Éamonn Ó Dónaill - Irish Grammar You Really Need to Know: Teach Yourself

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Essential Irish Grammar

amonn Dnaill

To my parents and aunt Frances

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following people involved in the production of this book:

Sue Hart and Ginny Catmur at Hodder, for their support, kindness, and patience; Josephine Curtis for her excellent editing work; the readers, Risteard Mac Gabhann and Aodn Mac Piln, for their comments; Tok Thompson for his invaluable advice and insightful guidance; Vivienne Lavery for her encouragement; Liam Cuinneagin of Oideas Gael ( www.oideas-gael.com ) for his support over many years, particularly when I was trying to finish this book and finally my students, for trying out many of the exercises.

amonn Dnaill

Contents

Making requests

Personal introduction

Many people find the learning of grammar extremely daunting; in this book, therefore, an attempt has been made to explain the grammar of Irish in simple, jargon-free language and to present examples that are useful and reflect everyday usage. All the structures presented are illustrated with examples that are translated into English. It is probably worth making the glossary of grammatical terms your starting point, especially if you are unsure about terms such as noun, adjective, verb, etc.

On the contents page, the grammar covered in each unit is outlined. If you want to look up a particular grammar point, you can also consult the index at the back of the book.

The following procedure is suggested for working through each unit:

Read the section headed In this unit you will learn about , in order to get an overview of what grammar is taught in the unit. When the structures contained in that section are clear to you, try out the exercises which follow the explanations. These are designed to give you immediate practice of the grammar points, through a variety of activities. It may be better not to write your answers into the book, so that you can return to the exercises at a later date to test yourself. At that point, try to do them without looking at the explanations, to see what you can remember.

Once you have completed the exercises, you can check your answers in the Key to Test yourself section at the back of the book.

You should also consult the Taking it further section, where you will find references to other grammar books and useful information related to the Irish language, such as websites, language courses and organizations.

The main Irish language dictionary, Foclir GaeilgeBarla, Niall Dnaill and Toms de Bhaldraithe (eds.), published by Oifig an tSolthair, Dublin (1977), is referred to throughout this book.

amonn Dnaill

Irish spelling, accents and stress

In this unit you will learn about

The alphabet

The letters of the basic Irish alphabet are:

a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u

The letter v occurs in some loan-words:

veain (van)

vta (vote)

The remaining letters (j, q, v, w, x, z) occur very rarely (they are mostly found in scientific and mathematical words).

Changes to the beginning of words (lenition, eclipsis)

In Irish (as in other Celtic languages), both the beginning and the ending of a word can change.

The change of form at the beginning of a word is caused by a preceding word. One such change is called lenition (or simhi in Irish) and the other eclipsis (ur in Irish). You will see many examples of lenition and eclipsis throughout this book.

Lenition

This change occurs to the following consonants:

b bh

c ch

d dh

f fh

g gh

m mh

p ph

s sh

t th

The remaining consonants (h, l, n, r) cannot be lenited.

Eclipsis

This change occurs to both consonants and vowels.

Here are the consonants that are affected by eclipsis:

b mb

c gc

d nd

f bhf

g ng

p bp

t dt

The remaining consonants (h, l, m, n, r, s) cannot be eclipsed.

t before vowels and s

t can be placed before an initial vowel. It is followed by a hyphen, except when the vowel is a capital letter:

t-a

t-e

t-i

t-o

t-u

tA

tE

tI

tO

tU

Insight

There is never a hyphen between t and an initial s:

Ts

n before vowels

n can be placed before an initial vowel. It is followed by a hyphen, except when the vowel is a capital letter:

n-a

n-e

n-i

n-o

n-u

nA

nE

nI

nO

nU

h before vowels

h can be placed before an initial vowel. Again, there is never a hyphen between an h and a vowel:

ha

he

hi

ho

hu

Long and short vowels

Vowels in Irish are either long or short. A length accent or a stroke (called sneadh fada in Irish) over a vowel indicates that it is long. Replacing one type of vowel with the other changes the pronunciation of a word, e.g. piste (child) and paiste (patch).

short	long
a
e
i

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