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Also note that it’s better to say “deirtear” (one says, i.e. the autonomous form), using “tú” is asking how literally you say something, not how it should be said by any speaker of the language. You can also just say “cén Ghaeilge atá ar ____” (i.e. what’s the Irish for ____?)
I agree with Onuvanja that you could think of these as “shortened forms” in the context of the original question, even if they don’t work exactly like contractions in English.
I’m unaware of a complete list, but a few others that are similar off the top of my head:
lem’ = le mo, and I think also led’ = le do
dom’ = do mo, etc. similar to above‘Sé, ‘sí = is é, is í
Again, it’s debatable whether these qualify as what you’re asking for, but I’d say they’re similar enough to warrant mention. It also might interest you, if you don’t already know, that there are other “shortened forms” that are built into the language, like “níl” is technically from “ní fhuil”, and “céard” is basically “cén rud.”
Not sure if I’m going this year but have been in the past. You will have a great time! It’s a nice location, friendly staff, great opportunity to learn and practice your Irish at any level.
Mura maith leat Law & Order, téigh i dtigh diabhail
nó … bíodh an diabhal agatLiterally these mean “go to the devil’s house” and “have the devil”, which are idiomatic expressions approximating “go to hell” in English.
Translation should never be approached word-for-word. I’d encourage learners of any level to look up expressions that are likely to be idiomatic (focloir.ie and teanglann.ie should be your best friends – use them).
For that I’d say something like “Táim ag lorg poist”, or “táim ag iarraidh post a fháil.”
Keep in mind that when translating, you should really seek to boil down the essence of the *meaning* you’re trying to convey and not attempt to do things word for word. This is actually challenging, but it’s generally a skill that’s very much worth cultivating. In other words, not all statements that begin in English with “I’m trying” or “I try” will begin the same way in Irish (or any other language for that matter).
I think using some form of “déan” is actually redundant in some of these cases. You can just say “Baineann sé triail as”, mar shampla. The “doing” is implicit here. Even in English you can say “give it a try”, you don’t need to say “give doing it a try”.
lol glad you like it 😉
Yeah I have a hard time with this one, since I don’t know if there’s any precedent (and thus correct verb) to use for “bringing” or “taking” the past (as if it were a thing you could even take, which of course it isn’t). I guess a native speaker would be more confident in saying what works and what doesn’t. I think your original “tabhair leat” is about as good as anything I’d come up with. My only other immediate thought is something like “lig uait an t-am atá thart murach go bhfuil tairbhe le bhaint as” (let the past go unless there is benefit to be taken from it), or something similar to that.
I keep trying to think of something like “ná ceannaigh sean-teach muna bhfuil suim agat tuí a chur air”, lol.. but that isn’t an authentic expression, just my attempt to forge one. (For OP, that means “don’t buy an old house if you don’t intend to thatch it”).
In Irish, given its extraordinary wealth of existing sayings, it’s generally considered preferable to pick one that lines up with what you mean conceptually than to translate it word-for-word. Sometimes an equivalent just doesn’t exist, though.
Actually the second game is An Aimsir Óg.
I’m not aware of any others (I knew about Shroud of the Morrigan), but they may exist. You may be interested in this guy’s Youtube channel (unfortunately inactive for a while, but had good content) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Yj5-LOxXA
Will definitely check out the Kickstarter campaign.
To elaborate slightly on part of the excellent answer from Labhrás, if you’re looking to make sense of why “what” constructions use the independent and “where”/”when”/”why” questions take the dependent, it is because there is an implied (or sometimes not implied) prepositional relationship involved with the latter. The analogy here is the difference in the English clauses like “the house which the man built” (here you could ask “what did the man build?” “he built the house” – there’s a direct object relationship between them), and those like “the house in which the man lived” (here you could ask “where did the man live?” “he lived in the house” – there’s now an indirect object relationship between them, signified by that preposition “in”). So if you’re asking in Irish “Cá / cén áit a ndearna sé é” there is sort of an implied indirect object relationship with the place – you could think of it, in fact, like “(in) what place did he do it?” Same with time and manner. “when (i.e. at what time) did he do it?”, “why (i.e. for what reason) did he do it?” Of course some of the use of the dependent is simply just .. because. Like with “go” and “nach” and the other examples Labhrás gave. In a sense, you simply have to know when to use it and when not. But I find that especially with the interrogative clauses, it helps to have an understanding of why it works the way it does in those instances.
B’fhéidir go bhfuil an ceart agat. Ní raibh mé féin róchinnte faoi sin. Chuimhnigh mé ar rud eicint ar nós “gurb í srón duine a raibh aithe aige air” ar dtús. Níl a fhios agam an bhfuil sé sin pioc níos fearr, ach tá sé níos soiléire nach bhfuil an tsrón th’éis a bheith ar eitilt agus tagtha anuas ar dhuine 😉
No need to apologize. See my revised post above to answer your other question. You often won’t see lesser-used variants or words well represented in search results. There are plenty of legitimate Irish words that won’t come up at all if you Google them.
(Apologize in advance for lack of fadas, I’m at work now and don’t know how to make them on this keyboard):
Teachin is a masculine noun and here it is in the genitive (doras an teachin). Adjectives need to be in their proper form just like nouns. “Beag” is “big” after masculine noun (hata an fhir bhig) and “bige” after feminine nouns (bruach na habhann bige). Additionally, masculine nouns lenite the following adjective in genitive (opposite of the nominative, where it’s feminine nouns that do this). So it becomes “bhig”. “Teachin beag” would be nominative, i.e. “ta teachin beag thall”.
Additionally, I’d caution against using Google searches to judge whether something is correct or not. With a scrutinizing eye, they can be useful, but you have to know enough to be able to filter out the utter proliferation of bad Irish out there. Also, the Irish corpus is not yet very well represented digitally. If you could search books written by people with real Irish you’d get a different picture but as it is you often just get blogs from learners and government web sites which are themselves often badly translated. In other words, if you don’t see something coming up in the search results, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. “Ti” is probably much more common than “teachin”, so I wouldn’t expect to see many results for the latter.
