Mu deidhinn + pronoun

[MartinJ]

Hi. Can anyone offer advice on best practice for the various forms of "mu deidhinn" when applied to a pronoun.

For example,

Dwelly gives "mu mo dheidhinn" but I've also seen "mum dheidhinn"
Dwelly gives "mu do dheidhinn" but I've also seen "mud dheidhinn"

Then things get even more varied where you're tackling a pronoun that starts with a vowel and I've seen:

"mu ar deidhinn" (SMO course material), "m' ar deidhinn" (Dwelly) and "mar deidhinn" (ancient SMO dictionary)

Sigh...

Le meas, MartinJ

[camac002]

Are you asking what form you should use? Just stick to the full versions (mu mo, mu ar...) As long as you recognize what the other forms mean when you see them, it's all good. Are you worried about hearing these contractions in fast speech? As your listening skills increase, a helpful clue is to listen if "deidhinn" is lenited (which you will probably notice easily), and in combination with the context of the conversation you will figure it out. And then you may even elide things like "mu ar deidhinn" to "mar deidhinn" yourself, but either way is fine.

[akerbeltz]

Ok they are, at heart, all the same and it boils, in this case, down to a question of how closely one follows SHMOC. SHMOC for some reason has a hardon for creating phantom prepositions in spite of their mission to simplify stuff. Go figure.

Anyway, so mu mo dhèidhinn comes out as /mu mɔ ʝeː.ɪNʲ/ in careful speech (mu of course can be /ma/ depending on the region). There are then several variations with less stress such as /mə mə ʝeː.ɪNʲ/, /məm ʝeː.ɪNʲ/ or even /mə͂ ʝeːNʲ/ etc. Dropping adjacent vowels across word boundaries is so predictable in Gaelic that in formal-ish writing, there is no need really to write elided vowels. Moving into less formal writing (think of the difference between the way English is written in a legal document vs a Beano...) mu m' dhèidhinn isn't out of place (my only gripe with that is that people who do that are inconsistent i.e. they change tha e a' dèanamh aran agus 's e aran math a tha ann to tha e a' dèanamh aran agus 's e aran math a th' ann when - if you're consistently showing elision, it ought to be th' e dèanamh aran agus 's e aran math th' ann).

GOC then says that you CAN spell mu m' as mum. Most GOC evangelists gloss over the fact words like mum are given as a permissible alternative and claim it's gospel. The reason I have beef with forms like mum, dod, ded etc (apart from the fact that they introduce a NEW batch of words when people often struggle to spell even the familiar...) is that they break Gaelic letter to sound rules left right and centre. Words like ded break broad with broad and words like mum muddy the lengthening rules before -m i.e. if you write mu m' as mum, according to the traditional conventions of Gaelic, this ought to behave like cum and have long /uː/.

So my suggestion always is, ask yourself what register of Gaelic you're writing in. If it's formal-ish, then write them out. If it's very informal, eliding stuff is ok but consider questions of consistency.

[MartinJ]

Ahha - tapadh leibh, 'S e bùrach a tha ann, nach eil?

For written stuff I think I'll stick with the scheme in AFB/Dwelly while I get my head round all this:

mu mo dheidhinn
mu do dheidhinn
m' a dheidhinn
m' a deidhinn
m' ar deidhinn
m' ur deidhinn
m' an deidhinn

I can't believe even the most careful speaker could manage to articulate "mu ur deidhinn" but then again I can't bring myself to write "mur deidhinn" - that's just plain confusing, like akerbeltz says.

Dare I mention that "mu deidhinn" also sometimes appears as "mu dèidhinn"? OK, probably not - forget I said that!

Le meas, MJ