Since 'm' does not eclipse, how is one supposed to tell whether someone is saying her dog or their dog?

my dog		mo mhadadh
your dog		do mhadadh
his dog		a mhadadh
her dog		a madadh
our dog		ár madadh
your dog		bhur madadh
their dog		a madadh

To avoid confusion you can use:

madadh di
madadh dóibh

[I am sure there is an Ulster version for these prepositions.]

madra di
madra dóibh

(Message edited by seánw on October 06, 2009)

You can also repeat the pronoun after the noun in its constrastive form for clarification:

a mhadadh seisean
a madadh sise
ár madadh muide
bhur madadh sibhse
a madadh siadsan.

This is the preferred method in Conamara where all of these possessive pronouns are pronounced /ə/.

It is interesting to note that this repetition of the pronoun is the standard form in Welsh, even though the possessive pronouns and the mutations they cause are distinct. Perhaps it goes right back to an older Celtic form? or is it just convergent evolution?

In Connemara Irish you'd also hear an madadh s'aicise. (Note that the s' here is pronounced as slender; it comes from seo, not is.)


Think the ambiguous a madadh is still more common than the rest of these put together, though - context is generally enough to avoid confusion.

A Bhreandáin, what you say about Welsh isn't actually true. There's the same sort of ambiguity with initial m-. Consider:

fy mam i
dy fam di
ei fam e
ei mam hi
ein mam ni
eich mam chi
eu mam nhw

Keep in mind that ei vs. eu is an orthographic fiction; both these adjectives are pronounced /i/ and have been for ages. Now, there are speakers who devoice nasals as part of the aspirate mutation and, thus, would say [i'm̥ami] for "her mother", but my understanding is that they aren't in the majority. Oh, and another little detail: /və/ for fy is a very formal pronunciation; the colloquial form is /ə(n)/. And ein is really /ən/ so, again, there's less separating fy mam i and ein mam ni than it seems on paper.

Thus it seems clear enough to me that the "echoing pronouns" were added for purposes of clarification--and relatively recently at that, since they don't appear in writing until relatively recently. That's rather the opposite of what we would expect if they went back to an older Celtic form.

Thanks, a Dhomhnaillín, for the explanation. Unfortunately I lost all of my Welsh books in the move from Japan to Oz (probably somewhere at my in-law's house in Japan but they've moved since too) so thanks for refreshing my memory on the forms. I have only really dabbled into Welsh but I always wondered about that one. So it _is_ just a coincidence after all. :-)

Linda, what Abigail says is certainly true - you only need to distinguish these forms for emphasis or contrast in Irish, i.e., those places that you would emphasize her dog or their dog, etc., for contrast or clarification in English.

Thanks everybody. I was thinking of a situation where context wouldn't really help, as, for example, when the neighbourhood is full of freshly dug holes, and someone asks whose dog is the likely culprit, your daughter's or the one belonging to the family across the street.

I was quite prepared to be told I would have to resort to naming the owners/possessors in question, but I much prefer the emphatic forms. Until now, I hadn't seen them used in that way, only as emphasizing the subject/object/bare predicate of the sentence. To my untrained ear, tá sé a madadh sise and tá sé a madadh siadsan sound quite elegant.

Assuming, of course, that I've got them right. Please let me know if something more is required, like a relative clause or some such.

Is a madadh sise/siadsan é

Being a dog is a condition....

It certainly is! Thank you.

quote:

Being a dog is a condition....

I'm probably missing something here, so your patience is appreciated, but isn't being a dog more of a classification or identification, requiring the use of "is," and not a state of being?

Yes, it requires the use of is. It is an unchanging condition. But classification/identification use is too, so I don't understand the confusion.

Is (é) an múinteoir é.

quote:

Is (é) an múinteoir é.

"Is é an múinteoir é". Ní féidir an chéad "é" a ligean ar lár nuair atá identification i gceist.

Nó "is múinteoir é" gan alt le classification a dhéanamh.

(Message edited by peter on October 09, 2009)

Could someone write out the cases of madadh as it is used in Connacht please.

O'Siadhail shows the nominative singular/plural as madadh madraí. Since the Standard madra madraí is a fourth declension masculine noun, I just assumed that madadh was also. But I now have reason to doubt my assumption.

So, madra would be:
ns madra
gs madra
np madraí
gp madraí

And madadh would be ...?

Voc.Sn. a mhadaí (!)
Nom./Gen.Sn. mada

Pl. madaí / madraí /mɑ:dəri:/

Note the exceptional vocative singular and the vowel quality in the plural "madraí". The alternative stem "madr-" /ma:dər/ is also used in some set expressions in singular (e.g. "madradh uisce").

(Message edited by peter on October 09, 2009)

quote:

Nom./Gen.Sn. mada

Hi, Peter. Just so I'm clear on this, I assume that mada is pronounced the same way Ó Siadhail's madadh is, but you're saying the way he spells it is not the way it's commonly spelled where you are. And Connacht does use Ó Siadhail's plural madraí, but it also uses madaí. Did I get that right?

quote:

madradh uisce

Is madradh just a typo, Peter? Foclóir Póca has madra uisce (OC) for otter, so based on your previous statement I would expect it to be mada uisce or Ó Siadhail's madadh uisce in Connacht. But perhaps you're telling me that the people in your vicinity make the expression their own by adding an R.

quote:

Note the ... vowel quality in the plural

I did indeed, and I was wondering if you might be able to explain why the first vowel is pronounced as a long A. I've been told that an R makes the preceding vowel long, but surely not when a D comes between them. When I put madadh, madaidh [Donegal's words for dog(s)] through the synthesizer at abair.ie, what I heard also sounded like a long A.

Hi Linda,

quote:

Just so I'm clear on this, I assume that mada is pronounced the same way Ó Siadhail's madadh is... And Connacht does use Ó Siadhail's plural madraí, but it also uses madaí. Did I get that right?

Yes, absolutely right. One thing that I should have mentioned before is that "mada" reflects the Connemara pronunciation because there the word-final "adh" in nominals is mostly a schwa. However, the final "-adh" becomes /-u:/ as you go north, so basically the preferred spelling for the whole of Connacht should be "madadh" (however I'm not an expert on Mayo Irish).

quote:

Is madradh just a typo, Peter?

No, no. As I said, the two stems coexist in Connemara Irish - the variety taught by Ó Siadhail. "mad-" is used in the singular and plural of the word "dog" whereas "madr-" is used (1) to form the alternative plural "madraí" (dogs) which is pronounced as if spelt "mádaraí"; and (2) in a small number of set expressions in both the singular and plural. These are "madradh uisce" (otter), "madradh allta" (wolf) and are pronounced as if spelt "madara".

Technically, in Connemara the vowel in "madr-/mad-" is always realised as long. However, the quality changes from the front /a/ in the singular in both stems to the back /ɑ/ in the plural of "madr-".

As for why this happens, /dr/ and /d'r'/ seem to be among the clusters causing dithphongisation and vowel lengthening (e.g. "paidir" --> "páidreacha"). Note however that there is always an epenthetic vowel in "madr-". So, the word is pretty unusual, to say the least.

P.S. The people where I come from speak Russian, and it's almost a year now that the people in my current vicinity have been predominantly German-speaking =)

(Message edited by peter on October 09, 2009)

(Message edited by peter on October 09, 2009)

quote:

I'm probably missing something here, so your patience is appreciated, but isn't being a dog more of a classification or identification, requiring the use of "is," and not a state of being?

Well, a Bodhrán, I'm very grateful you asked that question, because once I was told the copula was required, I wondered about that too.

quote:

Yes, it requires the use of is. It is an unchanging condition. But classification/identification use is too, so I don't understand the confusion.

A Sheáin, if I may be so bold as to put words in Bodhrán's mouth, I think the confusion lies not in the use of is, but in the placement of the pronoun(s). According to Nancy Stenson, referring to equation (aka identification) sentences, the copula in such a sentence MUST be followed immediately by a pronoun.

If that is the case, "it's her dog / it's their dog" would presumably be:

is é a madadh sise é / is é a madadh siadsan é

Now, let's not all shoot the messenger! I have no idea whether this is right, or whether it pertains to all areas of the country. (Although Stenson puts geographic caveats on many of her statements, the above is not one of them.)

All feedback welcome, although you may want to start a separate thread, since it's no longer relevant to the title of this one. I personally love the way discussions evolve on this forum. But others might feel that the message list should give some indication of what the messages are about -- and I can't fault that.

My understanding is this:

Classification:

Is madadh é -- It is a dog.
Is é madadh é -- in Donegal (called a generalized form).

Identification:

Is é an madadh é -- It is the dog.
(Donegal seems to prefer a different form -- Eisean an madadh.)

I made a mistake on my previous example by including the article.

quote:
However, the final "-adh" becomes /-u:/ as you go north, so basically the preferred spelling for the whole of Connacht should be "madadh" (however I'm not an expert on Mayo Irish)

Yes its pronounced Madú in north Mayo.The plural being Madaí.

( How do you do a quote??)

Thanks Seán for the clarification above - I forgot that conditions could be permanent. .
Thanks Linda Kathleen for your remarks above - I also love the way discussions evolve here - it almost always adds to my learning experience here - like this thread that you started.

quote:

( How do you do a quote??)

A Liam, you do a quote as follows:

(backslash)quote{whatever you're quoting}

You'll need to replace the parentheses and the word backslash with an actual backslash. I can't show that above because then it would make an actual quote. You can find more info under the help section

(Message edited by bodhrán on October 10, 2009)