Dia dhaoibh, a chairde,

I am starting to learn the genitive thing, and I am confused about which noun must be in the genitive when you have a "na" in the phrase. For example, if I wished to say "the flavour of the month" would it be "an blas na míosa" nó "an blasais na mí"? Or do they both need to be in the genitive?

I am leaning towards "an blas na míosa" but haven't a clue why...

If there's any type of "genitive rules for dummies" I would love to know them!

Go raibh maith agat, agus gabh mo leithscéal for any missing fadash, srl. Brand new laptop, still figuring things out!

Grmma, arís!

"Blas an míosa" I think. But I'm no expert.

Double definite articles are to be avoided. ;)

"Mí" is feminine, so "na" is used with the genitive singular: blas na míosa = the flavor of the month

blas na míosa
taste of the month.

The noun to which, in English, "of the" is applied, will be in the genetive.

And only one definite article (an/na) is required.

There are tricks to this. Think if you want to say:

a X of a Y
a X of the Y
the X of a Y
the X of the Y

No double genitives, which takes some practice to remember!!!

In some cases of may be expressed by a preposition like ag or de.

Here are some good rules to look at. Practice is the only advice I can give you.

http://nualeargais.ie/gnag/subst2.htm#genitivverwend

OMG...I was RIGHT (well, except for the double article thing...)?!?!

But I am getting ahead of myself; first, let me thank you all for your very kind feedback. As always, you guys rock!

Now on to the brain-picking...If I wished to say to son#4 about son#3's break-up, "Don't worry about it, she's only the flavour of the month."

What I came up with was (aye, fada-less, gml):

Na bac leis; nil si ach an blas na miosa.

Is the "no double articles" a hard and fast rule? What if I wanted to say "THE x of THE y"?

Or is there an idiom that covers this?

Practice, practice, practice....

Seanw: What a wonderful achievement to publish such a useful site http://nualeargais.ie/gnag/subst2.htm#partitiv

Driftwood614:

Regarding "Ná bac leis. Níl sí ach blas na bíosa."

There are three points I can offer:

"blas" is not used of people. It refers to the taste of food. I know that "flavour" does also but Irish shouldn't be made to just carry translations from English. Irish is a language in its own right created by countless generations of people who spoke it among themselves and to their children. You have rightly alluded to this in asking if there is an existing idiom.

Because Irish is a living language we have all recently learnt a new word "siabhrán" from the Headshop controversy. I think "siabhrán na míosa" would be better.

I have to abandon this message now as I am being called away .... 2 and 3 to follow ... slán tamall

Ar ais arís ...

a further comment on "blas" it also means good pronunciation or a nice accent in speech.

Having had an hour to think about "siabhrán" I consider it unduly harsh. What about "aisling mhíosa"? That would be nicer "a month's dream".

Regarding #3 [1: blas; 2: avoid translating directly from English]:

#3

"Níl sí ach ..." falls under the error commonly referred to as "Tá sé fear" and refers to the choice of one or other of the verbs "to be" i.e. is or bí.

Change one word and you have a good grammatical sentence:

"Níl inti ach blas na míosa."

If it is all over you will need to change "Nil" to the past tense "Ní raibh"

So

"Ní raibh inti ach aisling mhíosa." Ahhhh!

Driftwood, I saw this on the telly this evening and thought of your question:

'Fear an phoist na bliana'

Ta-daw! :) ginideach dúbáilte. Kind of an exception cause normally you can't have a double genitive.

To me it's wrong.
Fear an phoist means "the postman".

A postman is "fear poist".

The postman of the year is "fear poist na bliana".

Same thing with "bean an tí".

Lughaidh I'll take your word for that. I didn't twig that it was wrong. 'Fear an phoist na bliana' had actually been written on a poster that was in the TG4 programme itself so I took notice of it there and thought of Driftwood's question.

Added to that I am fairly sure the announcer pronounced it as "fear phoist na bliana" in the short introductory blurb before it started (didn't/couldn't hear the 'an' in the middle but that is normally dropped or just pronounced as 'a' anyway in between two nouns). I am fairly sure she had lenited the 'poist' after 'fear' so would that hint that the an was in between? In her own dialect at least (Conamara).

Just open to the possibility, but to the OP, you can trust Lughaidh moreso than me!

quote:

Added to that I am fairly sure the announcer pronounced it as "fear phoist na bliana"

then it should be "phost" (not in the genitive) and
it would mean "the man of the post of the year".


If there are people who say "fear an phoist na bliana", either they're making a mistake because they don't master Irish perfectly, or they speak Irish properly otherwise but they've pick that wrong expression from other (non-native) speakers.
Sometimes native speakers make mistakes like that because they hear them on TV or on RnaG - that's why the Irish media shouldn't hire non-native speakers to speak : they spread mistakes. Normally for other languages they wouldn't do that (except for Breton, whose situation is much worse than that of Irish : almost everything you can hear in the media is crap).

Cheers Lughaidh. Nice to have correct version. What I thought I heard was 'fear phoist na bliana' (which would be 'fear an phoist na bliana' if written down). But anyway if it's wrong, it's wrong.

Possibly the announcer wouldn't use fear an phoist anyway and wasn't familiar with it, but they were a native speaker- I don't think that phrase is even used for postman in Conamara, so that could explain it.

Thanks for your help and nipping it in the bud.

quote:

which would be 'fear an phoist na bliana' if written down

Normally articles aren't completely dropped that way in speech, there always remains a part of it, 'n or a' when it isn't "an".

"Fear an phoist" is pronounced "fear a' phoist" [ɸaɾ ə ɸwɪʃtʲ]. Here the "a' " should be heard, at least a bit...

yip it should :) And 8 times out of 10 I pick it up but I'm still learning so I miss it here and there. I just wanted to be honest about exactly what I had heard. What I found helpful was watching repeats of Ros na Rún and rewinding the "tape" cause when you are listening out for an expression and you know it is coming up you'll hear every little piece then. Sadly can't get a second play of that, but I can see now how Fear an phoist na bliana doesn't really sound "likely".

Anyhoo I think I better not confuse things anymore hehe

I think Lughaidh has explained the double genitive thing well. An t-alt (an/na), should it be used, should only be used once.

As regards a translation for 'flavour of the month', I think the suggestions of 'blas na míosa' etc. are direct translations from English and don't really make sense in Irish. I'd be more inclined to go with something like:
'Ní raibh inti ach fonn fánach'/'Níl inti ach fonn fánach'.

I considered 'gearrshaolach' and 'neamhbhuan' here but they're not as natural as 'fánach' ('insignificant' in this sense) in my opinion.

Hope that helps.

TG4 online had "Gradam na Gealchathrach: Tá Fear an Phoist san iomaíocht do ghradam 'Fear Poist na Bliana'."

This is also on another website.

http://uk-tv-guide.com/programme-details/TG4/11+July+2010/18%3A30/Fear+an+Phoist /Entertainment/

Yea thanks seanw, I did see that when I tried looking for the show on the tg4 site. It was just the poster and the announcer that led to me getting the wrong end of the stick.

Damn....slain by the "TSF" dragon. I never even saw that!

Will I EVER get the hang of this?!?!

YES!!! :)

Hmm, speaking of double genitive, would "key delivery message" be something like this...

teachtaireacht seachadta eochrach

or is there a better translation?

nó eochairtheachtaireacht seachadta fosta, b'fhéidir (bolgam! dealramh atá aige le Gearmáinis!).

Wouldn't that be "key message of delivery"... technically the KDM is a "message of key delivery", an XML file used for delivering a license code.

Ta cuma Ghearmanach ar "eochairtheachtaireacht", mar a d'urt tu. Nil sé nadurtha comhfhocla mar sin a chumadh i nGaeilg le fada. An té a smaoiteas i nGaeilg, ni chumfadh sé focla mar sin, dar liom.

I guess I needed clarification of what is meant then, because I have never heard nor used (in either language) "key delivery message". I assume it was a key message / delivery, not a key / message deliver. I think I stepped beyond my expertise with that one, then, and misunderstood the whole thing. Hmm ... so maybe you're right, but I am not willing to venture that because I tried looking up "key delivery message" and found water up to my neck!

If the meaning is "a message to deliver the key" something like this might suit: "teachtaireacht um seachadh eochrach"

um - a useful word to look up in the dictionary.
seachadadh - delivery
eochair - a key; (seachadadh) eochrach - (delivery) of a key.

By the way: I defy any non-native speaker to pronounce "an eochair" properly. :-)

The beauty of "um" is it gets rid of the verbal noun genitive.

Every schoolchild in Ireland knows "lucht múchta tine" (fire brigade) so "teachtaireacht seachadtha eochrach" would be OK. Micín Mhaidhcil Mhic Pháidir of Barr an Chnoic might have to hear it twice or three times before the meaning would register with him nevertheless such phrases will be commonplace in time to come.

Sorry! Panic! Typos: "teachtaireacht um sheachadadh eochrach" was what I meant to write. Tá brón orm faoin mí-chúram.

quote:

By the way: I defy any non-native speaker to pronounce "an eochair" properly. :-)

[ˈɔhej]

quote:

The beauty of "um" is it gets rid of the verbal noun genitive.

If you use faoi, fé or fá you get rid of the verbal noun as well :-)

Not being familiar with the IPA I cannot comment on [ˈɔhej] Having been corrected myself as a youngster by a Donegal native speaker who thought I was saying "othar" I wanted to draw attention to the word and to its effect on the preceding "n" of "an"

Regarding "um" and "faoi / fé / fá" I agree but the language is moving on and "um" seems to have found a place in official names for committees etc and seems to mean "concerned with" - "responsible for" etc while "faoi / fé / fá" would not be used in such contexts.

One of the consequences of the requirement of public bodies to produce their reports in Irish is that a large new cohort of well-trained enthusiastic translators are sifting through the existing vocabulary and using it in contexts where Irish was never used before. As with any other human endeavour -- even our contributions to Clár Plé Daltaí - much of their work is very good, some is indifferent, but none of it is bad because they are professionals.

Good for the future of Irish. New domains. New registers. New terminology. New scholars with paid employment. Plenty of work still for those attracted to the older literature. Piles of un-edited mss (manuscripts) moulderin' away in museums throughout the world for want of care and revival. Some translated to English but not yet made available to the reader of modern Irish. Wanted: Popularisers of the old literature in modern Irish.

quote:

Not being familiar with the IPA I cannot comment on [ˈɔhej] Having been corrected myself as a youngster by a Donegal native speaker who thought I was saying "othar" I wanted to draw attention to the word and to its effect on the preceding "n" of "an"

"uh nyohay"

quote:

Regarding "um" and "faoi / fé / fá" I agree but the language is moving on and "um" seems to have found a place in official names for committees etc and seems to mean "concerned with" - "responsible for" etc while "faoi / fé / fá" would not be used in such contexts.

a message responsible for key delivering?
isn't "a message about key delivering" clearer, ie. with faoi, fé... ?

quote:

Good for the future of Irish. New domains. New registers. New terminology.

if the job is done by people who *think* in Irish - many people just think in English and translate word for word. The result is that it's no Irish.
And translators should use mainly what does exist in Gaeltacht speech (in what dialect would you use "um" ? if I remember well, even in Munster they use "uim" instead of "um") instead of using stuff that has disappeared centuries ago and that looks foreign to all Gaeltacht speakers. Gaeltacht Irish is able to express what you want, especially for basic things like that, there are prepositions that are much more common than "um". Unless they despise Gaeltacht Irish...

quote:

many people just think in English and translate word for word.

That may be as true in Irish as it is in Breton or in Hebrew or in any language where there are more learners that native speakers but such people would not be employed as professional translators.

No one despises Gaeltacht Irish. We wish there was far more of it and that it was not being permeated by English vocabulary and structure. The residual Gaeltacht dialects are a joy to hear but to expect farmers, fishermen, craftsment, traders, and unemployed to supply terminology for the modern world themselves would be futile.

Most of the scholars involved in such work are themselves native speakers and certainly would do nothing to alienate modern Irish from the traditional language of the Gaeltacht.

You may know, Lughaidh, that a revision of An Caighdeán Oifigiúil is under way and that Raidió na Gaeltachta has for long established separate standards for the main dialects and has emphasised the value of all dialect forms. All the continuity announcers use one or other of the dialects. They have taught their regular listeners that "school Irish" is just that, the language of learners to be used as a foundation for life-long learning.

You should know however that when we listen to Raidió na Gaeltachta we appreciate the medium, we don't criticise, but we are mainly interested in the information, the news, the events, the people of areas we know well. Irish-speakers are like one big family and RnaG keeps us in touch.

However, I think I have said enough.

quote:

You may know, Lughaidh, that a revision of An Caighdeán Oifigiúil is under way

We'll see if they 'll modify what needs to be modified... According to what I saw, they won't.

quote:

No one despises Gaeltacht Irish.

Then why is it almost never used in writing, and why is it never taught, why is there almost no learning book that teaches them (except Learning Irish and the old Teach Yourself)?

Séanw,

Information available about the KDM is currently scarce, and I should have been clearer about what I was looking for. OTOH you could say that it is a "key message" which is being delivered, so you weren't wrong either. Maybe this is a fuzzy zone.

As it comes to sounding like German... This is OT but listening to German speech and comparing to translation, it seems that they also sometimes prefix "an" to adjectives to enhance them... or have I gotten something wrong here?

Maybe Aonghus could clarify, but I don't remember any such enhancement. I could only think of the article ein.

quote:

seems that they also sometimes prefix "an" to adjectives to enhance them

Beidh orm smaoineamh air sin. Ní ritheann aon sampla liom faoi láthair.

Tá "an" fairsing mar chéad mhír, ach níl mé cinnte gur treisiú atá i gceist. Treocht is mó a bhíonn i gceist leis, sílim.

My apologies for the delay in response. I had to go to Virginia unexpectedly.

Thank you all for the feedback. This is going to be quick, and in english, because the fridge is empty and the puppy wants to chew on my computer cord.

@Aongus, as always, your input as a native speaker is invaluable!

@Taidghín, that sounds much better than in English; I like that. GRMA!

@Seánw, the ag/de thing will require further study!

@Sineadw, thanks for the encouragement. It's just that it is very important to me to master this, so I can pass it on to my sons, and my time is so very limited now that I get frustrated.

As for the rest of it, I will print this out and delve into it deeper when I have more time (the two-legged animals are hungry). Thanks all for your assistance!