We don’t have the letter V in Irish but we do have the sound. Bh will pretty much always make a V sound (unless it’s at the end of a word, and even then it depends on the dialect of Irish), and mh often, but not always, also makes a V sound. People only find the phonetics of our names odd because we speak English, but Irish is a very different language. Nobody seems to have any issue with the phonetics of Spanish or French names because nobody expects them to mimic English.
Irish names and words are pronounced quite phoenetically. You just have to learn the gaelic phoenetic system, which is pretty predictable if you know it.
Yeah because they are handier tbf. Lots of people here have Irish names and they’re a pain when they go abroad, but any name from the Bible will travel quite easily. I’d never give a kid an Irish name beyond the ones well understood abroad (basically just Seán and Liam really).
Ha what’s insane about the grammar? I’m not disagreeing you, but I learned the language at such a young age that I just accept it for what it is really.
Oh, like initial mutations which are part of a more inflected system compared to english. I guess the word order is the hardest thing. Is that more a syntax thing than a grammar issue? Sometimes some really unpredictable sentences come up when translating word for word. Is irish at me. Was bread eaten at me. Am I in my teacher. Shit like that. The fucking coppola. Come on. Everything sounds like Yoda said it.
The spelling wasn’t really a problem for me though. Once you get the whole caol le caol, leathan le leathan rule, sounding words out is mostly straight forward. Youre bound to be right in some dialect or other.
Much of its forgotten to me but I had a go of it for a year or so.
Yeah the order of words is pretty unique I suppose. One thing I only realised a few years ago when living Spain is that, like in Spanish, we don’t have a single verb for “to be.” Found it weird when a Spanish teacher told me it worked that way in Spanish and it only later dawned on me that it was the same as gaeilge. We also use “on me” a lot where in English it would be “I am”; so “I am hungry” becomes “I have hunger on me”, which again isn’t dissimilar to the Romance languages use of “I have hunger”.
The thing I find most remarkable about Irish grammar is how people whose families probably haven’t spoken Irish for centuries (true Dubliners and the like) still mimic Irish grammar in English to do this day. It’s common to hear Dubs use the continuous present tense in English (I do be, he does be etc.) just because that’s a tense we have in Irish that doesn’t exist in English.
Yeah, many IE languages have that “to be” dichotomy. Estar is a cognate of bí (tá) and is related to words like stand and state in english. Copula is more like ser functionally. Welsh has something similar: all forms of “to be” are considered to be from the verb “bod” but there are forms used with certain ‘inverted” constructions that are just like the copula.
I think there was a dichotomy in latin (sto vs esse). I don’t know if the celts assimilated this usage or if there really were two “be”s in PIE.
You probably noticed the prepositional pronoun contigo/conmigo which was inherited from latin which had a ton of them.
Its almost like irish (and all celtic) has an obsession with prepositions. They want to stick them into every phrase. If they have to rearrange the entire sentence to accomodate a preposition, they will. So it seems to this english speaker.
Am I to going
Welsh will say
Am I in going
How can we forget “may the road rise with you” !?
so “I am hungry” becomes “I have hunger on me”, which again isn’t dissimilar to the Romance languages use of “I have hunger”.
But its not “I have hunger on me.” Its “ Is hunger on-me” . You can’t have hunger because you can’t have anything. You’re Irish! 😜 There is no “to have” nor is there a “to want” or “to succeed” or “to enjoy” or “to like! There are missing verbs everywhere. What did you do with your verbs Ireland? You can’t have shit, shit is just at you. You can’t want ( there’s this weird usage “Is from me” using ó or maybe “is needed at me” ) You can’t succeed at a task . The best you can hope for is that the task might rise with you. Did you enjoy the film (sorry, filum)? Nope, it shined with you. Do you like ice cream? No but its good with you. Maybe even grand.
You and the caighdean oifigiuil will say Im willfully mistranslating. But I don’t believe a word of it.
I found all this weirdness kind of charming, tbh. And when I went on to learn a little Welsh, I was like, “yeah, these are the same faggots”. Very interesting structure. But not easy.
still mimic Irish grammar in English to do this day. It’s common to hear Dubs use the continuous present tense in English (I do be, he does be etc.) just because that’s a tense we have in Irish that doesn’t exist in English.
Yup and an inability to pronounce words like film and “th”. Also phrases like “so it is” mimicking “....atá ann” in copular constructions. Oh its all coming back. Ireland, you kooky kids!
Ha hard to argue with a lot of that, but it is funny to see it spelled out! I would take issue with the below though:
But its not “I have hunger on me.” Its “ Is hunger on-me”
What we really say is “there is hunger on me”, since tá is the present tense form of bí. So we’re not missing verbs in sentences, we just use “there is” a lot. And of course we can “have” things in Irish, just not as a verb (definitely see where you’re coming from with our love of prepositions now ha)
Of course you can have things in Ireland (Im just poking fun) but there is no verb to have which is kind of shocking to an english or french which use “have” all the time, including for construction of certain tenses.
we just use “there is” a lot.
Well I hate to quibble, but ansin was not anywhere in “Tá ocras orm.” That is the way it’s translated into english. “There is...” is an english construction but the word isn’t in the irish sentence. The gloss — the word for word translation— is “Is hunger on-me.” Its not wrong. Its just weird to english speakers, and probaby alot of other IE language speakers.
Ive heard it said that celtic prepositions are verb-like in their usage in a way that is not intuitive to engish speakers.
There was a shift in the IE language family from highly inflected PIE with many cases and inflected pronouns and flexible word order to more modern IE languages which are analytic (strictly ordered) and not very inflected. Its my understanding that celtic has more hold over from the older styles of syntax and grammar. In fact theyve used irish to help backwards engineer reconstructed PIE.
Ansin means “here” - did you mean something else? Tá has quite a few uses, but when not followed by a ‘person’ (mé, tú, sé, sí etc.) it’s used in pretty much the same way as ‘hay’ is used in Spanish. Where you would say “there is/are/were” in English we would always say tá (or bhí for were), so it’s the closest translation. This changes quite drastically if it is followed by a ‘person’ though, as it just becomes one of our ways of saying ‘to be’ in the static present tense.
Edit: although you are correct about the use of prepositions in lieu of verbs, although I’d never thought of it like that before. Even to the point that while, like in English, we don’t really conjugate most verbs (some dialects do for first person plural) we actually do conjugate quite a lot of propositional words (agam, agat, aige, aici and the like). Maybe you have convinced me it’s a weird language after all haha
I think ansin is there and anseo is here, no? Maybe ann is the better version to use in such a case: “Is hunger on me there/in it” . But its obviously not used much in such a sentence.
I looked up hay and sure enough, its derived from ha y “has there” where y is from the latin hic “this”. So there is a “there” in hay, of a sort.
Im not saying youre wrong. Its a matter of literal vs colloquial translations.
we actually do conjugate quite a lot of propositional words (agam, agat, aige, aici and the like).
Yeah within a tense there is very little change in the irish verb ( in english, french, spanish, the conjugations of the verb indicate the subject — 1st 2nd 3rd person, singluar, plural) But its like irish unloads that job onto the preposition. The prepositional pronoun indicates person and numeracy of the “subject” (indirect object?) .
In english theres still traces of such inflected pronouns (I vs my vs me, he vs his vs him, who vs whose vs whom) differentiating the nominative, genitive and accusative cases, which used to be differentiated by the forms of all nouns in proto-germanic.
Of course, irish is still inflecting for a few noun cases like genitive, dative, vocative. And I suppose all the prepositional pronouns are hold overs of the much more elaborate PIE case system, similar to latin which had locative , ablative, instrumental, dative and maybe one or two more I can’t think of (corresponding to agam, uaim, liom, dom) . Its my understanding that the slavic and indian languages have a lot more of the old cases fully instantiated, but I have no experience with those languages.
Maybe you have convinced me it’s a weird language after all haha
Yeah people say its the VSO word order. Apparently VSOs are the weirdos of the language world. The way the sentence comes together when you put the verb first seems really different compared to SVOs or OSVs.
Ive often wondered if the wacky syntax has something to do with Irish prowess for the written word. Even hiberno-english speakers have these odd colloquialisms and maybe you guys just think about language a little differently (backwards and upside down) 🤷🏻♀️
It seems like the germanic and slavic languages have a word close to silber for silver. Most romance languages use a different word, close to argentum.
[ + ] Shotinthedark3
[ - ] Shotinthedark3 0 points 12 hoursJun 6, 2025 18:41:33 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] TheNoticing
[ - ] TheNoticing 0 points 21 hoursJun 6, 2025 10:16:14 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] Anus_Expander
[ - ] Anus_Expander 0 points 16 hoursJun 6, 2025 15:08:57 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] Irelandlost
[ - ] Irelandlost 3 points 23 hoursJun 6, 2025 08:00:42 ago (+3/-0)
[ + ] Seymore_potatohead
[ - ] Seymore_potatohead 1 point 1 dayJun 6, 2025 06:51:03 ago (+1/-0)
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 1 point 23 hoursJun 6, 2025 07:36:30 ago (+1/-0)
[ + ] Irelandlost
[ - ] Irelandlost 2 points 23 hoursJun 6, 2025 07:55:52 ago (+2/-0)
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 1 point 1 dayJun 6, 2025 06:40:08 ago (+1/-0)
[ + ] GetFuckedCunt
[ - ] GetFuckedCunt 0 points 1 dayJun 6, 2025 03:22:25 ago (+2/-2)
[ + ] Irelandlost
[ - ] Irelandlost 1 point 23 hoursJun 6, 2025 07:57:42 ago (+1/-0)
[ + ] GetFuckedCunt
[ - ] GetFuckedCunt 0 points 15 hoursJun 6, 2025 15:58:49 ago (+0/-0)
I bet if Hitler actually won ww2 then Germanic names would be handier over jewish ones.
[ + ] jfroybees
[ - ] jfroybees 0 points 1 dayJun 6, 2025 02:59:47 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 1 point 23 hoursJun 6, 2025 07:51:14 ago (+1/-0)
Bó - a cow
Cappal. - a horse
Ór - gold
Airgead - silver
But the grammar is insane
[ + ] Irelandlost
[ - ] Irelandlost 0 points 23 hoursJun 6, 2025 08:15:00 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 0 points 23 hoursJun 6, 2025 08:29:20 ago (+0/-0)
The spelling wasn’t really a problem for me though. Once you get the whole caol le caol, leathan le leathan rule, sounding words out is mostly straight forward. Youre bound to be right in some dialect or other.
Much of its forgotten to me but I had a go of it for a year or so.
[ + ] Irelandlost
[ - ] Irelandlost 0 points 22 hoursJun 6, 2025 08:43:16 ago (+0/-0)
The thing I find most remarkable about Irish grammar is how people whose families probably haven’t spoken Irish for centuries (true Dubliners and the like) still mimic Irish grammar in English to do this day. It’s common to hear Dubs use the continuous present tense in English (I do be, he does be etc.) just because that’s a tense we have in Irish that doesn’t exist in English.
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 0 points 21 hoursJun 6, 2025 09:41:47 ago (+0/-0)
I think there was a dichotomy in latin (sto vs esse). I don’t know if the celts assimilated this usage or if there really were two “be”s in PIE.
You probably noticed the prepositional pronoun contigo/conmigo which was inherited from latin which had a ton of them.
Its almost like irish (and all celtic) has an obsession with prepositions. They want to stick them into every phrase. If they have to rearrange the entire sentence to accomodate a preposition, they will. So it seems to this english speaker.
Welsh will say
How can we forget “may the road rise with you” !?
But its not “I have hunger on me.” Its “ Is hunger on-me” . You can’t have hunger because you can’t have anything. You’re Irish! 😜 There is no “to have” nor is there a “to want” or “to succeed” or “to enjoy” or “to like! There are missing verbs everywhere. What did you do with your verbs Ireland? You can’t have shit, shit is just at you. You can’t want ( there’s this weird usage “Is from me” using ó or maybe “is needed at me” ) You can’t succeed at a task . The best you can hope for is that the task might rise with you. Did you enjoy the film (sorry, filum)? Nope, it shined with you. Do you like ice cream? No but its good with you. Maybe even grand.
You and the caighdean oifigiuil will say Im willfully mistranslating. But I don’t believe a word of it.
I found all this weirdness kind of charming, tbh. And when I went on to learn a little Welsh, I was like, “yeah, these are the same faggots”. Very interesting structure. But not easy.
Yup and an inability to pronounce words like film and “th”. Also phrases like “so it is” mimicking “....atá ann” in copular constructions. Oh its all coming back. Ireland, you kooky kids!
[ + ] Irelandlost
[ - ] Irelandlost 0 points 20 hoursJun 6, 2025 10:40:18 ago (+0/-0)
What we really say is “there is hunger on me”, since tá is the present tense form of bí. So we’re not missing verbs in sentences, we just use “there is” a lot. And of course we can “have” things in Irish, just not as a verb (definitely see where you’re coming from with our love of prepositions now ha)
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 0 points 19 hoursJun 6, 2025 11:43:44 ago (+0/-0)
Well I hate to quibble, but ansin was not anywhere in “Tá ocras orm.” That is the way it’s translated into english. “There is...” is an english construction but the word isn’t in the irish sentence. The gloss — the word for word translation— is “Is hunger on-me.” Its not wrong. Its just weird to english speakers, and probaby alot of other IE language speakers.
An example of literal gloss in one of my books with a similar sentence. https://files.catbox.moe/3lhpaf.jpeg
Ive heard it said that celtic prepositions are verb-like in their usage in a way that is not intuitive to engish speakers.
There was a shift in the IE language family from highly inflected PIE with many cases and inflected pronouns and flexible word order to more modern IE languages which are analytic (strictly ordered) and not very inflected. Its my understanding that celtic has more hold over from the older styles of syntax and grammar. In fact theyve used irish to help backwards engineer reconstructed PIE.
[ + ] Irelandlost
[ - ] Irelandlost 0 points 18 hoursJun 6, 2025 13:26:03 ago (+0/-0)*
Edit: although you are correct about the use of prepositions in lieu of verbs, although I’d never thought of it like that before. Even to the point that while, like in English, we don’t really conjugate most verbs (some dialects do for first person plural) we actually do conjugate quite a lot of propositional words (agam, agat, aige, aici and the like). Maybe you have convinced me it’s a weird language after all haha
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 0 points 16 hoursJun 6, 2025 14:57:18 ago (+0/-0)
I looked up hay and sure enough, its derived from ha y “has there” where y is from the latin hic “this”. So there is a “there” in hay, of a sort.
Im not saying youre wrong. Its a matter of literal vs colloquial translations.
Yeah within a tense there is very little change in the irish verb ( in english, french, spanish, the conjugations of the verb indicate the subject — 1st 2nd 3rd person, singluar, plural) But its like irish unloads that job onto the preposition. The prepositional pronoun indicates person and numeracy of the “subject” (indirect object?) .
In english theres still traces of such inflected pronouns (I vs my vs me, he vs his vs him, who vs whose vs whom) differentiating the nominative, genitive and accusative cases, which used to be differentiated by the forms of all nouns in proto-germanic.
Of course, irish is still inflecting for a few noun cases like genitive, dative, vocative. And I suppose all the prepositional pronouns are hold overs of the much more elaborate PIE case system, similar to latin which had locative , ablative, instrumental, dative and maybe one or two more I can’t think of (corresponding to agam, uaim, liom, dom) . Its my understanding that the slavic and indian languages have a lot more of the old cases fully instantiated, but I have no experience with those languages.
Yeah people say its the VSO word order. Apparently VSOs are the weirdos of the language world. The way the sentence comes together when you put the verb first seems really different compared to SVOs or OSVs.
Ive often wondered if the wacky syntax has something to do with Irish prowess for the written word. Even hiberno-english speakers have these odd colloquialisms and maybe you guys just think about language a little differently (backwards and upside down) 🤷🏻♀️
[ + ] jfroybees
[ - ] jfroybees 0 points 4 hoursJun 7, 2025 02:36:50 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] jfroybees
[ - ] jfroybees 0 points 15 hoursJun 6, 2025 15:57:55 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 0 points 15 hoursJun 6, 2025 16:22:10 ago (+0/-0)
It seems like the germanic and slavic languages have a word close to silber for silver. Most romance languages use a different word, close to argentum.
[ + ] jfroybees
[ - ] jfroybees 0 points 9 hoursJun 6, 2025 21:46:03 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 0 points 9 hoursJun 6, 2025 21:58:57 ago (+0/-0)
https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/Airgead
[ + ] ShortbusAlcoholic
[ - ] ShortbusAlcoholic -1 points 1 dayJun 6, 2025 02:27:43 ago (+2/-3)
[ + ] lord_nougat
[ - ] lord_nougat 2 points 1 dayJun 6, 2025 03:36:14 ago (+2/-0)
[ + ] boekanier
[ - ] boekanier [op] 1 point 1 dayJun 6, 2025 02:34:09 ago (+1/-0)
[ + ] GreatSatan
[ - ] GreatSatan 1 point 1 dayJun 6, 2025 03:16:50 ago (+1/-0)
[ + ] Sal_180
[ - ] Sal_180 0 points 21 hoursJun 6, 2025 09:53:09 ago (+0/-0)