Irish: Lesson Fourteen
Genitive After Prepositions
As well as indicating possession, the genitive case of a noun is used after certain specific prepositions such as "chun" (to), "cois" (beside), "dála" (by), "fearacht" (like, as), "timpeall" (around) and "trasna" (across):
The genitive is also used after all "compound" prepositions
(prepositions of more than one word), e.g. "ar fud" (throughout), "ar son" (for
the sake of), "i ndiaidh" (after), "os cionn" (above) etc.
Plural of Adjectives
Adjectives agree with nouns in case and number, which means that when a noun is plural its adjective is plural, when a noun is genitive its adjective is genitive, and so on. As mentioned in Lesson Three, this only applies when the adjective directly qualifies the noun.
The most common way to form the plural of an adjective is to add "-a" to it:
If the adjective's final vowel is slender, "-e" may be added instead:
Adding these final vowels can cause the loss of the previous final vowel:
Adjectives ending in "-úil" change to "-úla" in the plural:
Some common irregular plurals are
You've learned that adjectives following a singular feminine noun are aspirated e.g. "eaglais mhór" (big church). In the plural, adjectives following feminine plural nouns are not aspirated, but they are aspirated if they follow a masculine plural noun whose ending is slender, i.e. whose last vowel is a slender one (e or i). Contrast the feminine word "súil" (eye) with the masculine word "bád" (boat). We want to apply the word "gorm" (blue) to both of them in the plural:
Because the plural of "bád", which is "báid", has the slender vowel "i" at the end, it aspirates the adjective that comes after it, whereas the feminine plural leaves the adjective unaffected -- almost the opposite to what happens in the singular.
Genitive Singular of Adjectives
The behaviour of adjectives when they follow nouns in the genitive is as haphazard as that of the nouns themselves, but luckily the Christian Bros. managed to isolate the nine different kinds of adjective and describe their genitive forms depending on whether they're following a masculine or feminine noun. Note that feminine adjectives are never aspirated in the genitive singular or in the plural, but masculine ones are:
The usual disclaimer applies: there's little point in memorizing these forms or worrying about them; as long as you can generally recognize them when they appear in an Irish text you'll get used to them over time.
Genitive Plural of Adjectives
How an adjective is declined in the plural depends on the noun it's qualifying. In Lesson 13 we learned the difference between a strong-plural noun and a weak-plural noun. Weak nouns have the same genitive plural and nominative singular, but strong nouns have the same genitive plural and nominative plural. If an adjective follows a strong-plural noun, it has the same form for all cases of the plural, e.g.:
But if an adjective follows a weak-plural noun, it has the same form in the genitive plural as it does in the nominative singular:
Infinitive with Object
Previously, we learned that the infinitive form of the verb is just the verbal noun without "ag" in front of it:
There is no direct object in these sentences. When one is added, the infinitive changes in form slightly -- it is aspirated when possible and is prefixed by "a". If we change the second sentence in the example above and add "toitín" (a cigarette) as the direct object, we get
Note how the infinitive then gets pushed to the end of the sentence. Some other examples:
The present subjunctive is a tense that isn't even covered in some Irish textbooks, but is one that learners find very useful, because it covers the idea of wishing something and so appears in some famous Irish proverbs and blessings. It's considered an old-fashioned tense for daily speech (except in set phrases) but still appears often in print.
The subjunctive is normally formed from "Go" (which eclipses, and adds "n-" to a verb beginning with a vowel), plus the subjunctive form of the verb, plus the subject, plus the thing being wished for. For instance, the subjunctive form of "teigh" (go) is "té":
Or again, the subjunctive of "tabhair" (give) is "tuga":
Or to take a third example, sometimes the wish is also a curse, like this one from Tory Island in Donegal:
The Irish phrase for "thank you" -- go raibh math agat -- uses the subjunctive of "bi" and literally means "may there be good at-you".
The subjunctive of regular verbs is as follows:
Three Irregular Verbs
Over the next few lessons I'll gradually give the forms for the ten Irish verbs that are at least partly irregular. The three I'll give today are feic, "see", tabhair, "give", and abair, "say".
1) Root: "feic"; Verbal Noun: "ag feiceáil"
Past Passive: chonachthaswas seen").
2) Root: "tabhair"; Verbal Noun: "ag tabhairt"
Past Passive: tugadh ("was given").
3) Root: "abair"; Verbal Noun: "ag rá"
Past Passive: dúradh ("was said")