In English, we use "self" or "own" when we're performing an action upon ourselves, or talking about our own posessions:

He killed himself
He killed his own dog

What's funny though is that some people also use it for emphasis. Usually, in English, we indicate emphasis by stressing our voice on certain syllables, but in the following sentences we use "self" or "own" to indicate emphasis:

I myself saw him do it.
I saw my own brother do it.

This abandonment of stressed syllables in favour of different sounds is similar to Irish's use of "mise, tusa eisean". Usually, we'd hear:

I saw him go it.
I saw my brother do it.

What has me confused though is why I've seen people, in Irish, use "féin" for emphasis. Why would someone say "Chonaic seisean féin an gadaí" rather than "Eisean a chonaic an gadaí"? Is this native use or is it simply Béarlachas propogated by learners?

It is odd that noone has responded to this, which seems like an interesting and informative thread.

Beir bua agus beannacht

Féin may have become some sort of empasiser that gets into places where reflexivity is required. My feelings on this is only provisional at the moment, but:

mise
mise mé fhéin
orm fhéin

(reflexive pronouns and empasis and retrospective pronouns)

dar liom (methinks)

suggest some sort of 'reflexivity of report' regarding consciousness that might have a polarity, but different to identity vs classification in the copula, is going on. If languages had personalities, Irish would love conditionality and woulds and herselfs etc It's only vague in feeling on my part but it may be part of the 'internal zeigeist' of the tongue to do such a thing

PS. I only had 1 Ubh seacláide and I feel sick of them

"PS. I only had 1 Ubh seacláide and I feel sick of them"

We just got back from the garden store, where my better half picked up two Cadbury eggs on the way out. I resisted!

Regarding this topic, however, only one observation from my corner:

"I saw my own brother do it."
vs.
"I saw *my* brother do it."

To my ear, "my own" brother implies a sense of disbelief, shock or horror at the action of the brother, whereas "*MY* brother" would imply "mine and not anybody else's."

How would both be expressed properly in Irish?

"I saw my own brother do it."
mo dheartháir féin

"I saw *my* brother do it."
mo dheartháir-se

do chara féin = your own friend
do chara-se = *your* friend (as opposed to mine)

NB: The emphatic particle "-se" is usually written without the hyphen, but I find it clearer in many cases to add the hyphen, as above.

Sílim go gcuirtear caol le caol agus leathan le leathan i bhfeidhm le -se / -sa: do dheartháirse; your brother (as opposed to mine); do charasa (do chara-sa). The slender with slender and broad with broad spelling rule is applied.

Incidentally paper never refused ink and CDs record whatever is saved on them. There is a version of The Three Bears on the market "Na Trí Béir" which makes a hash of this feature: instead of saying "cé d'ith mo leitese" [with "leitese" carrying the stress] the bear says "cé d'ith MO leite". It is such a pity because otherwise the story is well presented. I suppose with the spread of Gaelscoileanna a hundred such errors will be introduced into the spoken language .... It will still be Irish however. Só ar aghaidh linn! Glanfaidh muid suas inár ndiaidh. We'll clean up after us. We have plenty of headlines and templates to follow: Ó Criomhthain, Peig Sayers, Ó Cadhain, Ó Ruadháin, Ó Grianna, Ó Maolchonaire, Céitinn ... Aodhagán Ó Rathaille, Brian Merriman, Ó Direáin, Ó Riordáin, ...

quote:

Sílim go gcuirtear caol le caol agus leathan le leathan i bhfeidhm le -se / -sa: do dheartháirse; your brother (as opposed to mine); do charasa (do chara-sa).

An ceart ar fad agatsa. Botún a bhí ann. GRMA.

Help me understand this. In a sentence such as "cé d'ith mo leitese," does the spoken Irish not stress the "mo?" Or are we just referring to the way the written word indicates the emphasis for the reader?

Scríobh Pádraig: In a sentence such as "cé d'ith mo leitese," does the spoken Irish not stress the "mo?"

A Phádraig, I haven't yet located a reference text for your question, but I have read that in spoken Irish there would be no stress on "mo." Instead of putting stress on "mo" Irish uses suffices like "se" in your example above to indicate emphasis.

Stress is not applied to mo, and also not to most other little words in the language that tack on at the beginning (a, mo, sean-)

There is an overall change in tone for the phrase "who ate my lettice" vs. "who ate my letticese", but there is not the big shift as in English at the pronoun of ownership

quote:

NB: The emphatic particle "-se" is usually written without the hyphen, but I find it clearer in many cases to add the hyphen, as above.

Not to contradict you, but I've never seen any proficient writer use hyphens other than where they're "required". The only time I've seen "-se / -sa" with a hyphen is in two s's running in together: mo dhoras-sa.

quote:

do chara-se = *your* friend (as opposed to mine)

Caol le caol, leathan le leathan ;)

quote:

Help me understand this. In a sentence such as "cé d'ith mo leitese," does the spoken Irish not stress the "mo?" Or are we just referring to the way the written word indicates the emphasis for the reader?

Presumably you're a native English speaker. In English, we tend to place emphasis or stress (whatever you wanna call it) by vocally stressing the syllables we utter. In Irish, however, emphasis/stress is indicated a lot of the time by simply altering the sound (e.g. by putting -se at the end).

Other than the Queen's English -- which isn't spoken by anyone who can actually express themselves -- most, if not all, dialects of English have alternate forms of pronouns for indicating stress, analogous with how Irish has "mé" Vs "mise". In my own dialect of English, for instance, which is a hybrid of workingclass and middleclass English of Dublin in Ireland, my pronounciation of the unstressed / stressed pronouns are as follows:

me Vs me
yeh Vs you
um Vs him
er Vs hur
us Vs all vus ("all of us")
yiz Vs all yous ("all yous")
dum Vs dem

Your question can be answered in terms of language universally, not just in terms of the Irish language: If the sounds themselves can indicate the emphasis, then there's no need to stress the syllable, and so the syllable isn't stressed. Therefore the following is said without any stress:

Mo charrsa a chonaic sé seachas do charrsa.

Whereas the English version would use stress:

He saw my car, not yours.

As I said, most, if not all, of the dialects of English have alternate pronouns forms for emphasis... it's just that they're not acknowledged in the written language.

the pronoun féin

féin (= self) is used as:
Retrospective pronoun (forainm aisbhreathnaitheach)

* mé féin = myself, sé féin = himself
* in the sense of personal (e.g.: Rinne sé féin é = He did it by himself)
* also to emphasise the personal pronoun (e.g. Tá mé féin sásta anois = I myself, anyway, am now satisfied)
* In clauses with the pronoun in complex subjects/objects (e.g.: Tá mé féin agus Pól ann = Paul and I are there)
* and with the possessive pronoun in the sense of "own": (e.g.: mó theach féin = my own house)

Reflexive pronoun (forainm athfhillteach)

* mé féin = myself, é féin = himself
* reflexive on the subject (e.g. Chneáigh sé é féin = He hurt himself)

féin appears (retrospective and reflexive):

* with a personal pronoun (subject- or object form) e.g.: mé féin = me myself/my self; tú féin = you yourself/ your self, é féin = he himself/his self etc.
* with an emphatic personal pronoun (then additionally a simple pronoun!) tusa tú féin, mise mé féin, etc.
* with a prepositional pronoun e.g. Déan duit féin é = do it for yourself
* with synthetic verb forms e.g.: Chonaiceamar féin é = we saw it ourselves, déan féin é! = do it yourself!
* with nouns (them mostly with the inserted é/í/iad) *: e.g.: na daoine (iad) féin a rinne é = the people did it themselves; Bhí Pól (é) féin ann = Paul (himself) was there
* with possessive pronoun + verbal noune.g.: Bhí sé á dhíol féin = he sold himself
* with possessive pronoun + noun in the sense of own e.g.: mo theach féin = my own house

féin is often pronounced [he:n'] instead of [f'e:n'] .
(part. dialect dependent, part. dependent on the preceding sound)
In Connemara e.g. only the pronunciation [he:n'] is common.
The pronunciation [p'e:n'] also appears e.g. in Munster and on the Aran Islands, if it follows an -m: dhom féin [γ@m pe:n'] =to myself. Then also part. written as péin (dhom péin).
Writing fhéin is wrong!

The adjective same is céanna: e.g. an fear céanna = the same man (see pronominal adjectives)
the adverb féin

féin = self can not only be used as a pronoun but also as an adverb(like in German)

It takes on the meaning of "even":
e.g.: Bhí Pól féin ann = Even Paul was there.
It can appear alone or as a complement to other adverbs.
e.g.: mar sin féin = even then, despite that, anyway; anois féin = even now; fós féin = even still; chéana féin = already

*: é/í/iad is mostly inserted to differentiate between pronoun and adverb.
ex..: Bhí Pól é féin ann = Paul himself was (personally) there (pronoun)
Bhí Pól féin ann = Even (himself) Paul was there (adverb)

Pádraig asked: Help me understand this. In a sentence such as "cé d'ith mo leitese," does the spoken Irish not stress the "mo?" Or are we just referring to the way the written word indicates the emphasis for the reader?

May I answer briefly and simply: In a sentence such as "cé d'ith mo leitese" do not stress the word "mo" stress "leit" like this: "cé d'ith mo LEITese". That's the natural stress in Irish. There's probably secondary emphasis which could be indicated by "CÉ D'ITH mo LEITese" although the first two words would receive less stress than LEIT.

Mac Léinn, BRN, and Fear na mBróg have also alluded to the "little words" that are never stressed, prepositions and such like.

Unfortunately sometimes singers forget this and land heavily on the little word when they could so easily have avoided this mistake. It spoils the song. Get a good speaker of Irish to check out your matching of words to music if you are tempted to record...... :-) Otherwise listen listen and listen again to the really good singers, Nioclás Tóibín singing "Róisín Dubh" for example.

Mise Taidhgín. I've forgotten my pasfhocal.