muid or sinn?

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Magnus
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muid or sinn?

Postby Magnus » 2005-06-30, 14:18

I'm just starting my 3rd attempt to learn Irish from Mícheál Ó'Siadhail's book Learning Irish and hoping that now I have broadband access and (in particular) Unilang to help me I might get a bit further than my previous attempts.

One question is bothering me straightaway. In lesson 2 of my book I am told that the word for "we" is muid. However, another Irish Book that I have (an old edition of Teach Yourself Irish - © 1961) lists sinn as the 1st person plural pronoun. I know from a brief look at Scottish Gaelic that this is the form there too.

I suspect that the difference is due to the different dialects addressed by the two books - Learning Irish teaches Cois Fhairrge while the other does West Munster. However, I'd like to know which, if either, of these is the standard form.

Of course, since I'm planning to use Learning Irish as my main textbook I should probably stick to what's taught in there, at least to start with.

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Postby Zoroa » 2005-06-30, 16:28

Sinn is the older form and is probably predominantly used in Munster, (but known worldwide as in the party name Sinn Féin = Ourselves)
Muid is made up of the present tense verb suffix -imid (e.g. tuigimid = we understand);
Muid is today more often as sinn and stems as a pronoun originally from Ulster.
In older grammar books[ 1 ] the use of muid was very much frowned upon, but without success.
Occastionally, muid is recommended as a subject form after analytical verb forms (e.g.: tuigeann muid thú = we understand you), sinn on the other hand to be used as the object form (e.g.: tuigeann tú sinn = you understand us). Muid appears still also the object form.


Source : http://www.nualeargais.ie/gnag/person.htm#muid
Zoroa ;)
Deviens qui tu es !
Nietzsche "Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra"

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Magnus
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Postby Magnus » 2005-07-01, 15:50

Go raibh maith 'ad. :)

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culúrien
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Postby culúrien » 2005-07-15, 2:30

My Irish correspondent tells me they are both used frequently, but muid is used more often. But it wouldn't be unusual at all to hear sinn.


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