#irish101

Thank you!

Hi there!

It's definitely one of those things in Irish that can be tricky to get a handle on. Here's a good description of it:

Séimhiú (lenition) literally means "a softening" and involves adding the letter "h" after the first consonant in the word that is being changed. The séimhiú changes both the sound of the word and its spelling. Some examples of when a séimhiú is used with nouns include: ● after some possessive pronouns (e.g. mála (bag) > mo mhála (my bag)) ● with the definite article an (the) before a feminine noun (e.g. fuinneog (window) > an fhuinneog (the window)) ● after "a" in the vocative case, used when calling or addressing someone (e.g. Bríd (female name) > a Bhríd) [source]

Here's a more comprehension explanation on wikipedia which looks a bit scary but it will explain things more fully. Don't worry about not understanding/remembering everything! I'm a learner too and I certainly don't!

In your question you use deartháir (brother). So if you wanted to say my brother you would use mo dheartháir (my brother) because 'my' is possessive.

Real life example:

sráid = street caisleán = castle sráid an chaisleáin = castle street (lit. street of the castle).

Welcome back! Today we’re going to embark on a journey to read Irish! We’re going to start with looking over the letters and their qualities and then tomorrow, we’re going to get down a bit deeper on those rules. Reading Irish is what many people can get quite overwhelmed with and there are quite a few rules, but approaching it right from the start will hopefully make it seem a little less daunting! I hope you like today’s lesson. In Irish, we have the same letters as in English (minus the old font) - except for j, k, q, v, x, y, z (unless they’re borrowings)

One of the most important things to remember is that every consonant has two qualities, slender (caol) and broad (leathan).

These are determined by the vowel - a, o, u -> broad, e, i -> slender. Which is easy to remember as you have to ‘smile’ to pronounce the slender vowels. Which will then influence the consonant you’re saying with it. Compare - saying ‘cat’ ‘key’, notice how your mouth shape changes when you say these.

This comes in later in pronunciation rules.

Vowels, besides being markers of broad and slender, also have a little diacritics mark, an acute accent, if you will, called a fada. In general, it makes the vowel longer. Sometimes even to the point of creating a diphthong (a two-vowel sliding sound), especially in case of ó - which becomes an /oh/ sound and é - which ends up sounding like /ay/. There are also dipthongs and something you could call vowel clusters which create one sound, you will learn them as you go.

Have you noticed how Irish names are often going to be pronounced way differently than what they’re spelled?

Saoirse Sean Aisling 

-> click on the name to be taken to teanglann.ie, a super handy website where you can listen to the pronunciation - see the dialects we talked about yesterday?

Irish has quite different spelling rules from English. When you have learned these rules, you can read virtually anything. Remember the broad and slender rule? Some consonants change quite a bit when slender. For example s - look at Saoirse again and notice the different sounds with the letter S. We’re going to look at more of that tomorrow.

More info-dump! I also would like you to know that obviously, there’s no exam, there’s no pressure, you don’t need to know all the rules all at once, all by heart. You can refer to this post later on when you follow up with the lessons as well. In general, getting comfortable with reading Irish does take time. I am, however, a strong believer in learning with context and teaching the whole thing at once. I don’t want to look over every single letter, I want you to see how the letters come together to create words and maybe even go on a little journey to discover those combinations for yourself! Okay, here we go, How to read in Irish!!

First of all, pronunciation can be quite dialect-dependent. For dialects - I am trying to teach in the most dialect-neutral way I know. If you’re starting out fresh, you’re free to choose whichever dialect suits you the best or whichever you like the most! Of course, if you’ve already spent time learning a certain dialect, I would suggest you stick with it, but maybe it would also be interesting to learn some of the differences.  I would like you to look at this list of words and put them into teanglann.ie or focloir.ie and listen to their pronunciations. You should be able to hear some difference (some are bigger, some are quite small) between the two pronunciations of the same letter! (Just a note - I personally find that Ulster dialect makes a more prominent distinction there, so if you cannot hear it, try Ulster! Especially for t and d!) Bó (cow) - Bia (food) Cú (hound) - Ciúin (calm) Doras (door) - Deoch (drink) Fuar (cold) - Féach (look) Guta (vowel) - Giota (piece)  Halla (hall) - Hiopnóis (hypnosis) Lón (lunch) - Leithscéal (excuse) Mór (big) - Milseog (dessert) Nua (new) - Neart (strength) Post (post, job) - Pian (pain) Rollóg (small roll) - Riamh (before) Sean (old) - Sú (juice) Tóg (take) - Tirim (dry)

Next step: (only read once you’re comfortable with the sounds and the differences!) A handy rule to help you remember the spelling, especially when it comes to many vowels being next to each other and ‘which one you should read’ is caol le caol, leathan le leathan, meaning slender with slender, broad with broad. Which means that means that the vowels on either side of a consonant (or group of consonants) should agree; they should both be broad or both be slender. This rule should help you with more complicated words like Bealach (way) - you pronounce a slender B, influenced by the E and then follow with the As. Conspóideach (controversial) - Ó will have its way because of the fada. The I is only there because there is an E. After a slender -D-, you follow along with the now seemingly broad ending -ACH. 

Hope everyone’s doing alright today! I’d like to look at some basic sentence structure and grammar points. I’m going to try my best not to go too far linguistically and to utilise some of the phrases we’ve looked at already. I kind of struggled with how to present and convey everything, so feel free to ask follow-up questions. 

Irish follows a VSO (verb-subject-object) sentence structure. (Like other Celtic languages!) So verb has to come first! There are some exceptions, but for now, just remember, VERB comes FIRST! Let’s compare an example sentence to an English one. 

I read a book. I (pronoun - subject) read (verb - predicate) a (indefinite article) book (noun - object) Léim leabhar. (sounds a little awkward, but it’s grammatically correct and it will serve our explanation well) Léim (verb - predicate + pronoun included - subject) (Irish does not have an indefinite article, only definite) leabhar (noun - object). Note: This tense specifically (we’ll talk about tenses later) contracts the verb and pronoun together, but only in 1st person singular and 1st person plural (except for Ulster Irish) Let’s look at the phrase we know already: Tá mé go maith. (I am well, literally: is me well), this one is ‘the other’ present tense, so it’s not contracted, however, Munster Irish does contract Tá mé into táim. Tá (verb - predicate) mé (pronoun - subject) go (a particle used to change an adjective into an adverb) maith (adjective -... my syntax knowledge only goes so far… modifier? But pretty much an object) 

Important - if you’re confused about tá and is (as we saw in Is mise), just like in Spanish, Irish has two different forms of ‘to be’. The is - the copula, is mostly used for fixed and permanent statements. Tá - is used for all the other cases. One more grammatical point for today: Irish uses so-called mutations to express some grammatical properties. We’re going to look at one of the mutations tomorrow. They can be confusing, but in turn, Irish doesn’t have as many crazy inflections like some languages do! Pronouns: Mé        I Tú        You Sé (é)   He (him, used as Object) Sí (í)     She (her, used as Object)

Muid (more rarely now Sinn) We Sibh       You Siad (iad) They (them, used as Object) 

Today I’d like to look at numbers. Irish has quite a few counting systems. The numbers change slightly whether you’re counting people or years, which is fairly complicated, but today we’re only going to look at cardinal numbers 1-10, because today we’re taking it easy! 0 a náid 1 a haon 2 a dó

3 a trí

4 a ceathair

5 a cúig

6 a sé

7 a seacht

8 a hocht

9 a naoi

Today we’re going to look at some of the question words you are going to encounter while reading/speaking Irish. 

We already have looked at questions such as Cad é mar atá tú? Cé as tú? Conas atá tú? All these questions are pretty much the same as Wh- questions in English. There’s quite a few and this comprehensive list comes from: https://brianlambe.wordpress.com/irish-the-question-forms-ca-ce-cad-etc/ 1. Cá – where

Cá fhad – how long

2. Cad – what Cad a tharla ? - what happened? 

Cad as duit – where are you from

Cad chuige – For what, Why ?

Cad leis – with what ?                   

3. Céard – what - more dialect-specific to Munster

4. Cé hé Pádraig – who is Pádraig?

5. Cé acu – Which of them

6. Cé mhéad – how much, how many

7. Cén – which

8. Cén fáth – why 

Cén áit – where  ( which place )

Cén uair –  when  ( which time )

Cén chaoi -which way, how,   ‘Cén chaoi ina bhfuil tú ?

9. Conas – how