﻿922
AN GAOḊAL.
trom, heavy.
thrum.
tá, am, are, is, art
thaw.
EXERCISE II.
Translate into Irish. —
1 Lip and the mouth (closed). 2 A sweet poem
3 Hunger and sorrow. 4 Butter and honey. 5
A day and a month. 6 A bad month, a white (un¬
cultivated) orchard, heavy gold; fine sweet meal.
7 A blue garment, fresh butter, a melodious poem
8 A white board, heavy sorrow, and a bad death.
9 A soul and body. 10 A wand (yard, rod) and
gold, fine (pulverized) earth, and fresh meal.
NOTE — The adjective follows the noun in Irish.
"I have” is expressed in Irish by agam,
to me, and so of the other persons as
given below,
What is conveyed in English by “I
am”, is, in Irish, by orm.
Ḃ-fuil, is are, is used in asking ques¬
tions only, and is pronounced, “will".
agam, at me; agat, at thee; aige, at
him, at it; aici, at her. orm, on me;
ort, on thee; air, on him, on it; airṫi
on her, tart, thirst.
Translate —
1. I have a friend, thou hast a friend, he has a
friend, she has a friend. 2 I am thirsty, thou art
thirsty, he is thirsty, she is thirsty. 3 Hast thou
gold? 4 Has he butter and honey? 5 I have
sweet butter. 6 She has heavy gold. 8 Has he
gold, butter, honey and a friend ?
Hints —
I am thirsty, tá tart orm.
I have gold, tá ór agam.
ḃ-fuil ór agat? hast thou gold?
We give under “The Last Glimpse
of Erin," with a literal English transla¬
tion under each line, and also the poe¬
tical one, and we would urge every
student to get it off by heart. Our ob¬
ject in giving it in this form is that it
shows directly the grammatical and i¬
diomatic construction of the language.
The student is shown that the adject¬
ive follows the noun, that the verb pre¬
cedes its nominative, also, where the
personal pronoun is incorporated with
the verb, as; geaḃfad, I shall get, etc
Clársaiġe is the gen. case of cláirseaċ,
a large harp ; cruit means a small harp
also, a haunch-back. Ceann, the head,
cinn, its gen. case. It will be seen al¬
so that the definite article is not used
before the same class of nouns as take
it in English, and vice versa. There
is no indefinite in Irish ; we say in En¬
glish, I have "a" horse, in Irish, tá
capall agam, literally, horse is to me.
Coulin is only an Anglicised form of
cuilḟionn, literally, fair-tresses ; as we
would say, fair-haired, with "darling,"
etc. understood.
We give the pronunciation of the di¬
fficult words in the song and we would
request the student to pay particular
attention to them and compare the
sounds given to the aspirated letters
with those given in the paradigm on
the preceding page.
The student sees occasionally a con¬
sonant with a hyphen placed before
words, as, d'a n-díbirt, a g-cian, etc.
This is called Eclipsis; the d etc, loses
its sound and the n sound takes its
place. In pronouncing the word con¬
sider the d etc. as if it were removed
entirely and the n, etc. put in its place
Remember also that the grammati¬
cal ending iuġaḋ and ugaḋ are pron¬
ounced simply, oo; as, smuainiuġaḋ,
thinking, pronounced sme-in-oo; meud¬
uġaḋ, enlarging, pronounced, mayd-oo.
iġe and iḋe have the sound of ee, as
cláirsiġe, the genitive cláirseaċ, a
harp, pronounced, klawr-sheer — remem¬
ber that s has the sound of sh before
and after the slender vowels e and i,
in the same syllable, with the single ex¬
ception of the assertive verb, is, which
is pronounced, iss. The slender vow¬
els, also, impart a slender sound to the
consonants coming immediately before
and after them.
In places where do and mo, thy and
my, come before words beginning with
a vowel, the o of do and mo is dropt
and an apostrophe point used instead,
as, d' uċt, thy bosom, or lap, pronoun¬
ced, dhucht, a's, is and 's are freq¬
uently used for agus, and.
This is a valuable vocabulary and it
should be carefully studied.
