Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
When using a verbal noun as an attributive adjective, usually it is the genitive form. No “ag” is used.
Running man = fear reatha.
Picture of a flying hawk = pictiúr de sheabhac eitilte.Use of “ag” means that you are actually talking about the action. It obviously depends what you want to express exactly. The difference is like the one in English between “the running man” or “the man who is running”.
This can be deceptive in Irish sometimes, because some nouns in the genitive case look like adjectives to the untrained eye. For instance “comhaid chabhrach”, I can see a beginner thinking “cabhrach” means something like “helpful”, and in context it sort of does, but it’s really the genitive of cabhair = to help, so literally “files of helping” -> “helping files” -> “help files”.
I am not an expert in the language by any means, but my first piece of advice would be to start listening to it at native speed as early as possible. You have to make associations in your brain with the sounds you will actually hear in real Irish rather than just knowing how things look on the page if you’re ever going to have a grip on spoken Irish. At least that’s my opinion. I feel I can read the language to a fair extent, but have a very hard time understanding what I would call informal Irish which is not as well articulated as what you may hear on Raidió na Gaeltachta, for example. And I think that is partially due to the fact that I didn’t prepare myself early on for what I would actually be hearing. My advice is to watch as much Irish TV and movies as possible, because that type of dialog is more consistent with what you would experience out among people than listening to the news. One resource that I wish was more plentiful is Irish film with Irish subtitles. There are some episodes of “An Grá Faoi Ghlas” on youtube that have this. There is also a movie called “Cré na Cille” which has both English and Irish subtitles (I definitely need them, as the dialog is very slang-intensive). As far as grammar is concerned, learn the 11 irregular verbs and the copula in their different tenses, etc. inside out as soon as you can.
Ádh mór ort!
