I would like to know how to say, in Irish, the following:

"My heart is yours. Ever and always."

Thanks for your help!

Word for word translations are not always possible in Irish. Due, in part to the use of prepositional pronouns.

The closest I can get you is:

Mo chroí leat, riamh agus go deo.

My heart is with you, always and forever.

You'll get some other options, and possibly corrections to my attempt, soon enough. There may even be a seanfhocal or two that expresses the sentiment more poetically.

Don't tatoo, or engrave until others have chimed in.


Ádh mor ort.


A mo chairde eile, .........?

Le meas,

Is leat mo chroí, riamh agus go deo

Go raibh mile maith agat, a Ahonghus. Your tutelage is invaluable to we, the linguistic mortals.

Le meas,

James

Thank you, James and Aonghus, very much. Oh, and James, even though in other posts I note that you continually claim to be new to this, I think you do a bang-up job. And thank goodness Aonghus is around to mentor you!

The "bang-up" job you mention is only from a willingness to publicly expose my incompetency. (Not an entirely bad thing, when you're trying to learn a new language) I answer these types of requests as much as to inform as I do to learn. In your particular case, I learned, rather than informed! I agree whole-heartedly with your assesment of Aonghus. Without him and many others, Fintan and Larry to name just a couple, I (and others like me) would be absolutely lost. They are the core to this site. Without their constant vigil against missed fadas, absent lenition and wandering uru's this would just be another "Shamrock site."

Le meas,

James

Le meas,

James.

In which case I better tell you the vocative of Aonghus is a Aonghuis!

go neirí libh go léir

Aonghus

Humbled again!

I'm just shy... I don't come out much...

But, *handraise* I have questions! And something's wrong with the site so I can't start a new one so can I paste them on here? *assumes permission, since people seem nice on here* (One is a translation! It kinda fits under the topic!)

1) Le meas is With respect, so how would you say With all due respect? I just think it's the coolest way to end a letter in English...

2) I was looking at a few words and this thing on broadening endings... there's one that ends up -aera... I see an e and an a surrounding a consonant, but apparently it's okay.. is this a typo? Or is the ae enough of a broad sound that it's allowed? It confuses meeee!

3)....there was another one... I know there was........ I think it might have been exactly how 'mar' is used? I see it a lot.

Tell me to hush if I annoy you! I'm very oversensitive to annoying people, and if you don't promise to tell me I'll assume you are...

James
no need to be humbled.
Aonghus is not a particularly common name, use of the vocative itself is rare.

I learn by making mistakes myself most of the time....
I just happen to have grown up speaking Irish, which left me with an intuition which usually prevents me making grammatical errors, but I'm not infallible. Just lucky!

Elewyn, a chara,

1) With all due respect (to you) would be "I gcead duitse" if you're writing to one person, or "I gcead sibhse" to more than one person.

2) There is a general rule which states that you use broad with broad and slender with slender vowels either side of a consonant, but as with so many grammatical rules, there are exceptions. I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here though....

3) "mar" can mean "like" or "as", but it can also mean "because" - it depends on the context. The term "mar shampla" means "for example" but that can also be said as "as an example". It can also be used as an adverb meaning "where", for example "Sin mar atá anois againn" - "That is where we've got to"

Le meas,
Larry.

And mar can mean where. It requires an indirect construction: mar ar cheannaigh mé iad where I bought them; mar a bhfuil siad ina gcónaí where they live

Larry, a chara,

2) I knew the rule, but I'd assumed it was infallible because I'd never been told different :P In a way, it makes sense. If I find an actual example of a word, I'll copy it... it ended with aera though.

3) Okay. I'm assuming just a normal because? I'm also assuming that's *the* word for because rather than just another word for it. Not that it's your fault if you're wrong :P And how does anois fit into that sentence? I can get the rest. I keep thinking it means now, or something.. my Irish stuff's all in the luggage that's lost and could be IN Ireland right now for all I know... (And I'm lazy)

Seosamh, a chara,

What makes it an indirect construction? ("Where the Wild Things Are"!) Hmmm.... Yeah, I understand everything in your Sentence Fragments except for the mar (so far! It just has yet to be assimilated)....

Go raibh míle maith agaibh, (Is that right?)
Elewyn

Oh... hold on. Why is it one word for respect and another for more respect? Le meas, I gcead duitse? Or do they mean different things? And if so, what does cead mean? :P:P *point missing luggage* Blah, flying!

Elewyn
I think the problem here is that the phrase
"with all due respect" actually means more or less the opposite (in Ireland and England at least)

It means, "yes, I hear what you're saying, and I accept your right to say it, but now listen to what I'm saying"

That is the sense conveyed by "i gcead duitse/dibhse"

If you want to convey a higher degree of respect, you would say:-

le h-árd mheas
or
le mór mheas

Also, it is rare that a phrase (or even a word) will have only one equivalent word in another languages
Picking up a dictionary and translating word for word generally affords native speakers some amusement!
For example, I know of a case where someone was in a restaurant in Germany, and looked up "bill" and then proceeded to ask the waiter for the birds beak - all the more unfortunate as that is slang for mouth

Elwyn, a chara,

2) Oh how I wish that these rules WERE infallible. It would make things so much simpler! Take a simple word like "aréir" (last night) for example. By the rule, you shouldn't have an "a" followed by "é" for the "a" is broad and the "é" is slender, but the fact remains that it occurs quite frequently. "Grósaera" - "Grocer" is another example. The word "grósaera" is in the genitive singular. I think many people assume that because they may see the rule in a grammar book that it's set in concrete and must be obeyed. If you subconsciously prefix the word "general" every time you see the word "rule", you should be okay.

3) It would be wrong to think that mar is "the" word for because, again it depends on context. For example, you'll see the expression "mar gheall ar..." which basically means "beacause of..." - you couldn't really just use "mar" when it's in a construction like that. Aonghus is quite correct in saying that you cannot translate word for word, and I guess that goes for any language, and I would not normally recommend using a dictionary except for translating individual nouns and verifying gender.

At the risk of repeating myself, context plays a very large part as I'm sure you've grasped by now.

Yes, go raibh míle maith agaibh is correct when you're addressing more than one person (agat - singular, agaibh - plural)

Le meas,
Larry.

Sorry Elwyn, I missed this bit....

"anois" fits into the above example because, as you correctly pointed out, it does mean "now". Another translation for the sentence "Sin mar atá anois againn" is "that is where we are now". Sorry if I confused you...

Le meas,
Larry.

A Aonghuis,

(Got it right, this time!!)

Your story of the patron requesting the bird's beak reminds me of a true and not so tragic tale.

We were in Latin America training with some host nation soldiers. One of our less linguistically gifted team members was riding in the back of a military transport truck with a dozen or so soldiers from the local military. As they were careening through the jungle the American sergeant saw a tree limb hanging low and approaching fast. Thinking quickly he shouted "Pato", the Spanish word for "Duck." As he squatted to avoid the limb the Spanish speaking soldiers instantly moved in the opposite direction, looking skyward. Seems "Pato" does mean "duck" but it is a noun, not a verb!

Fortunately, the limb was small and there were only minor injuries.

As you, and many others have stated, word for word translations can present problems and are best approached with caution.

Asking if there was that was more whimsical than anything, so I'm not worried that there's not a literal translation, and I actually doubted that there was when I asked it :) I learned that lesson way early on when I printed something out and painstakingly copied the translation of every single word underneath it... which was more helpful than it would seem. The jumble of words... Irish grammar is so much more complicated than Spanish :P I love it!

2)I have no problem accepting that a rule has exceptions.. It must be a habit to believe things like that without really questioning. Until I see an exception...

3) It does pretty much go for any language... I think... as soon as you get away from a really relatedd language. I do use it for individual nouns and such :) I think it's more that it makes me feel more confident. Hmmmm, again.

No, I figured it was more like that, it wasn't very confusing :) But it did warrant asking for an explanation of it.

Just to make matters worse, the vowel following a consonant preceded by "ae" is always(?) broad.

Mar shampla: aerach, aeraiocht, Gaeltacht, laethanta ...

Le meas,
Larry.

"ae" is one letter in Gaeilge. They're stuck together. The right hand side of the 'a' touches the left hand side of the 'e'. And it's broad.

-Phil

NO! Where did you get that from?
It happens in other languages, but Irish in not one of them.

a & e are separate

*walks out of room to get dictionary*...

reads from it

An Délitir æ
-------------

The vowel written after a consonant (or consonants) preceded by æ is always broad :

ærach, æraíocht, Gælach, Gæltacht, læthúil, læthanta, contætha.


And the 'æ' is stuck together. You probably have a choice whether or not you want to stick them together. Because the entire thing is broad, and so treated as one letter, I'd stick them together.

-Phil

Agreed that the sound is a diphthong.
But I have about a hundred books in Irish printed over the last eighty years, including a fair number in the old print (with dots for seimhiú) and in none of them is ae witten as æ.

btw, which dictionary?

The American Oxford Dictionary defines a diphthong as "a sound formed by the combination of two vowels in a single syllable in which the sound begins as one vowel and moves toward another (as in coin, loud, and side.)" Interestingly, as in the case of "side," it is the sound of two vowels (ah and ee) and not necessarily the presence of two separate letters that constitutes a diphthong.

A digraph is sometimes confused with a diphthong. A digraph is a combination of two letters (not necessarily vowels) representing the sound of one such as ph or ey. In the printing trade, digraph is the term applied to a character made up of two letters joined as are the a and the e in Aonghus' prior post.

As regards Irish diphthongs, An Gúm Foclóir Póca does not cite "ae" as such. It does list four others:

Radharc -- having the sound of English "eye"
Leabhar -- "cow"
Bia -- "pianist"
Fuar -- "fluent"

Since the "a" followed by "e" (sans fada) takes the sound of "é" as in Gaeltacht, I guess we would identify it as a digraph. I suspect that the printed digraph, which I don't seem to be able to reproduce here may be specific only to certain fonts.

Digraphs are a load of shite. It's just irregular spelling messin' things up again.

As for sounds, here's how I look at them:

Vowel:
------

A noise you can make for ten seconds.

áááááááááa
éééééééééééééée
óóóóóóóó

Diphthongs:
-----------

It sounds like a vowel, but when you try to say it for ten seconds you realize that it's two vowels.

For example try to say this:

ááááááááááááááááááááíííííííííííííííííííííí

That's "eye"

Consanants:
-----------

You can't sustain them. The only last for a second.

-

"ae" is just a broad version of "é"

-

Learner's
ENGLISH-IRISH
IRISH-ENGLISH
DICTIONARY
Ó Siochfhradha


An Comhlacht Oideachais

-

To sum things up, I'd say use "ae" or "æ", which ever you want. But I have to say the stuck-together-one looks pretty cool.

-Phil

It's distressing to put effort into researching and writing a post and then to have it summarily trashed and discarded as though the effort doesn't even deserve consideration. I've noticed a frequent turnover in contributors to this site. I think I know why.

Brannigan, a chara,

I appreciated your post. That's good information to know.

Go raibh maith agat.

Bradford

Go raibh maith agat a Bhrannigain as ucht an eolais thuas. Tá sé an-ráite ansin agat faoin défhoghar agus faoin délitir. Very neatly put.

A Phil na hóige, ba dheas dá socrófá beagán beag níos fearr leis an bpobal thart ort anseo, nach ndéarfá? Níor mhiste chuige sin gan focail ar nós 'cac' agus a leithéid a radadh fút is tharat gach ré babhta.
Is féidir le duine cabhrú nó ciorrú a dhéanamh ar shuíomh mar so. Is é mo mheas gurbh fhearr le cách anseo do chabhair ná do chealg.

Cuidigh linn mar san. Maith an fear.

I'll second (or third) the thanks proposed by
Bradford and Seosamh.

Brannigan, a chara, this site has a lot of lurkers as well, who will appreciate your post regardless of whether Phil has let his enthusiasm run away with him again.

"æ" is used in some of the scandanavian languages, and you ought to be able to get it if you use Latin-1 fonts, which are a part of Unicode. You won't get it in ascii. (I just cut & paste it from Phil's post!)

You can get the "æ" character with an ANSI/ASCII font.

It's Alt + 0230 on my system. You'll get it in Character Map anyway. Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools-> Character Map

-Phil

Would someone please help with the translation of.."Happy Mother's Day, I love you."JamesThank you

Lá Máthair Sona! Tá mo chroí istigh ionat!
I'm not sure if you meant "Thank you." as a salutation. If so, it would be "Go raibh maith agat."
-Maidhc.

I had a funny feeling so I came back. That should be "Lá Mháthair Sona!"
-Maidhc.

I'd say "Lá na Máithreacha" for mother's day (genitive, and plural)

Lá na Máithreacha Shona duit
Tá grá agam ort

This bit of information regarding the second Sunday in May in America. The holiday is spelled
"Mother's Day" which is genitive, singular.

Mother's Day

Don't mind that. English grammar never makes sense. eg. Bike Shop

Shop of a bike

I don't think so

Shop of bikes

-

Genetive Singular

The day of a mother


Genetive Plural

The day of mothers


Genetive Definite Article Singular

The day of the mother


Genetive Definite Article Plural

The day of the mothers


-

It's easy to see that the best is

The day of mothers

which, by the gay grammar "rules" of English, becomes

Mother's day, Mothers' Day, whatever.


-


Mother's Day

as Aonghus said

is

Lá na Máithreacha


-Phil

Well, that tears it for me. Apparently you're not capable of civility. As I suggested several days ago, I suspect your bad manners are driving others away. At any rate, I'm gone.

Brannigan

Opps!!

That's should've been


An Lá Máithreacha

The day of mothers


as opposed to


Lá na Máithreacha


The day of THE mothers


I haven't quite got the hang of it fully yet.


-Phil

NO! Dammit.
There are times when it is idiomatically correct to use "na" and times when it ought to be left out.

An Lá Maithreacha is cumbersome and unidiomatic.

Brannigan, tá súil agam go bhfuil tú fós ansin!

I went for Mother's Day being plural since it is the day for all Mothers.

It's ambiguous in English, you could make a case for it being either, but plural makes a little more sense to me.

The day of mothers

The day of the mothers

Maybe you're right. I can see how both of them could be right. And I definitely agree that it's the plural. I suppose "the mothers" is more personal.

-Phil

I would say that it is more a day FOR mothers rather than OF mothers. To me 'Day of the Mothers' sounds like the title of a very bad 1950's era drive-in theater horror film. I can just picture zombie-like, angry grannies wielding meat cleavers and rolling pins - wreaking havoc on a small town's hormonally over-charged teenagers. EEEEEEKK!!!
And I'm torn as to my preference between singular or plural. It is a day for all mothers, but I won't be honoring anyone elses mother. Just my own. So how about "Lá do Máthair"(Day for Mother.) or "Lá Mháthar"(Mother's Day.-gen. sing.)?

Can anyone tell me the Irish for Cherries, Calf (as in baby cow, one that is still alive...not like veal), and butterfly? Thanks a bunch!

cherries silíní
calf lao
butterfly feileachán

Maidhc
the problem I'd have with your version is that it would be unusual to call your mother "Máthair" in Irish, even more so than in English in Ireland.
And "Day for Mother" just doesn't fly
Lá mo Mháthair - my mothers day
But that gives us a problem with making "Happy Mother's Day" out of it.
If we are wishing our mothers a happy mother's day, it seems to me to demand the plural/general to be sensible.

Hmmm. I see what you mean there, a Aonghuis. Plus, I caught notice of a little something last night in the spelling of the holiday. It's "MOTHERS DAY" - no apostophy. That pretty much summed it up for me. Lá na Mháithreacha. (I'm still not sure why you need 'an' in the middle. Does it make the distinction between article and adjective?) And after further reflection on it, the idea of it being a day 'of' mothers also became more clear when it came to me that half of the day would probably be spent by many, both of my parents included, planting flowers in cemetaries.
And it's strange to her 'mother' over here too. I usually just call mine 'Ma'.
Slán,
Maidhc.

an lá = the day

an oíche = the night


Chaith mé an lá
Chaith mé an oíche

-

an lae = of the day

na hoíche = of the night (an -> na, it's because "oíche" is feminine. It happens with all feminine nouns)

Bhí mé ag caitheamh an lae.
Bhí mé ag caitheamh na hoíche.

-

an mháthair = the mother

na máthar = the mothers


na máthar = of the mother

na máithreacha = of the mothers

-

The day of a mother

An lá máthar.

The day of mothers

An lá máithreacha.

The day of the mother

An lá na máthar. The "An" at the start is left out because it's uneccesary:

Lá na máthar

The day of the mothers

Lá na máithreacha


-Phil

Mothers Day, Mother's Day, Mothers' Day


Whichever it is, I want to point something out: That word "Mother" is not the noun we all know, it's a name. If it was the noun we all know, it would be:

A Mothers Day, A Mother's Day, A Mothers' Day


And since it's the name, it's obviously the definite article because we all know who Mother is.


Now if the same is done in Gaeilge, I don't know. But if so, there'd be nothing wrong with:

Lá Máthar

or Lá Seáin, or Lá Tomáis

And I have to say "Lá Máthar" does sound very well and looks natural.

But ofcourse I would've called it "Mam's Day" or "Mammy's Day", something like that:

Lá Mamaí


-Phil