[mb-users] Any Irish Gaelic speakers in the audience?

[Bogdan Butnaru]

On 9/10/07, Cadalach <cadalach at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd mainly stick with the English style (rather than, say, French)
> i.e. Capital letter for the first and last words and:
>
> * Capital initial letters for nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives etc.
>
> * Small initial letters for the article, prepositions and little
> "particles" (see below)
> [...]
> For "particles" things can look a little funny -- I'd write "Cha do
> dh'Òl Mi" (I Didn't Drink).
>
> Irish also has eclipsis which can look funny -- "i mBaile Átha Cliath"
> (in Dublin) -- but that's the way it should be done.
>
> There are also quite a few little words which mean different things
> depending on context: here's the extreme example...
>
> a' Mhàthair (the Mother)
> A Mhàthair (His Mother)
> A Màthair (Her Mother)
> a Mhàthair! (Mother! (vocative))
>
> An Duine _a_ Bh' Ann (The Man _Who_ Was There)
> Am Boireannach _à_ Steòrnabhagh (The Woman _from_ Stornoway)
> 20 Bliadhna _a_ dh'Aois (20 Years _of_ Age)
> A' Dol _a_ Ghlaschu (Going _to_ Glasgow)
>
> Which are some of the reasons I haven't written anything yet --
> without knowing the language(s) would people be able to pick out these
> differences effectively?

Thanks for the general overview. A few quick notes, in case you decide
to write a guide:

Examples and lists can be very useful. From your explanation I
conclude that the guidelines are approximately [i] everything
capitalized [ii] except some particles [iii] and except some funny
things at some word beginnings.

Often (I assume for Irish too) most of the things in category [ii] can
be listed in a few lines. There are only so many prepositions and
articles, even in inflected languages.

It's also essential to list those that have non-particle homonyms, ie
words that sometimes must be capitalized. These are a subset of [i],
so it shouldn't be huge.

Since we're talking of relatively small sets of words, often there are
rules that can be used even if you don't actually understand the
language. A speaker might not notice these in normal use. (For
instance, your examples suggest [a'] and [à] are only capitalized at
start of sentence. Not sure if it's true in general, just making a
point. You could also note things like [Bh'] is a common prefix that
should be capitalized, as is [O'] in names and unlike [dh']; or that
proper nouns can get an m  prefix that should be left lowercase.
Whatever makes sense.)

You can also list (simple) grammatical rules; even a non-speaker can
use a dictionary to figure out if a word is a verb or a noun in simple
phrases if they really want to. Links to decent Wiki pages can help.

And of course, if something is easy to mistake also list it---we'll
run to you if we encounter it ;)

> Finally, I had a quick look through the Sinéad O'Connor page and
> didn't see anything that was glaringly bad, but I'm having some
> computer problems at the moment so it might take a while before I can
> have a proper look at it.

Buíochas!
-- 
Bogdan Butnaru — bogdanb at gmail.com
"I think I am a fallen star, I should wish on myself." – O.