Hi all,

I was curious of the difference between "Ó" and "Mac"....Also how a name with Ó would be for women...
Does it have to do with how old the name is for the MAC and Ó

Secondly,

I was curious if someone might show me a sample of Manx Gaelic, something simple that I can compare to Irish...If possible

Finally I learned some with Buntús Cainte...they said the prefix an- means very (An-te)

I was reading on something for BBC and they said iontach ( which Buntús said meant BEAUTIFUL) could be used this way (Iontach te) I was wondering what's up with this, if it's just an alternative or maybe a dialectal thing ( the site used "Cad é mar atá tú" which I was under the impression is northern...

Thanks

Ooh! Ooh! I know this!

Mac -- 'son of'
Ó -- 'grandson of'

A woman married to an Ó Sé, would be (Bean) Uí Shé, an umarried woman would be Ní Shé

A woman married to a Mac Craith, would be (Bean) Mhic Chraith, and an umarried woman would be Nic Chraith.

Am I close? An bhfuil mé ceart?

Craith? Would that have become "McGrath"?

and also would it be like "Ó craith" later on once my grandfather was a craith?

Tá tú ceart, a RobinF.

Maidir le Gaelg Vannin, feach anseo:
http://homepages.enterprise.net/kelly/FRONT/INFO/oml/spec.html

Manx looks very different to Irish, because they have a completely different orthography. But it sounds very similar.

I don't know that there are any rules for why some surnames use Ó and others Mac - both go back a very long way, and don't change.

Fred, a chara,

"iontach" is sometimes used in the Ulster dialect instead of "an" as a prefix meaning "very".

Le meas,

Larry.

My translation of "iontach" is "wonderful".

Another thing I was looking through Buntús cainte and they seem to not lenite and put úrú in some places


Isn't it "An bhord"?

This always confuses me, too. I depends on how it is used. Are you talking about a table? To a table? (and, what is "dative", anyways?)

Bord is a masculine noun, so it doesn't lenite (well, except in the genetive ('of the table') sense) when you're talking about a table. I have to look at the charts every time.

I looked up the differenet forms here:
http://www.ceantar.org/cgi-bin/grmqsearch.cgi/Irish?bord

which really gives me a better idea how things work.

iontach [aidiacht den chéad díochlaonadh]
a bhainfeadh preab asat toisc é a theacht gan choinne, surprising

a chuirfeadh iontas ort; wonderful

strainséartha (tá an obair iontach aige go fóill); unused to

maith, breá, nótáilte (d'éirigh go hiontach leis); good

an- (tá sé iontach te) very.

The very usage is commonest in Ulster.

-----
Dative is the case in which a noun is put if the subject of the sentence is in some way giving the object to that noun.

Dative is slowly dissappearing from most languages.

the table = an bord

the table's leg = cos an bhoird

the tables = na boird

the tables' legs = cosa na mbord

Dative: When the noun comes after a preposition, eg. "to a table", "from the bus", "with John", "under it".

We don't distinguish much between the nominative and dative case in Gaeilge because they're 99.9999999% the same. There's only a handful of nouns that have a different form for the dative. Here's a few:

lámh
ar láimh

grian
ar ghréin

Éire
go hÉirinn

teach
ó thigh

cos
faoi chois

My translation of "iontach" is "wonderful".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/blas/learners/beag1/lesson2.shtml

This link is to Giota Beag, an Irish learning program produced by BBC Northern Ireland. As such, it is devoted predominately to the Ulster dialect, and in this lesson concerning comments on the weather they have translated Tá sé iontach fuar as It is very cold.

I like the connotation, wonderful, however. Reminds me of Othello's remarking that Desdemona thought his story-telling was "wonderous strange." He meant "very strange," but wonderous (iontach) has so much more. The more I learn of the Irish, the more convinced I am that every time they open their mouths, out comes poetry. Warriors and poets. Iontach.

(Go hiontach)

We have the same kind of thing in English:

The woman is very pretty.

The man is pretty ugly.


But it still doesn't take away from the meaning of "pretty".

The snowflakes were falling slowly.
The snowflakes were slowly falling.