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Good question. This is like a version of something where many other rules and exceptions from the past all come crashing together and you have to think of which one is the priority. I’ve removed a lot of my answer because I had creeping doubts about it and managed to get confused. It’d be great to get an authoritative answer. If one doesn’t appear after a few days, I’ll WhatsApp my Irish teacher and try to see what she says about this.
I didn’t pick up on the “Aha” thing, lol!
I need to just slightly amend what I wrote earlier. I put “ag bog ar aghaidh” but I meant “ag bogadh ar aghaidh” as it’s the verbal noun of the verb “bog” required after “ag”. I just put “bog ar aghaidh” first to give you the verb, then I realised how he was using it with the verbal noun and I added in the “ag” but forgot to change the verb form. In his south dialect the sound afterwards (a schwa) would merge with the “ar” so it sounds like “boga’ar aghaidh”. Anyway, I guess what is most important is just recognising the phrase itself and the meaning.
“Bog” is a very normal word in Irish to mean “to move” (in this sense, as in moving on, but also to move house etc.) and “ar aghaidh” is an extremely common expression across Irish everywhere you will find it, so there is not going to be anything weird or restricted about such a sentence.
I didn’t grow up surrounded by Irish or anything, so I can’t attest to any specifics, but in as much as it seems to me, I think if anyone needed to express the idea of moving on to a different topic, or changing the subject, this is probably what they would say.
So, just to clarify:
bog (verb) = to move
ar aghaidh = on / onwards
bog ar aghaidh = to move on
ag bogadh ar aghaidh = moving on …(Edit): sorry I butchered some spellings up originally and just fixed them.
Go to Teanglann and put in the words and you can select which of the three dialects you’re interested in and you can compare the pronunciations. If still insure, then refine the question with some details about what is not clear about the recordings and someone should be able to offer the best tips.
Aha, I listened to it a bit more and caught it.
Ag bog ar aghaidh
Is what he says “moving on …” So it’s something you say when changing topic and would be a common phrase in a podcast that changes topics regularly.
Argh, struggling with the fadas myself there. “Beagánín”. On phones you just have to hold down the letter on the keyboard and various accent options pop up and you select the right one.
If you could give a link and a time stamp, that would be helpful. I just had a listen to about 10 mins of the latest episode and couldn’t really determine if he said it or if it was something different than what you heard.
He did say “beaganín” a few times though, which means a little bit. Could that be what you heard?
There is a great book I was listening to (audio version of it on Audible) called Craic Baby. It’s the same guy who wrote the Motherfoclóir book. The first 5 or 6 chapters all end with a small section called “A fada can make all the difference” and he goes through a good few examples to end those early chapters. Definitely great book for those with an interest in Irish.
There is also a Twitter account called “Our Dada” and they tweet loads of examples of these minimal pairs so take a scroll back through their posts to see some great ones.
My favourite one is Orla/Órla (vomit/golden princess).
I just tried to write a reply, but it didn’t seem to go through. Maybe because I posted a link. In any case, I found the answer to your question online. If you search for the phrase in Google and look for the Tumblr post by friendlyneighbourhoodpolyglot and there is a good explanation and usage notes about it.
