Grammar

Scottish Gaelic is an inflected language. Nouns indicate their relationships with a number of grammatical cases (nominative, vocative, genitive, and 'dative', so-termed in traditional grammars [better - 'post-prepositional' case]), and verbs are conjugated to indicate tense (simple tenses are past and future; compound tenses are continuous present, past, and future), mood (indicative, imperative, subjunctive), and voice (active, passive).

Gaelic shares with other Celtic languages a number of interesting grammatical features:

• Verb Subject Object word order; a relatively uncommon typology among the world's languages
• Prepositional pronouns: pronouns and most prepositions are fused into compound forms, such as agam (at me), agad (at you), ris (to him).
• The absence of a verb to have: instead, possession is expressed prepositionally, with aig (that is by saying that something is at or on a person, cf. Russian u):

tha taigh agam — I have a house (lit. a house is at me)

an cat aig Iain — John's cat (lit. the cat at John)

• Emphatic pronouns: A distinction is made between the ordinary pronouns, like mi and thu, and their emphatic counterparts, mise, thusa, and so forth, which express a contrast to other persons. For example:

tha i bòidheach — she's beautiful

tha ise bòidheach — she's beautiful (as opposed to somebody else)

Grammatical emphasis carries over into other situations:

an taigh aicese — her house

chuirinn-sa — I would put

na mo bheachd-sa — in my opinion

• "To be": Gaelic has two forms of the verb "to be": tha is used to ascribe a property to a noun or pronoun, whereas in general usage is is used to identify a noun or pronoun as a complement. ('Is' can be used to ascribe a description to a noun or pronoun, but generally this usage is restricted to fixed expressions, for example: 'Is beag an t-iongnadh' lit. 'Is small the surprise'

tha mise sgìth — I am tired

is mise Eòghann — I am Ewen.

It is, however, possible to use tha to say that one thing is another thing by turning it into a property:

tha mi nam Albannach — I am a Scot (lit. I am in my Scot)

Is e Albannach a th' annam — I am a Scot (lit. it's a Scot that's in me).

Articles

Gaelic has a definite article but no indefinite article:

an taigh — 'the house'

taigh — '(a) house'

The form of the (definite) article depends on the number, gender, case, and initial sound of the noun.

(i). an, am, and an t- are used with masculine singular nominative nouns:

an cat — 'the cat' (also for nouns which cannot be lenited)

am balach — 'the boy' (nouns which begin with labial consonants)

an t-òran — 'the song' (nouns which begin with vowels)

(ii). a' is used before a lenited consonant; there are two cases:

a' chaileag — 'the girl' (feminine nominative and dative)

leis a' bhalach — 'with the boy' (masculine dative and genitive)

(iii). na and na h- (before a vowel) are used in the feminine genitive singular:

na mara — 'of the sea'

na h-Alba — 'of [the] Scotland'

(iv). na and na h- (before a vowel) are used in the nominative and dative plural of both genders:

na cait — 'the cats'

na h-àireamhan — 'the numbers'

(v). nan or nam (before a labial) are used in the genitive plural:

nan cat — 'of the cats'

nam balach — 'of the boys'

<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next > End >>