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Actually, it should have been "is ? an focal n? ...".

Sorry, I should have been more precice. Here, "an" is the copula (the copula has different forms for tense and mood). So it goes like this:
Is leabhar ?. ~ "It is a book."
An leabhar ?? ~ "Is is a book?"
N? leabhar ?. ~ "It is not a book."
All "is, an, n?" are just different forms of the copula. Above, they are in present/future tense, indicative mood, interogative mood and negative mood respectively.


WHOOPS! Sorry, that was meant to be "? foghlaim" with NO s?imhi?. I'll try to explain:


Take the sentence- "T? m? ag foghlaim Gaeilge". Nothing out of the ordinary here. This means "I am learning Irish".

Now. If you want to say "I am learning it", and want to use a pronoun instead of "Irish", you might come up with this:
"*T? m? ag foghlaim ?."
However, in Irish the "ag" and "?" merge into one, to become: "?". This comes before the verbal noun:
"T? m? ? foghlaim."
The verbal noun must agree with the "?" (nothing strange), so if it's a feminine noun (Gaeilge) that you're replacing, there's NO s?imhi? on "foghlaim".

However, for "T? m? ag foghlaim B?arla", it'd be:
"T? m? ? fhoghlaim."

And for plurals, "T? m? ag foghlaim Gaeilge agus B?arla":
"T? m? a bhfoghlaim."


Compare these to regular possession:
his shoe --> a bhr?g
her shoe --> a br?g
their shoe --> a mbr?g

And vowel-initials:
his song --> a amhr?n
her song --> a hamhr?n
their song --> a n-amhr?n



To be honest, they're probably dialectal variations, depending on what sourses you're using.

<hr>

If you feel like doing some excersises on the above, try to translate:

EX:
0-- "T? m? ag ?l tae" --> "I am drinking it (masc.)"
T? m? ? ?l

1-- "T? m? ag l?amh leabhair" --> "I am reading it (masc.)"
2-- "T? m? ag buaileadh S?le" --> "I am hitting her (masc.)"
3-- "T? m? ag canadh amhr?in" --> "I am singing it (masc.)"
4-- "T? m? ag ithe sceall?ga" --> "I am eating them (pl.)"
5-- "T? m? ag p?inte?il an bhalla" --> "I am painting it (masc.)"
6-- "T? m? ag mar? na lacha" --> "I am killing it (fem.)"
7-- "T? m? ag scr?obh na litreach" --> "I am writing it (fem.)"
8-- "T? m? ag oscailt na gc?fra?" --> "I am opening them (pl.)"

Vocabulary:
an leabhar -- the book
an t-amhr?n -- the song
na sceall?ga -- the chips
an balla -- the wall
an lacha -- the duck
an litir -- the letter
na c?fra? -- the drawers
(note that these are in the Genitive Case in the above, something for an entirely different lesson altogether!)

<hr>

I hope that helped clear some things up for you!

I don't understand.

T? m? ? foghlaim.
The ? and the a merge? But why?


? and ag to me become aici, not ?, but then that means something else (at her).

1. T? m? ag l?amh ?
2. T? m? ? buaileadh (or ?, but S?le is fem.)
3. T? m? ag canadh ?
4. T? m? af ithe iad
5. T? m? ag p?inte?il ?
6. T? m? ag mar? ? / T? m? ? mar?
7. T? m? ? scr?obh
8. T? m? ag oscailt iad

I don't understand. Is it because it's dative? And how is this dative? Because ag governs dative?

I have alot to understand about Dative.

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Nokinen poika

Ok, I clearly didn't explain very well. I do that a lot!

As for why the "?" and "ag" merge - that's just a quirk of the language.


As I'm off to bed now, I'll just give the answers here; I'll reply more tomorrow:

1. T? m? ? l?amh. (No change on l?amh, it can't lenite.)
2. T? m? ? buaileadh. (No change on buaileadh because S?le is FEM.)
3. T? m? ? chanadh. (S?imhi?, because amhr?n is MASC)
4. T? m? ? n-ithe. (ur?, because sceall?ga is PLURAL)
5. T? m? ? ph?inte?il.
6. T? m? ? mar?.
7. T? m? ? scr?obh
8. T? m? ? n-oscailt.


It will help if you remember that the "ag X" forms are really nouns. "Buaileadh" is a noun from the verb "buail". They're called verbal nouns.

(More tomorrow)


EDIT:
It isn't Dative; it's accusative. The deleted nouns, replaced with pronouns, were all Direct Objects of the verb.

Oh! A literal translation of "T? m? ? mar?", for example, would be:
"I am at_her killing".
Does that make sense? Becuase it is "her" killing (i.e. the killing belongs to her), you mark the noun (this time it's a verbal noun, but that's still a noun) as you would any other possession.




[Caveat: I've realised that my teaching skills suck; apologies]

Yes. I understand alot that you say. You don't have to explain all those things to me... Just that I hadn't gotten very well that "ag+pronoun = ?".

Are there other prepositions whihc merge like that? Like ar?

The nouns are in genitive though? Because if a noun takes lenition and is masculine, then it's genitive, no?

T? s? ? foghlaim - he's learning it (it=fem)
T? s? ? dh?anamh - he's making it (it=masc)

Wouldn't it?
And also plural take ?r?, but I don't know if that is anything genitive (it seems to right in nominative.)

But now I understand!

T? m? ? bhfoghlaim, na rialacha seo!

(By the way, how would it be if I wanted to say "na rialacha "damned" seo"?)

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Nokinen poika

I'm really confused too. I learned (in the Donagle gaeltacht) that ag + ? = aici. Acoording to the Christian borthers, it's from do + a, though ag + a makes more sense. But ag + ? > ? makes no sense to me at all.... unless it got normalized.

N?l m? ag r? nach bhfuil t? go m?cheart...

Isn't there one negation too many here?

Shouldn't it be: N?l m? ag r? nach bhfuil ceart agat.

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Nokinen poika

Maybe I can help, since this seems very similar to how Welsh works.

If I were to translate T? s? ? foghlaim into Welsh, it would come out something like Mae e'n ei dysgu. As with Irish, the basic structure is: be + link particle + verbal noun. A pronominal subject comes between the conjugated verb and the particle; the pronominal object comes between the particle and the verb.

But because of the nominal nature of the verbal noun, the object actually appears as a possessive. That is, a too-literal rendering would be something like "Is he in her learning", i.e. "the learning of her". In Welsh, the third-person possessive is always /i/, although spelled ei (in the singular) or eu (in the plural). What distinguishes the persons are the mutations: soft (masculine singular), aspirate (feminine singular), or none (plural).

Irish seems to work basically the same way, although differing in details: The possessive is always /a/. IIRC, the masculine singular takes aspiration, the feminine singular none, and the plural eclipsis. So the contraction isn't really ag + ?, it's ag + a!

Again, there's a parallel in Welsh. When ei/eu comes after the preposition i, they contract to i'w. So "He's ready to learn it [f.]" is Mae e'n barod i'w dysgu. Note that this is completely different from the conjugated forms of i, which would be iddo (fe) "to/for him", iddi (hi) "to/for her", and iddyn nhw "to/for them".

Again compare:

Dw i'n ei dysgu "I'm learning it [f.]"
Dw i'n ei ddysgu "I'm learning it [m.]"
Dw i'n barod i'w dysgu "I'm ready to learn it [f.]"
Dw i'n barod i'w ddysgu "I'm ready to learn it [m.]"
Dw i'n barod iddi hi "I'm ready for it [f.]"
Dw'in barod iddo fe "I'm ready for it [m.]"

Thus, I would say that ? is a contraction of ag + a (cf. Welsh i'w). Historically, aici might derive from a contraction of ag + ?, but it's probably best to think of it just as a conjugated preposition (cf. Welsh iddi).

Thank you thank you thank you linguoboy! Silly me, it's "ag + a", and then the "a" triggers the mutation. Thank you! It's hard to know how various morphosyntactical things work when you've learnt them passively, although I know that that's no excuse. And for all you Irish learners, this mistake is really common, the use of "T? m? ag foghlaim ?" as opposed to "T? m? ? fhoghlaim".

Again: thank you linguoboy!

Glad I could be of service.

Now maybe you can help me understand something: Last night, I broke down and pulled out ? Siadhail's Learning Irish to see how he explains verb-noun objects. According to him, the periphrastic present is formed with do [pronounced /g@/] + verb-noun, not ag.

WTF? I know he's teaching a particular Kerry accent, but /g/ for /d/ still seems pretty extreme. Could it be that /ag/ is really the underlying form? He claims to be using the standardised written language throughout. So what gives? Is ag vs. do another example of dialect variation? Are both acceptable in Standard Irish?

Sorry - I realise this is soomewhat off topic - but several people have mentioned scottish gaelic, and I was wondering if there were any scottish gaelic speakers on the board? Tis a language I would really like to learn, but I've never found anyone who speaks it...

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I don't have my copy of the book with me ATM, could you give me an example? And the dialect he's teaching is Cois Fharraige, which is in Conemara (Galway/Mayo).

Neither do I, unfortunately. Here's an example from the site Egein linked to:

T? t? d?r (i.e. do + ?r) mbualadh = You are hitting us.

(IIRC, in Cois Fhairrge, the d?r is pronounced [Ga].)

That's got to be the part that gets me most lost when looking at Irish. All of those 'little' particles bouncing around just confuse me. I can handle as many affixes jammed on to things as you like, but having so many tiny words flitting about in a sentence disorients me horribly.



Sadly, no. A few people here seem to have parcels of knowleding about the tongue, but we'ven't any speakers, native or otherwise. All we've got is an Irish guy and a Welshman.

Oh, in case you were going to inquire, the language in my current signature banner is Manx (Gailck), which I have an interest in, but do not speak.

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"Great men are almost always bad men."
~Lord John Dalberg Acton

If you're talking about do and it's variations being pronounced as [Go] or [go], it's just a dialectal variation. Some dialects lenite these, and can sometimes be seen in writing.

If you're asking why "do" is used instead of "ag" in some places, it's becuase the direct object is a (non 3rd person) pronoun. So you'd have things like:
T? siad do mo bhuaileadh.
T? siad do do bhuaileadh. (T? siad dod' bhuaileadh.)
T? siad d?r mbuaileadh.
T? siad do bhur mbuaileadh.

Can you ever use do in place of ag when there's no direct object, even dialectally?

Such as "T? m? do chaint" instead of "T? m? ag caint"? No. Not even dialectally.

I have a question!

The acute mark. It appears to be called a 'fada'. However, I've fairly certain my mother pronounces it /fQD@/ (or something that to my english ears sounds like that - Q, not a, and D, not d. Now, a-->Q doesn't seem impossible but why on earth a D? HAve you heard anything like that?

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Blog: http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

I haven't heard people use [D] for /d/; what dialect does your mother have? And [Q] for /a/ also sounds weird to me for that matter. Actually, when saying things like "a fada" (a-acute), it comes out more like ["a.fa_0.d@].

Her dialect is a "father from dublin (grandfather from Belfast), mother from Kerry, but learnt Irish in school in Waterford, can't really "speak" irish any more but remembers words, phrases and pronunciation, and probably would remember how to speak it if she were listening to other speakers" dialect. So I'm really not expecting standard-ness.

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Blog: http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

I have my own question.

I seem to be pronounciting duine and daoine nearly the saye way!

Duine and Daoine.

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Nokinen poika

I've heard something that sounded (to my English ears) like [D] in RTE pronunciations of Garda.

As for the vowel, some descriptions do seem to suggest that /a/ between two broad consonants can sound like the vowel of English hot, for example on http://www.fiosfeasa.com/bearla/language/gutai.htm . However, in the recordings linked from that page I hear the broad allophones as [a] (like hat IMD) and the slender allophones as more like [{]. So I don't know which dialect of English they're talking about - theirs, or some American one?

On the subject of how fada sounds to English speakers, a Scottish mountain called Beinn Fhada is sometimes Anglicised as "Ben Attow".

Would it help if I did a recording of myself saying the different vowels in my own dialect (and in a more "Irish" (read: country) dialect too if you like), and in broad and slender settings?

And I'll do one of "duine" vs "daoine" too.

Go deimhin a chuideodh s?!
(?)

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Nokinen poika

Isn't the difference simply vowel length, i.e. /i/ vs. /i:/? (I mean, unless you're some crazy Ulsterman...)