As BC, ceacht 30:

Thug mé seacht bpingin air.

Regarding the n at the end of bpingin... does this sound approximate an "ng" sound or do my ears deceive me?

In Munster Irish palatal unlenited n is ŋ' when intervocalic or final eg. coinne kiŋ'i, olainn oliŋ',spairn spariŋ'.

(Source: The Irish of West Muskerry, Co. Cork, page 119, the letter N)

Ach, seacht bpingine a thug tú air.
(Plural of pingin.)

Lars

You are right, seacht, ocht, naoi, deich can be followed by singular or plural of noun except in case of bliain, ceann etc. with their special plural forms after numerals.

Pingin is one of them.

By the way, in most dialects, "pingin" is pronounced as if it were spelt pínn or píng...

so, what numbers does "pingin" become "pingine"?

dhá, cúig, deich, fiche, caoga?

also, would it be deich scillinge as well?

I think I've mislabeled some on my coin collection.

pingin becomes pingine after 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and the numbers that end with 3 > 9 (included). With all the other numbers you use the singular:

deich bpingine
trí pingine
trí pingine is daichead
céad is ceithre pingine

but:

dhá phingin
triocha pingin
caoga pingin
fiche pingin
céad pingin...

quote:

also, would it be deich scillinge as well?

Yes, deich scillinge.

Lars

(Message edited by lars on April 16, 2008)

Thanks.

pingin becomes pingine after 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and the numbers that end with 3 > 9 (included). With all the other numbers you use the singular:

Is that dialect-specific?

According to Buntús Cainte it's "ceithre scilling agus sé phingin."

Where does this whole class of "special plural after numerals" originate from?

In Dinnen and my old grammar of the Christian brothers nothing of it is mentioned.

For example Dinneen gives in his dictionary of 1927 for apples the plural uiḃe(aċa), for years the plural bliaḋana / bliaḋanta and for pennies pinginne / pinginní etc. without mention of a different usage.

So is this only a CO invention / convention? Domhnall_Ó_h_aireachtaigh obviously found other examples.

PS. The only other case with special "number cases" I know of is Russian with forms like два шага [dwa ʃa'ga] (two steps) where one might expect the normal gen.sg. шага ['ʃaga] (Note the different accent).

Michal wrote some notes on this:

see

http://www.cainteoir.com/cainteoir_files/gramadach/Uimhreacha.pdf

What an unbelievably useful thing! Thank you for posting the link!