Gaidhlig Gach Latha

Am Bloga

  • Home
    • About the teachers
    • About Gaelic
    • refund, attendance, privacy and anti discrimination policies
  • Blog Mios na Gaidhlig
  • Learning Gaelic
    • Classes >
      • Class Schedule
      • Beginner Gaelic Classes
      • Advanced Beginner Class
      • Intermediate Gaelic Class
      • Advanced Gaelic Class
      • Special Classes
      • Gaelic culture and history classes
    • Private Lessons
    • Online-courses
    • E-mail courses (Free Trial)
  • Specials
  • Patreon
  • YouTube channel
  • Teespring shop
  • Etsy shop
  • Zazzle Shop
  • Student Materials
    • Patreon library
    • beginners materials
    • Intermediate material
    • advanced materials
  • self-paced online courses
  • useful links
  • Contact us

8/29/2017

Basic Gaelic sentences (part 1 present tense)

0 Comments

Read Now
 
Gaelic sentences can seem very confusing when an English speaker first starts looking at them. A lot of that is because Gaelic sentences have a very different order than English sentences. So lets take a look 
Picture
At the most basic level Gaelic is a VSO language which means sentences go like this: Verb Subject object. Looking at this shows us one of the main differences, the verb comes first. 

The first type of Gaelic sentence that you are likely to encounter is the present tense sentence. The most common of these look like this:


Tha mi ag obair.  literally  It is me at working and the order is:verb pronoun present participle.
The great thing about Gaelic is that you can build sentences fairly easily if you know what your options are for each part. So in the example above the first part is the verb. You would think that you would have millions of choices here but in the present tense most sentences start off with the verb 'to be', so your choice is really what sort of sentence you want to make. 

Gaelic verbs don't conjugate like other European verbs depending on who you are talking about but they do change depending on what type of sentence you are making. So the choices you have here are: Positive statement, negative statement, positive question and negative question. They look like this:

Tha        positive statement    something is

Chan eil.  negative statement.  something is not

A bheil.  Positive question.     Is something?

Nach eil.    negative question.   isn't something?

Because these aren't going to change or be changed by the other parts of the sentence you can just swap them around and make different sentences. Ie

Tha mi ag obair ----> Chan eil mi ag obair.

The next slot is the subject slot which usually contains a noun or a pronoun. If you are going to use a noun like a name or a thing you have almost endless choices here but if you choose a pronoun (I, you, he she etc) you have a very manageable 7 choices here. 

mi = I
thu = you (singular and informal)
e = he
i= she
sinn= we
sibh =you (formal or plural )
iad = they


The last slot is for the present participle. In Gaelic this consist of a shortened form of the preposition aig (at), which looks like a' in front of consonants and ag in front of vowels, and the verbal noun form of a verb. This slot does offer a lot of choice but don't be put off. Choose a few verbs to learn at one time and you can have great fun.  Here are five useful verbal nouns:

ag obair = working
ag ithe = eating
a' cluich = playing
ag òl = drinking 
a' leughadh = reading  

simply choose one from each column to make a simple Gaelic sentence

Picture
Keep an eye out for further post about how to make Gaelic sentences in other tenses and keep having fun learning Gaelic

Share

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

Details

    Authors

    Caroline has been involved with Gaelic for more than 18 years. She has degrees in Celtic Studies and Gaelic Medium Teaching.

    Marine lives in the french-speaking part of Switzerland. She has been learning Gaelic with Caroline since 2013 and has just  completed An Cùrsa Adhartais at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig.

    Archives

    March 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    May 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    January 2016
    December 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014

    Categories

    All
    100 Songs
    Challenges
    Conversation
    Daisy And Friends
    En Francais
    Gàidhlig A Mhàin
    Gàidhlig A-mhàin
    Learning Gaelic
    Mios Na Gàidhlig
    Mios Na Gaidhlig3b43c03790
    Setting Goals
    Vocabulary

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
Photos used under Creative Commons from pablo.diaz, mauxditty, borderlys, Martin Burns, rafiq s, flamesworddragon, Etsy Ketsy, RkRao, francesbean, H o l l y., ** RCB **, Cara Jo Miller, pacomexico, Casey David, jurvetson, goforchris, EladeManu, ikewinski, ankakay, magnus.hagdorn, anieto2k, James Willamor, J McSporran, Franco Folini, kelvinlls, DNAMichaud, andrewmalone, Photogestion, KimManleyOrt, Gellscom, notjustsquirrels, mer chau, Pai Shih, The Cleveland Kid, Capt' Gorgeous, TheZionView, dvanzuijlekom, Jack_IOM, dfarrell07, Mark Strozier, ik ben bram .nl, Esther Cantero, Crystl, aussiegall, coldfish88, indigoprime, RICO24h, evocateur, Ben Sutherland, Francesco_G, stusmith_uk, karendesuyo, symphony of love, Hunky Punk, geezaweezer, m01229
  • Home
    • About the teachers
    • About Gaelic
    • refund, attendance, privacy and anti discrimination policies
  • Blog Mios na Gaidhlig
  • Learning Gaelic
    • Classes >
      • Class Schedule
      • Beginner Gaelic Classes
      • Advanced Beginner Class
      • Intermediate Gaelic Class
      • Advanced Gaelic Class
      • Special Classes
      • Gaelic culture and history classes
    • Private Lessons
    • Online-courses
    • E-mail courses (Free Trial)
  • Specials
  • Patreon
  • YouTube channel
  • Teespring shop
  • Etsy shop
  • Zazzle Shop
  • Student Materials
    • Patreon library
    • beginners materials
    • Intermediate material
    • advanced materials
  • self-paced online courses
  • useful links
  • Contact us