kevin wrote:It wasn't my intention to make you feeld bad, nor do I think there's any reason for it. You already agreed that it's not a good idea to compare with each other, but as you're doing it anyway... I can't watch you while you're translation, but I'm pretty sure that you invest not nearly as much time in each sentence you translate as I do at the moment.
Yes, we agreed not to make comparisons, I just wanted to answer your question about why I was so impressed. I'm sure I don't spend as much time looking things up, I write the majority of it without looking anything up.
kevin wrote:As soon as I'll stop looking up every single detail I'll start making much more mistakes - which will hopefully get better over time, but I would never expect to become perfect. Similarly, I think it's only natural that you still make errors after only a few years of seriously learning the language.
Now maybe I'm a bit at advantage with looking up stuff in the grammar because when you learn Latin and Greek at school instead of living languages, you are much more focussed on formal grammar, and that may help with handling things. Not sure, though, it may just as well be that it takes me the same time as you to find and understand things.
It would seem reasonable to assume you'd be more used to learning things that way. I keep trying to learn Old Irish, but the entire process of learning a dead language seems to be different, and it's extremely grammar-dense. I'm not
too bad with grammatical explanations, I'm probably halfway between you and one of those people whose scared off by the mere mention of "nouns" or "adverbs" or anything grammatical at all (and plenty of people like that still manage to become completely fluent in foreign languages).
kevin wrote:Finally, I'm not sure if having more resources is always helpful. In sum, they probably give you a little more information, but you also get lots of duplicated information and you need to manage all of it. I don't think at the moment I could cope with having more of them, I would simply lose the overview. Pretending that the one grammar I use contains everything I need for now feels like the right way.
That's probably true. I am glad, however, that I have a copy of
Cruinnscríon na Gaeilge (a really good Irish grammar that's in Irish) and Ó Dónaill's Gaeilge-Béarla and Béarla-Gaeilge dictionaries (as for as I'm aware, it's the most authoritative Irish dictionary around), and I doubt I'd get them too easily outside Ireland.
kevin wrote:Oddly, even though most Irish people don't speak Irish, we find foreigners' mispronunciation of Irish amazingly funny. Basically because the idea if a foreigner learning Irish is in itself funny.
Which in turn I find funny. But yeah, it's probably the same for all languages with only few learners. For example, my Czech teacher told us as well that nobody would expect any foreigner to speak Czech.
Yeah, it's really just the sheer unexpectedness of hearing Irish in a foreign accent. It happens so rarely. Most people I know usually love it (that someone is taking such an interest), but I've heard stories from some about people being resentful - if a foreigner can learn Irish, it kind of takes away their excuse not to learn it (which is usually either "It's too hard" or "The education system taught it to me so badly").
linguoboy wrote:Ciarán12 wrote:Bhí fearg air toisc nach raibh an páiste a hobair bhaile déanta aici.
This escaped my attention earlier, but the syntax on that second clause is really weird. Remember that the so-called "perfect" in Irish is essentially a stative passive. The object is promoted to subject, the verb is replaced with a verbal adjective, and the subject--if it is retained--is given in a prepositional phrase. So:
Dhún mé an doras "I closed the door" >
Tá an doras dúnta agam. "The door is closed by me".
In the same way, "The child has done her homework" becomes "The homework is done by the child". So if
an páiste appears in the final sentence at all, it should be as the object of
ag, not floating in subject position before
obair bhaile.
Yeah, I noticed my mistake earlier and meant to go back and correct it, sorry. I understand how the whole "(Form of "bí") + (what would be the Object in English (but in Irish is taking the position of the subject)) + (Verbal Adjective) + ( "ag" + what would be the Subject in English OR form of "ag" inflected for person)" thing works. I see now what you mean about it being a sort of passive (in that it maches up quite well with the English "the homework is done by the child"), but I always thought of the "tá....ag...." as the same construction used for possession in Irish, and thus being literally "The child
has their done homework".
The child has
their homeworkTá
a cuid obair bhaile ag
an bpáiste.
The child has
their homework done/
The child has
done their homework.
Tá
a cuid obair bhaile déanta ag
an bpáiste.
linguoboy wrote:As for obair bhaile, this is not a count noun and can't take a possessive determiner in Traditional Irish. There the practice is make it a partitive genitive with cuid and put the determiner on that, i.e. a cuid obair bhaile "her [share of] homework".
So the revised sentence should be:
Bhí fearg air toisc nach raibh a chuid obair bhaile déanta ag an bpáiste. (Or, if using only pronouns, Bhí fearg air toisc nach raibh a cuid obair bhaile déanta aici.)
Yeah, I just tend to learn which nouns take "cuid" before them when used with possessive pronouns as I go. I didn't know obair bhaile was one. Shows you how much of mo chuid obair bhaile I did in school...