Speaking Gaelic

Well this is day day two of Ten intensive classes of learning Scots Gaelic. Listening back over yesterday's recording I spotted LOADS of mistakes in the pronunciation of words (and a couple of spelling errors) - It'll be good to re-visit the dialogues at the end of the course to see how I compare...

Today's class was rather quite 'taxing' - all about numbers and days of the week and building on yesterday's work. We also learnt about Surnames and the Weather and a few add-ons to phrases: Thanks (tapadh leat/leibh), and 'and you/how about you? (thu fhèin)'. Using yesterday's dialogue as a basis, i'm going to expand including these add-ons (spelling errors corrected), surnames and some weather talk; and hopefully i'll be pronouncing the words more like how the should be! I'll also include some days of the week and telephone numbers.

# A: Madainn mhath! Dè an t-ainm a th'ort?

# B: Halò! Is mise Seumas Vallas. Dè an t-ainm a th'ort, fhèin?

# A: Is mise Sìne NicLèoid. A Sheumais! Ciamar a tha thu?

# B: Tha gu math, tapadh leat. Ciamar a tha thu fhèin?

# A: Chan eil dona. Cò as à tha thu? Tha mi à Glaschu.

# B: Tha mi a Lios MoChuda.

# A: Ciamar tha e ann an Lios MoChuda an-diugh?

# B: Tha e sgòthach agus brèagha. Ciamar tha e ann an Glaschu?

# A: Tha e fliuch. A bheil e grianach a-màireach?

# B: An e Dihaone a-màireach?

# A: 'Se.

# B: 'Se. Tha e garbh agus fuar a-màireach? Cò tha seo?

# A: Is ise Flòraidh Chaimbeul agus is esan Pàdraig Caimbeul agus is ise Moràg...eh...chan eil fhios agam!

# B: A bheil Pàdraig à Inbhir Nis agus nach eil Flòraidh à Dùn Èideann?

# A: Chan eil. Tha Flòraidh à Dùn Dèagh agus Pàdraig à Sruighlea.

# B: Ah! Nach eil e teth an-diugh?

# A: Tha. Dè an àireamh fòn a th'agao?

# B: A neoni, a h-aon, a ceithir, a h-aon, a sia, a còig, a dhà, a seachd, a naoi, a h-ochd.

# A: Tapadh leat. Tìoraidh!

# B: Tìoraidh!

Days of the Week (Monday to Sunday)

Dilvain

Dimàirt

Diciadain

Diardaoin

Dihaone

Disòthairne

Didòmhnaich / Latha na Sàbaid

Some Grammar (borrowed from http://www.geocities.com/alltandubh/Leasan1.html)

Aspiration
Aspiration is a way of indicating grammatical change in Scots Gaelic and, since it is widely used, it's best to start off by illustrating how it works. There are eighteen letters in Gaelic: five are vowels (a, e, i, o, and u, as in English), one is the letter "h", which is in a category all by itself, and the remaining letters are consonants (b, c, d, f, g, l, m, n, p, r, s, and t). Of the vowels, two (e and i) are called "slender" vowels, and three (a, o, and u) are called "broad" vowels. Of the consonants, all of them except l, n, and r can become aspirated in writing, and this changes their sound as well. To aspirate a letter, you simply put "h" after it when it appears at the beginning of a word.

The purpose of aspiration is to show certain kinds of grammatical change, just as in English we put "-ed" to the end of a verb (e.g. "walk" --> "walked") to show the past tense or put "s" at the end of a word to show the plural (e.g. "hat" -- "hats"). The difference is that Scots Gaelic, in common with the other Celtic languages, puts the change at the beginning of the word instead. For example, one common use of aspiration is to indicate certain kinds of possession. The Gaelic word "mo" means "my" and causes aspiration (where possible) on the following word. The word "taigh" means "house". To say "my house" in Gaelic, you would say "mo thaigh". "Taigh" is pronounced like the English word "tie", but "mo thaigh" sounds like "mo hie". Or to take another example, "cù" means "dog", so to say "my dog" you would say "mo chù". "Cù" sounds like "koo", but in "chù" the "k" sound is dropped in favour of a "ch" sound like in the word "loch" -- a sound halfway between "k" and "h".

"To Be”

i) Present Tense, Affirmative

Like some other languages, for example Spanish, the Gaelic languages have two verbs that cover the range of the English verb "to be". One of them is used to join a noun with a noun, e.g. "Iain is a teacher" or "Calum is a Scotsman". The other one, which we'll look at in this lesson, is used to join a noun with an adjective -- e.g. "Ruairidh is tall", "Colin is old", etc.
(Note the difference between "thu" and "sibh"; "thu" means "you" when speaking to one person only. "Sibh" means "you" when speaking to more than one person but is also a polite form you can use when showing respect to someone who is older). The pronouns "e" and "i" mean "it" when they refer to masculine and feminine nouns rather than people.

The above forms are easily joined with adjectives like "beag" (little), "mór" (big), "òg" (young), "sona" (happy), etc.

ii) Present Tense, Negative

Just as in English and other languages, the verb "to be" in SG is highly irregular. To give the negative form of "tha", i.e. in order to say "... is not...", you have to use a different form altogether -- "chan eil"

iii) Present Tense, Question

In English to ask a question we can just rearrange the word order (e.g. "you are happy" becomes "are you happy?") or we can even leave the word order as it is and just change the tone of voice ("you *are* happy?") In SG, however, we have to use a question word before a verb in order to ask a question using that verb. The question word is "an", but this changes to "am" before the letters b, f, m, and p. Unfortunately since "tha" is irregular, we can't just put the question word before "tha"; we have to put it in front of an irregular form called "bheil". Since "bheil" begins with a "b", this makes the question word "am":

Over time, however, the "am" has become shortened in speech and writing to "a", so that questions are now usually asked with "a bheil...?" I've shown you the full form because you will still come across it in older books and because it helps to understand the basic rules involved with asking a question generally.There is no word for "yes" or "no" as such in Gaelic, so a question tends to get answered with either an affirmative or negative form of the verb that was contained in the question. For example, the question "am bheil iad sona?" (are they happy?) can be answered affirmatively with "tha", which just means "are"; the negative answer would be "chan eil" (are not). When the question is "am bheil...?", "tha" becomes a "yes" answer and "chan eil" becomes a "no" answer -- but "yes" and "no" in Gaelic are always different depending on what verb is in the question.

iv) Present Tense, Negative Question

A negative question corresponds to the English phrases "Isn't he/she/it...?" or "Aren't I/they...?" In SG the negative question word is "nach" and, as usual, an irregular form of "tha" is used -- "eil"

As with "am bheil...?" the answer to a negative question with "nach eil...?" is either "tha" (corresponding to "yes") or "chan eil" (corresponding to "no").

Verbal Noun

The verbal noun is a kind of verb expressing ongoing action, very much like the English verbs which end in "-ing" like "walking" or "laughing". There are two parts to each verbal noun, the verb itself and "a'" ("ag" before a vowel) coming before it. It is used with "tha" and with the different forms of "tha".