Download English Grammar Review Parts of Speech Noun – Ainmfhocal An

English Grammar Review
Parts of Speech
Noun – Ainmfhocal
An animal, place, thing, person (name), substance, quality, or idea
A noun is usually the subject or object of a verb in a sentence.
Nouns have number; singular and plural, as well as case; common or genitive* in Irish.
Case is the form a noun changes to, indicating if it's the subject / object or if one noun possesses another. It
shows the role a noun takes in the sentence.
Subjects and Objects have the same forms in Irish, but nouns that possess other nouns are in the genitive case.
*sometimes old Dative case forms survive. They're few, so can just be memorized in place.
Examples & Irish Equivalents
In English, examples of nouns are: dog, dogs, school, Dublin, tree, water, cousin, Fred, alcohol, freshness, love
In Irish, they are parallel: madra, madraí, scoil, Baile Átha Cliath, crann, uisce, col ceathar, Síle, alcól, úire, grá
In English the noun may be singular or plural, and take a possessive ending or punctuation.
tree — singular
trees — plural
tree's — singular possessive
trees' — plural possesive
In Irish, these forms are represented by the singular common case, plural common case, genitive singular, and
genitive plural
crann—singular common, crainn—plural common, crainn—genitive singular, crann—genitive plural
focal.ie presents them in the following order, using Irish abbreviations:
eye
súil bain2
gu: súile, ai: súile, gi: súl
bain – baininscneach — feminine
fir – firinscneach — masculine
s – ainmfhocal — noun (common case)
gu – ginideach uatha — genitive singular
ai – ainmfhocal iolra — noun plural (common case)
gi – ginideach iolra — genitive plural
A complete list can be found here: http://focal.ie/Abbrevs.aspx
The number after the bain or fir indicates the declension pattern of the noun.
You'll notice that crann, crainn, crainn, crann follows an ABBA pattern. Since this is the most common, they
call this pattern declension 1. There are five main patterns for each gender, which warrant an entire other lesson.
Nouns – Ainmfhocail
Definite & Indefinite Articles
Nouns in English can be definite or indefinite. The word the precedes definite nouns, and the words a or an
come before indefinite nouns. These words are called articles. We can also use a noun in its general sense
without articles. Irish has definite articles, but not indefinite ones. The noun without anything in front of it is
indefinite, in Irish.
a tree
crann
the tree
an crann
trees
crainn
the trees
na crainn
We can also do this for the possessive / genitive case:
of a tree
crainn
of the tree
an chrainn
of trees
crann
of the trees
na gcrann
English doesn't have grammatical gender anymore, but Irish, like many European languages does. A noun can
be either masculine or feminine in Irish.
The definite article in Irish changes to agree with its noun for gender (masculine or feminine) number (singular
or plural) and case (common or genitive). It also changes the noun itself depending on whether the noun begins
with a vowel, a consonant, d, t or s.
These changes occur on the front of the noun, since that's where the definite article goes. (See chart.)
Here's another example- a feminine noun:
a street
sráid
the street
an tsráid
streets
sráideanna
the streets
na sráideanna
of streets
sráideanna
of the streets
na sráideanna
And in the possessive / genitive
of a street
sráide
of the street
na sráide
Forms that are the same become clear in context.
Here are the questions you'll need to ask yourself when processing a noun's article.
1)
2)
3)
4)
Is it masculine or feminine?
Is it singular or plural?
Is it common or genitive case?
What does the word begin with?
1. A vowel?
2. A consonant?
1. Is that consonant a d, t, or s?
5) Given my answers, which article do I use?
6) Given my answers, how will I change (or not change) the front of the noun?