Tuinn

[Màiri na Coille]

Hai a h-uile duine,

I'm writing a novel and I want the chapter titles to be in both Gaelic and English. The title of the Prologue is "Black Waves". My dictionary tells me that "tuinn" (waves) is one of those words which is sometimes feminine and sometimes masculine. What form of "dubh" do I use, then? Is it "Tuinn Dubha" or "Tuinn Dhubha"?

Mòran taing!
Màiri

[akerbeltz]

In the plural, the gender is not relevant to lenition, just the type of plural formation. In your case, because tonn forms its plural by slenderising (tonn > tuinn), it lenites the following adjective. Because the adjective is only one syllable long, it takes the extra vowel so dubh > dubha. Put them together, you get tuinn dhubha.

In very archaic Gaelic, something called blocked lenition would have applied in this case but without going into further details, blocked lenition (though it still exists) no longer applies in the context of noun + adjective.

[Seonaidh]

I would not put chapter headings in Gaelic unless the chapter contents were also.

[akerbeltz]

<shrugs> it's her novel, if she wants them to be bilingual, why not?