Peadar wrote:You seem well-knowingknowledgeable about Irish. Here's another question if you don't mind:
There's a sentence in the song "Mo ghile mear"
It goes "Sé mo laoch mo ghile mear, sé mo Shaesar, ghile mear"
SUC, there isn't a "mo" before "ghile mear", but there's still lenition.
Does this mean that the lenition of the possessed noun is not just a phonetic inflection, but a grammatical one?
Lenition is characteristic of the vocative. The vocative particle
a lenits, but is often dropped in speech. Cf. the title of another ballad, "Mháirín Óg Ní Cheallaigh".
Máirín is lenited here because it represents direct address. (The title is alternatively given as "A Mháirín Óg Ní Cheallaigh", with a leading vocative particle that is not pronounced.)
That said, can I ask where you found this version? The versions I'm familiar with all have "'Sé mo Shéasar,
gile mear", without lenition.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons