier to recognise as being related to an bhfuil.

Ní

There's two uses for this word, one is the negative particle you use before verbs, as seen above with ní fhuil, which of course gets contracted to níl, but you see it with all other verbs as well.

Ní dhéanfaidh mé é - I won't do it Ní thuigim - I don't understand

The other use for this word is as the negative form of the copula. This is when it's used on its own without a verb, and you should refer to my tá vs is post to know when to use this rather than níl.

Bhuel, dheineas é.

Fós ag imirt Minecraft as Gaelainn, thá an t-eagrán so ciúin a dhóthain, ach beidh an chéad chomharsa sa chéad cheann eile!

(This is the workings of a script for a youtube video, so if you have any questions or there's anything that's not clear to you, please let me know!!)

This lesson is going to cover a lot of the most basic and fundamental elements of Irish sentence structure, I think a lot of you will know this already but I want to set a good foundation so that we can build into the more advanced stuff.

So the first thing you need to know is that Irish is a Verb-Subject-Object or VSO language. That defines the order that words are placed in a sentence. In english it's Subject-Verb-Object for example "Finn ate a salmon". Finn is the subject, the 'doer', 'ate' is the verb i.e. the action, and 'salmon' is the object, the thing that the action is done to.

In Irish this is structured as "D'ith fionn bradán" - [Ate] [Finn] [a Salmon].

Some other examples:

"Finn killed the giant" is "Mharaigh Fionn an fathach" - [Killed] [Finn] [The giant].

"Niamh hears Oisín" is "Cloiseann Niamh Oisín" - [Hears] [Niamh] [Oisín].

Overall this is pretty simple, the verb is just moved to the start of the sentence compared to english.

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The order is similar for 'bí' - the verb 'to be', where the verb is at the start.

Finn is strong - Tá Fionn láidir [Is] [Finn] [strong]

The predicate here - the part that describes the subject can be an adjective like that or

an adverb, Tá Fionn ann - Finn is there

or a prepositional phrase, Tá fionn sa chaisleán - Finn is in the castle (the preposition here is sa, meaning 'in the')

BUT - ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN THIS VIDEO, GRAB YOUR NOTEBOOK AND WRITE THIS DOWN - The describing part at the end cannot be another noun, if you want to say things like "Fionn is a hero" or "she is my mother" you use a different structure, which we'll talk about in the next lesson.

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So in english we have a few different ways of indicating questions, sometimes we swap the words, e.g. "Finn is strong" becomes "Is finn strong?", or we can use "do" at the start "You see it" becomes "Do you see it?"

In Irish it's pretty straightforward, we just add what's called a particle before the verb.

"Mharaigh fionn an fathach" becomes "Ar mharaigh fionn an fathach?"

"Cloiseann Niamh Oisín" becomes "An gcloiseann Niamh Oisín?"

Ar is the question particle for regular verbs past tense, and an is used for the other tenses plus a few irregular verbs in the past.

Some irregular verbs have different forms that come out after these verbal particles called "dependent" forms. For example "Tá Fionn láidir" becomes "An bhfuil fionn láidir?" fuil is the dependent form

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There's a similar particle to make things negative, "ní" and "níor" Same pattern here, níor is for regular verbs in the past tense and ní is for every other tense and some irregulars in the past.

Cloiseann Niamh Oisín becomes "Ní chloiseann Niamh Oisín"

Mharaigh Fionn an fathach becomes "Níor mharaigh Fionn an fathach"

Here's one that people sometimes get caught out on:

"Tá fionn láidir" becomes "Níl fionn láidir"

Níl comes from ní fhuil - fuil being the dependent form that we mentioned earlier, since fh is silent.

People sometimes get confused between níl and ní, but remember that níl is the negative form of the verb tá. Whereas ní is the verbal particle that you use to negate other verbs.

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There's also the negative question particles, ná and nár. (You have nach instead of ná in the standard.) So "Ná fuil fionn láidir" - "Isn't Finn strong?"

I hope this isn't too confusing because we're going to move on to the last part of this lesson which is a little bit trickier.

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If we want to express an idea like "Finn thinks that he's strong" how would we do that?

There's another particle for this go / gur which we use like the english that to join the two parts of the sentence.

Ceapann Fionn go bhfuil sé láidir - Finn thinks that he's strong.

Dúirt Niamh go raibh Oisín dathúil - Niamh said that Oisín was handsome.

Something that people sometimes get tripped up by here, is that in english we're allowed to drop the word 'that' from these kinds of sentences. So I can say "Finn thinks he's strong", but in Irish you can't remove the go like that, you have to keep it in.

If we want to do this kind of joining with a negative phrase we can actually just reuse ná / nár.

For whatever reason, teachers and students alike hype up the conditional in Irish as if it's the most difficult thing you'll cover in Irish grammar, I promise it's not.

What is the Modh Coinníollach?

The modh coinníollach is the conditional mood, it is essentially used whenever we would use "would" in English. So it mostly deals with hypotheticals.

How do you form it?

The conditional stems are always the same as the future, which means that there are no verbs which are specifically irregular in the conditional. You just take your future stem, lenite it (séimhiú) and add d' if it starts with a vowel, and you add on the appropriate ending.

For a one syllable verb (one which takes -f(a)idh in the future) you add

-f(a)inn -f(e)á -f(e)adh sé/sí -f(a)imis -f(e)adh sibh -f(a)idís

For a two syllable verb (one which takes -(e)óidh* in the future) you add

-(e)óinn -(e)ófá -(e)ódh sé/sí -(e)óimis -(e)ódh sibh -(e)óidís *I'm writing e(ó) for the sake of convenience but it's actually ó or eo.

You can even compress most of this rule into just "remove the -idh from the future form and then add the following endings":

-inn

-f(e)á -- Note here that the f is only put in if there isn't one already

-(a)dh sé/sí

-imis

-dh sibh

-idís

And that's it, that's all you need to know to form the conditional. Let's look at some examples

Déan (do)

future: déanfaidh

For the conditional we lenite the future stem (déanfa-), and then add the ending, so "I would do", the ending is "-inn" -> "dhéanfainn"

Ceannaigh (buy)

future: ceannóidh future stem: ceannó- "You would buy" - Cheannófá

Bí (be)

future: beidh future stem: be "I would be" - bheinn "he would be" - bheadh sé

Ól (drink)

future: ólfaidh future stem: ól I would drink - d'ólfainn they would drink - d'ólfaidís

The Catch

The only real difficult thing about the modh coinníollach for english speakers is remembering when to use it. This is because in english we often use past tense forms for hypotheticals "If I was rich I would do...", even though we're not talking about the past.

You just need to remember that for hypotheticals in Irish both verbs need to be in the conditional. And that you use dá for 'if' which eclipses.

If I was rich I would buy a house - Dá mbeinn saibhir cheannóinn teach.

If I drank wine I would be happy - Dá n-ólfainn fíon, bheinn sásta.

this ask is from january, sorry for the delay, I've just been pretty busy In terms of how to start in the states, I'd say look at the resources I've recommended in other posts tagged with #resources, the only thing that will be significantly different outside of ireland is less irish books in libraries, everything else I mention will be similarly accessible.

Choosing a Dialect

I'm of the opinion that you should choose a dialect when learning Irish for 2 reasons.

It helps you to be consistent with pronunciation, which varies a lot between dialects. If you pick one dialect you can check how that word is pronounced on a site like teanglann.ie and immediately know.

It's fun!! Standard Irish is kind of boring, and learning about dialects is a much better window into how Irish is actually spoken in native communities. There's so many interesting traits and features to learn about. Also it kind of fills that primal urge to join a team or a club (Gaelainn na Mumhan abú!)

In terms of how to pick, I think there's a few ways to go about it.

Pick based on the resources available to you. This is super reasonable, if you have a book that teaches connacht Irish and nothing else, maybe focus on connacht Irish.

Pick based on personal ties. Maybe your family comes from Kerry, or you grew up in Mayo, you can choose to learn a dialect based on that.

Pick based on what you like the best. You don't need a 'reason' to learn a specific dialect, listen to the major dialects and see if there's any you like the sound of. If you're a linguistic nerd see if any of the dialects have interesting traits to you. Pick whichever one has the best vibes.

Okay so during the last lesson I gave a big warning which I'll give again here, you cannot use tá to link two nouns directly, for phrases like "Fionn is a hero", instead you use "the copula" which is like a special verb with its own structures.

In the present tense the copula is "Is"

So "fionn is a hero" is "Is laoch Fionn" "Niamh is a princess" - "Is banphrionsa Niamh". "They are heroes" - "Is laochra iad" "I am a woman" - "Is bean mé"

The copula is really important to Irish, but it uses a few different structures which can make it one of the more challenging parts of the language.

The structure is different for "definite" nouns and "indefinite" nouns. Definite nouns are specific nouns, things like "the sword", "the swords", "my sword", "Fionn's sword". On the other hand, indefinite nouns are things like "a sword", "swords" not referring to a specific one/ones.

We saw the indefinite structure above. "Is [description] [subject]" "Is fear Fionn" - Fionn is a man. "Is fir sinn" - We are men. (You could use muid here too, but sinn is what's used in munster. "Is fear an rí" - The king is a man.

These are indefinite because the description is indefinite - "a man", "men" rather than "the man" or "the men".

Sometimes you'll see a pronoun before the subject, this is common but it doesn't change the meaning and isn't strictly necessary:

Is fear é Fionn - Finn is a man

Is banphrionsa í Niamh - Niamh is a princess

Is laochra iad Fionn agus Oisín - Finn and Oisín are heroes The pronoun should match the subject that follows it.

The copula has negative forms, and past tense forms etc.

Ba laoch Fionn = Finn was a hero

Ní laoch Fionn = Finn is not a hero

Deir sí gur laoch Fionn = She says that Finn is a hero

An laoch tú? = Are you a hero?

The copula does not have a future tense form, another structure is used in cases where that could come up which will be discussed in a later lesson.

Moving on to definite descriptions, if we want to say something like "Cormac is the king" we say "Is é Cormac an rí" OR "Is é an rí Cormac".

This first pronoun doesn't really convey any additional meaning but it is necessary in this structure. It should match the gender of the person if we're talking about a person, and otherwise it should match the noun that comes directly after it.

The general rule here regarding the order is that you put the new information first. So the first one is informing someone who the king is, and the second one is informing someone who Cormac is.

"Is í mo mháthair an ridire" - The knight is my mother

"Is é an ridire an rí" - The knight is the king

If the subject is a third person pronoun (he, she, they, it), then there will be two pronouns in the sentence

"Is é an gadaí é" - "He is the thief"

"Is í an bhanríon í" - "She is the queen"

Is iad na ridirí iad" - "They are the knights"

Deir sé gurb é an rí é - "He says he's the king"

(In some dialects the final pronoun is dropped, "is é an gadaí" but it's common to keep it in Munster)

If the subject is another pronoun (I, you, we, y'all), then the pronoun comes first and the emphatic form is used

Is mise an rí - I am the king

Is sibhse na ridirí - Y'all are the knights

An tusa an bhanríon? - are you the queen?

Homework

Here's some example sentences for you to try yourself, you can also put them in the comments if you'd like or if you have any questions, please give me those too

Cormac is a knight.

She is a thief.

Are they heroes?

They aren't heroes.

She says she's the queen.

Are you the king?

Are we heroes?