Greetings all,

I am new to Irish, and have recently bought Irish Grammar by Hippocrene books.
However, although the book lists nouns in all the relevant cases, it does not provide me with a 'formula' if you will, for changing nouns.
I realize that there may be many rules to this, but I have little hope of learning Irish without a good working knowledge of nouns.
Please give me a formula for changing nouns to fit different cases. My email address is .
Also, if any of you have AOL messenger and are willing to spend your time coaching a very amateur but very determined aspiring Irish speaker, please let me know!

Clare

woah! can you narrow it down a little? Give us a few nouns which you are having trouble with & I'll try and deduce some rules for you. I can't get my head around grammatical terms like "cases" at all.

A Oliver,
I think the point of Clare's querie is that she would like to find a way to take nouns from their singular to their plural forms without having to learn them all one word at a time."Tis a daunting task that I myself have trouble with. It's almost as if there are 4 sets of regular declensions plus 1 set of irregular and another that noone has ever figured out except by word of mouth and accepting the word of whomever taught them.YIKES.
I understand that to native speakers this is far less a problem because their mindset is automatically wrapped around this puzzle of putting nouns into their proper declensions and readily forming the proper word in its proper case. (Phew!)
So, Is there a way to first; take a singular noun and identify which declension it belongs to and then next; make it into its proper plural forms for its proper tenses by means of - let's call it grammarical mechanical manipulation? (Insert maniacal laughter HERE!)
Áigh, Tá tinneas inchinn orm...(Ow, my brain hurts...?)
Slán,
Maidhc.

Oliver, A Chara,

Clare and Mike have brought up a question that I have just about dispaired of having answered via the Internet. I found each of their posts confusing, and I think it's because the subject is so confusing to us, that it's difficult to clearly state the question.

I had a correspondent, a native speaker in Dublin who was wonderfully versed in all things grammatical who just stopped writing after I asked the kind of question asked by C & M. Nevertheless, I'm bound and determined to try again.

Here goes:

On page viii of Foclóir Póca there is a table with the heading: The Noun in Irish. The table lists examples of nouns of each declension and the correct spelling of the nominative plural and the genitive singular and genitive plural for each example. (Sorry about that.)

If I wish to know the plural of bád, the table indicates báid. The table also tells me that "of the boat," is báid and "of the boats" is bád.

This is fine so long as the noun I'm dealing with appears in the table. Obviously every noun in the language does not.

I have stared at those tables until my eyes have crossed, hoping to discover some pattern in the changes that can be applied to nouns not listed in the table. I suspect it has something to do with slenderizing, but any system or method escapes me.

Beir bua ...
Pádraig

There's a good online dictionary from the University of Limerick (my alma mater) which gives information like this. So for "bád" it's:

bád [ainmneach uatha] [nom singular]
báid [ginideach uatha] [gen singular]
báid [ainmneach iolra] [nom plural]
bád [ginideach iolra] [gen plural]

This might be of some use - it's also excellent for verbs, lists all the different tenses.

www.csis.ul.ie/focloir

It's an Irish-Irish dictionary but learners can use it for the grammar without too much trouble, I'd say.

Slán.

Molaigi Dia! Is an cloch Rosetta é -- An Foclóir Beag. If it were a girl I'd be asking "where have you been all my life?"

http://www.csis.ul.ie/focloir/

This link needs to be on every desktop, y'all. Just make sure you scroll down past the definitions as Gaeilge to get to the declension tables. More good news. The verbs are conjugated too.

Oiche maith, A Oliver, agus buíochas.
P.

'Foclóir Uí Néill' a thugaim air le meas ar an té a chruthaigh é, Gearóid Ó Néill.
Is leathbhádóir maith ag 'Foclóir an Dálaigh' - 'Foclóir Uí Dhónaill' é.