Irish Gaelic

From Metapedia

Here are some notes on Munster Irish, focusing on the Irish of the Muskerry barony in County Cork. This was the Irish of the early Gaelic Revival, and is closest to the literary tradition of earlier centuries. In the 1950s, the Irish government moved its partly artificial Official Standard towards the Irish of County Galway, which was seen immediately prior to that move as the least grammatically correct dialect. Munster Irish is the smallest of the three dialects of Irish Gaelic alive today, but is arguably the most conservative dialect that preserves the traditional grammar of the language largely intact.

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Irish is a VSO language: the verb comes first (followed by the subject and object). Also, Irish is highly inflected in the case of nouns and conjugated in the case of verbs. When conjugating verbs, some persons require the addition of a pronoun; for other persons (the first person singular and plural) the conjugated verb form suffices. Thus, in the table below, tú, sibh, sé, sí and siad mean "you singular", "you plural", "he", "she" and "they" respectively. The first person pronouns mé and sinn, meaning "I" and "we", are not required as the inflection of the verb shows the person.

The present tense of the verb táim, "to be".

Firstly, there are a number of ways of referring to Irish verbs in the absence of an infinitive in the Irish language. This verb could be called BÍ (the imperative), BHEITH (the verbal noun) or TÁIM (the first person singular). I am going to refer to it as TÁIM.

I am	táim
you s. are	tánn tú
he is	tá sé
she is	tá sí
we are	táimíd
you pl. are	tánn sibh
they are	táid siad

This is one of the two Irish equivalents of the English verb "to be". Táim is used with adjectives and adverbs to say what something is like or where something is. There is another verb, the copula, that is used to show identity. In other words, do not use this verb to link two nouns ("John is a teacher"); that would require the copula.

Examples of usage:

To describe something

Tá Seán mór: Seán is big/tall.

To give the location

Tá an madra anso: the dog is here.

To indicate possession

Tá teach ag Máire: Mary has a house.

[Note: in one of the few cases where Cork dialect diverges from historically correct Irish, there are a number of words where the dative is used for the nominative. Teach is one of these: in Cork the dative tigh is more widely used--tá tigh ag Máire--but teach is preferred as the nominative in Standard Irish and is accepted as correct all over Ireland.]

Another thing to note is that this verb should not be used on its own. If you want to say "God exists", you will need to add the adverb ann: Tá Dia ann. Ann is an empty word (meaning "there"), used to complete the sentence. So a sentence starting with tá an madra ("the dog is...") could be completed with beag ("small") or ann ("there") or sa bhaile ("at home"), but not left unfinished.

Note: the standard Irish 3rd person plural is tá siad, but táid siad is a more conservative form attested to in historical writings, but preserved only in Cork. Standard Irish also has a short i in the 1st person plural: táimid. But this short i is not found in any living dialect of Irish.

The negative form of the present tense of the verb táim, "to be".

The forms given above are the absolute forms. After certain particles, however, the dependent form of this verb is required. The stem of the dependent form of the verb táim is fuil-, ie, fuilim, fuilir, etc. However, further changes are also caused by many of the particles that require the use of the dependent form of the verb. Let us take the negative particle ní. This requires use of the dependent form, but also causes a consonant change known as lenition. Lenition will be discussed elsewhere in this document, but in the case of a verb beginning in f-, lenition softens this to fh-, a consonant combination that is unpronounced in Irish. So,

ní + fuil- becomes ní fhuil-, which is further contracted to níl-. The negative forms of the verb táim are therefore as follows:

I am not	nílim
you s. are not	nílir
he is not	níl sé
she is not	níl sí
we are not	nílimíd
you pl. are not	níleann sibh
they are not	nílid siad

It can be noted that the second person singular form nílir is not an exact parallel to the positive form, tánn tú. In fact, the forms níleann tú and táir do exist too, but monosyllabic verbs tend to avoid the -ir endings in the second person singular. Let us see some of these forms in real sentences:

Nílid siad anso: they are not here. Níl sé mór: it is not big.

The interrogative form of the present tense of the verb táim, "to be".

The use of the interrogative particle an, by contrast, causes a consonant mutation that will be discussed elsewhere called eclipsis. In this case, a dependent verb form beginning in f- is altered to bhf-. The idea behind eclipsis is that the original consonant is eclipsed, ie the f is eclipsed by the bh, which alone is pronounced, and the bh is pronounced similar to a v or a w in English. The interrogative form of the verb táim is therefore as follows:

am I?	an bhfuilim?
are you s.?	an bhfuilir?
is he?	an bhfuil sé?
is she?	an bhfuil sí?
are we?	an bhfuilimíd?
are you pl.?	an bhfuileann sibh?
are they?	an bhfuilid siad?

An bhfuil sí anso? Tá. An bhfuileann sibh sásta? Nílimíd. (sásta means "happy, satisfied")

The negative interrogative form of the present tense of the verb táim, "to be".

A further particle is ná, the negative interrogative particle, which requires the dependent form of the verb, but does not cause any consonant mutations. See the following table.

am I not? aren't I?	ná fuilim?
aren't you s.?	ná fuilir?
isn't he?	ná fuil sé?
isn't she?	ná fuil sí?
aren't we?	ná fuilimíd?
aren't you pl.?	ná fuileann sibh?
aren't they?	ná fuilid siad?

Ná fuilir compordach? (aren't you comfortable?) Ná fuilid siad ansan? (aren't they there?)

To recap, the verb táim has a dependent form fuilim, producing a number of forms in conjunction with particles including: táim, I am; nílim, I am not; an bhfuilim?, am I?; and ná fuilim?, aren't I?