Download Grammar wrap-up — Verbs, Adverbs, and Prepositions I realized

Grammar wrap-up — Verbs, Adverbs, and Prepositions
I realized that going in depth as much as I have for each part of speech is just too much, so I've decided
to boil it down a bit more and just cover the essentials.
Verbs
A verb is the part of speech that shows action or state of being. It's what a subject is doing to an object,
or how a subject is being.
Verbs are actually much easier in Irish than in English. English has a very complex tense system with
subtle differences indicated by pronunciation. Consider this example.
I got to go to the store vs. I gotta go to the store.
Irish has only four tenses, one “mood” and one “voice”, those being:
Present Habitual, Simple Past, Past Habitual, and Future tenses; Conditional Mood (if-then / would),
and Subjunctive Voice (hope / curse).
In our western dialect we only have a few personal pronoun endings to worry about when conjugating
verbs. Most of the time the verb doesn't change for person.
Unlike other European languages, you can either use the personal pronoun endings or the separated
stand-alone pronouns, but not both.
cheannaigh muid or ceannaíomar — (we bought), but not cheannaíomar muid*
Irish also has something in common with English in that it uses a Present Progressive structure. In
English this is marked by a form of the verb be, followed by a verb with the suffix -ing.
I buy — I am buying
In Irish this structure is also marked by a form of the verb be— bí, in conjunction with what is called a
verbal noun. The verbal noun is also preceded by the preposition ag.
Ceannaím — Tá mé ag ceannach
Since the verbal noun is technically a real noun, any other noun directly following it must be in the
genitive case. This rule in modern Irish, though grammatically correct, is going by the wayside.
There are two classes of verbs in Irish, each with its own variation on conjugation. Type (1) verbs are
usually one syllable, while type (2) verbs usually end in -igh. Ceannaigh is a type 2 verb. What those
differences are is to be saved for another lesson.
Adverbs
Adverbs modify verbs. They tell how a verb is doing or being. We often use an -ly suffix on adjectives
to form them in English.
lazy → lazily
In Irish, adverbs are formed from adjectives by adding the particle go in front.
sona → go sona
happy → happily
If an adverb or adverbial phrase comes at the end of the sentence in Irish, and the object of the verb
happens to be a pronoun, that pronoun will jump to the end of the sentence behind the adverb.
D'ith mé an ceapaire go tapa. → D'ith mé go tapa é.
I ate the sandwich quickly. → I ate it quickly.
Prepositions
Prepositions in Irish are fascinating. They change for person as verbs might in other languages. This
means that prepositions like with them are expressed by one word- leo, in Irish.
As in colloquial English, prepositions may appear at the end of a sentence. These prepositions are never
“bare”, that is, without a pronoun object included. This leads to a sort of double object sometimes.
Níor inis sé dom cé a chuaigh sé leis but not …cé a chuaigh sé le.*
He didn't tell me who he went with.
Since leis means literally with it / him, this may be said to render a literal translation of:
He didn't tell me who he went with him.
It's also correct in Irish to put order the phrase as we're taught is “proper” English, but the pronoun
object is still included within the preposition.
He didn't tell me with whom he went.
Níor inis sé dom cé leis a chuaigh sé.
One final note about prepositions is, that there are differences in how they cause initial mutations to
their objects, if not pronominal as above, depending on if that object is definite— that is, if it has an
Irish 'the' in front of that object. This yields some interesting prepositional phrases.
ar bhord — on a table
ar bord — onboard
ar an mbord — on the table
ar na boird — on the tables