I've noticed words use the -se suffix before but I'm not sure what it exactly means. For example, I was reading a children's book about the alphabet and each letter has a little poem that goes along with it.

quote:

Áine Asal m'ainmse
Im' sheasamh dom sa pháirc.
Gan chara beo im' chuideachta
Nach uaigneach é an radharc?

Dá dtiocfása ag súgradh liom
Againn bheadh spórt is spraoi
Is neosfainnse mo rúnta dhuit
Hí-há, hí-há, hí-hí!.

The example in this is m'ainmse, "my name" but why does it have the -se ending?

Also as a side confirmation, Im' is just i mo? Right?

-se and -sa are used for emphasis/contrast.

m'ainmse = MY name
dá dtiocfása = if YOU would come
neosfainnse = _I_ would tell you

And yes, i m' = i mo

These are called, usually, the emphatic suffixes. They are used:

1) For emphasis;
2) When one pronoun is linked by a conjunction to another pronoun or to a noun.

They can be used with:

1) Possessive adjectives; (m'ainmse)
2) Personal pronouns (often in stories ar seisean etc)
3) Prepositional pronouns (domsa)
4) Synthetic forms of verbs (Dá dtiocfása)


Féin is also used for emphasis by itself (mo theach féin), with the emphatic particles (mise féin), and to convey reflexivity (mé féin).

The convention in the past was to separate them from the word with a hyphen, e.g. m'ainm-se, Dá dtiocfá-sa, which was clearer and easier on the eye while reading quickly.

A Shéamuis,
I don't believe that custom was universally practiced nor preached. A well placed hyphen can help reading when there is ambiguity, but other than that, they may slow reading if they are used too much or used irregularly.

It was the norm in the enormous majority of books up to the 1950's or so, manuscripts are another matter.
I agree that avoiding superfluous hyphens, and other punctuation marks, is desirable (e.g. I think the Scots overdo it a bit with the apostrophes) but in this case I think there is good reason to make use of them - particularly for the benefit of learners.

One of the worst mistakes a speaker can make is to transpose the English-language method of emphasis on to Irish.

For example, in English when when you want to emphasise that some article, say a book, belongs to you, you say, "That's MY book". The speaker puts the stress on the posessive adjective "MY".

In Irish though, it's done differently. You don't put extra stress on any particular word. Instead, you add a suffix to the noun or prepositional pronoun depending on the structure of the sentence. "Sin mo leabhar" becomes "Sin mo leabharsa" and "Is liom an leabhar" becomes "Is liomsa an leabhar".

However, you have some people, learners mainly, who import the English practice into Irish and end up saying things like,"Sin MO leabhar" and Is LIOM an leabhar", putting stress on "liom" and "mo". This is incorrect. In fact it's more than incorrect, it's really grating on the ear.

I only know of one grammar book that states that this practice is unequivically wrong and that's "Irish Grammar" by Éamonn Ó Dónaill.

(Message edited by Joe on February 10, 2010)