teach ‘s aige – his house
aghaidh ‘s aici – her face

I understand this to mean a possession. What is ‘s short for?

Go raibh maith agat!

It is seo.

teach ’s aige = an teach seo aige.

Lars

The text I am getting this from does not have an article.

V + N + 's + ag + possessor of N.

Sampla:

Ní thiocfadh liom aghaidh 's aici a fheiceáil.

I'm familiar with Lars example as well.
What confuses me about yours sean is why it's not aghaidh s'aige!

Small diff.. but.

The face is a woman's.

Ní thiocfadh liom aghaidh 's aici a fheiceáil.

I was not able to [or could not] see her face.

Lars, [et al.?,] is this simply an idiom in which the an is dropped as well?

(Message edited by seánw on October 19, 2009)

The seo makes the an superflous, because the phrase is definite.

Sin tuairim s'agamsa pé scéal é!

If it made it superfluous, you'd drop the article everytime you have "seo" and "sin"...

To me, some people drop the article by analogy with what you say with proper nouns: Seán s'againne, Máire s'againne.

But to me, I think one shouldn't drop it...

"S' aige" is an idiomatic expression without demonstrative but rather possessive meaning, so dropping of article is possible.
In demonstrative "an teach seo = this house" probably noone (?) drops it.

Lars

>"S' aige" is an idiomatic expression without demonstrative >but rather possessive meaning, so dropping of article is >possible.

The s' is a demonstrative particle.
It's as in "an tseachtain s'chuaigh thart".

I see also that my text may have made a typo with an 's instead of an s'. In other parts it is s'. Maybe this is what Sinead was talking about before in her post? Thanks for clearing this up. This "teach ’s aige" from "an teach seo aige" seemed quite a leap for me, but then again, so does "'na" from "chun an" (and others)! I have a bit more difficulty deciphering the colloquial expressions and shortenings than the spelled out "literary" writing. Thanks!

I didn't mean gender, just that I thought the apostrophe in yours- i.e. 's aige/aici/acu (before the prep pronouns) should probably go after the s as it means seo! As in s'.

Thought that was confusing you some.

Ah sean I missed your last msg there so ignore me in my last msg :)

Lughaidh's expression is new to me anyhoo:- as in 'an tseachtain s'chuaigh thart'.

Sounds lovely.. Before this I only heard seo used with the prep. pronouns .

They say "an tseachtain seo caite" in other places and that's what you'd find in most (all?) learning books. But in Donegal at least, people say "an tseachtain s'chuaigh thart", "an mhí s'chuaigh thart", etc.

i gCiarraí - "An tseachtain seo a d'imigh tharrainn" is coitianta, nach ea?