Le / leis before gach

[MarcMacUilleim]

Hi,

I received a semi-official email to day which ended "Leis gach deagh dhùrachd", which I found surprising as I would have thought / was always taught that it should be "Le gach deagh dhùrachd" and that "leis" is only used in such expressions before the definite article.

Happy to be corrected, of course, as I am and always will be a Gaelic learner...

M

[An Gobaire]

It is always "leis" before "gach".

Le deagh dhùrachd.
Leis gach deagh dhùrachd.

[MarcMacUilleim]

It is always "leis" before "gach".

Le deagh dhùrachd.
Leis gach deagh dhùrachd.

It most certainly isn't, otherwise I wouldn't have asked!

Chaidh iarraidh orm seo a sgaoileadh .

Le gach deagh dhùrachd

Catriona NicIain
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Sabhal Mòr Ostaig


Le gach deagh dhùrachd,
Mira Byrne
Iar-Mhanaidsear nan Goireasan
01471-888 675
Sabhal Mòr Ostaig
Ionad Nàiseanta na Gàidhlig
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Nach tig sibh thugam ma bhios ceist no beachd sam bith agaibh air a’ chuspair seo.

Le gach dùrachd
Sgotaidh
Ceann-suidhe
Comann nan Oileanach

M.s.a.a.

[Seonaidh]

It's a matter of choice. Some folk stick with "le" before "gach", some prefer "leis". I think "le" is more common, but both are acceptable.

[MarcMacUilleim]

Fair enough. It's probably one of those Gaelic things where both are perfectly acceptable, like "dà ghealaich" being pedantically correct according to old grammar books, though everyone nowadays says "dà ghealach"...

[akerbeltz]

It's a matter of choice. Some folk stick with "le" before "gach", some prefer "leis". I think "le" is more common, but both are acceptable.

It's the other way round it would seem, DASG has 38 for le gach but 359 for leis gach.

I think the -s form is the older. also cf anns gach which definitely always takes the -s form

[MarcMacUilleim]

A bit of research reveals the entry for "gach" in Colin Mark's dictionary (p321) which says: “The preps ann, a, le, ri and gu take the s form before gach: Leis gach adhartas… anns gach suidheachadh… ris gach duine… às gach doras…”

Of course, some English grammars will insist that "none" must take a singular verb as in "None of them was there" despite the fact that the vast majority of English speakers would say "None of them were there"...

Does anyone else think that "Leis gach deagh dhùrachd" just sounds wrong, even though it's clearly perfectly acceptable and correct...?

[akerbeltz]

As a learner, I'm always suspicious of my linguistic 'feelings', those are only reliable for native speakers really. I have done some Google searches and whatever our feeling, leis + gach + prefixed adjective seems to win out though it's not a common pattern, perhaps explaining some of the confusion:
leis gach fìor (5) including some really old sources
le gach fìor (0)
leis gach sàr (0)
le gach sàr (0)
leis gach droch (3)
le gach droch (6) mostly Irish though

ris gach deagh (1)
ri gach deagh (0)
anns gach deagh (5)
anns gach deagh (0)

Perhaps this is handled differently in Irish and there's some knock-on

[MarcMacUilleim]

Yes, I'm sure you're right!

From a personal point of view, I'm going to (try to) use "leis gach" from now on as, as you have shown, it's clearly by far the more common usage, especially in written Gaelic. One more step along the road towards fluency...

[Níall Beag]

As a learner, I'm always suspicious of my linguistic 'feelings', those are only reliable for native speakers really.

Indeed. As a learner of many languages, I've often been told not to worry about rules, and just do what "sounds right". Well, what sounds right to me is English -- everything else sounds wrong, so that's no use for a learner.

The thing that is missing from a lot of rules is that they talk about definiteness in terms of articles only... and then add on little amendments to deal with things like possessives, proper nouns etc. There are certain things that are inherently definite, and gach is one of them.

Consider:

Aig an àm sin bha e mar àbhaist gum biodh leth-amadain ri fhaicinn aig taobh teallaich ann an taigh gach uasal sa Ghàidhealtachd.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/alba/oran/people/a ... acneacail/

In English, that italicised part would be "in the house of every nobleman in the Highlands," but there's no article in there... because "gach" is a definite word. Each member of a group is very specific. Specific... specified... defined... definite.

The same is true in Irish, seemingly, where they would say "Is é X máthair gach oilc" for various values of X -- "X is the mother of all evils", with no apparent article -- gach again being inherently definite.

[Níall Beag]

Oh, and there's a Scottish Gaelic example in the DASG too:

gu ' m b ' i a Ghaelic màthair gach aon diubh

http://www.dasg.ac.uk/corpus/concordanc ... 9uoq9&uT=y
that (the) Gaelic is/was [the] mother of every one of them

[An Gobaire]

I should have written: "It is always correctly written as leis before gach."

You will also find people writing things like: "bruidhinn ri na (daoine)", when it is correctly meant to be "ris na daoine", for example.

It's understandable why though.

It is always "leis" before "gach".

Le deagh dhùrachd.
Leis gach deagh dhùrachd.

It most certainly isn't, otherwise I wouldn't have asked!

Chaidh iarraidh orm seo a sgaoileadh .

Le gach deagh dhùrachd

Catriona NicIain
Stiùiriche Cùrsa
Dioplòma anns na Meadhanan Gàidhlig
Sabhal Mòr Ostaig


Le gach deagh dhùrachd,
Mira Byrne
Iar-Mhanaidsear nan Goireasan
01471-888 675
Sabhal Mòr Ostaig
Ionad Nàiseanta na Gàidhlig
Slèite
An t-Eilean Sgitheanach
IV44 8RQ


Nach tig sibh thugam ma bhios ceist no beachd sam bith agaibh air a’ chuspair seo.

Le gach dùrachd
Sgotaidh
Ceann-suidhe
Comann nan Oileanach

M.s.a.a.

[GunChleoc]

Consider:

Aig an àm sin bha e mar àbhaist gum biodh leth-amadain ri fhaicinn aig taobh teallaich ann an taigh gach uasal sa Ghàidhealtachd.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/alba/oran/people/a ... acneacail/

In English, that italicised part would be "in the house of every nobleman in the Highlands," but there's no article in there... because "gach" is a definite word. Each member of a group is very specific. Specific... specified... defined... definite.

Actually, we have a different rule at work here: In a string of nouns, only the last one can carry the genitive case and a definite article.

ann an taigh an daoine - in (the/a) house of the man
ann an taigh daoine - in (the/a) house of a man

[poor_mouse]

...ann an taigh an duine / nan daoine ?
Mur eil mi air mo mhòr-mhealladh.

Seadh, chan urrainn do 'anns an' a bhith ann co-dhiù

[Níall Beag]

Consider:

Aig an àm sin bha e mar àbhaist gum biodh leth-amadain ri fhaicinn aig taobh teallaich ann an taigh gach uasal sa Ghàidhealtachd.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/alba/oran/people/a ... acneacail/

In English, that italicised part would be "in the house of every nobleman in the Highlands," but there's no article in there... because "gach" is a definite word. Each member of a group is very specific. Specific... specified... defined... definite.

Actually, we have a different rule at work here: In a string of nouns, only the last one can carry the genitive case and a definite article.

ann an taigh an daoine - in (the/a) house of the man
ann an taigh daoine - in (the/a) house of a man

Ah yes... I see what you mean.... there's me parroting the "double definite rule" that I'd been told rather than thinking about the actual language.

Anyway, as always, I think the working of the genitive here is made clearer by using the English possessive.
ann an taigh an daoine - in the man's house
ann an taigh daoine - in a man's house

Notice in English that the possessive becomes the determiner* for the main noun.
[ *Determiner: class of words including definite and indefinite articles, and anything that can be substituted for them. eg the red house, that red house, his red house, twenty-five red houses etc ]

"Gach" is determiner, just as "a h-uile" is, just as "mo"/"do" etc are.
Which brings back to the point of confusion, as the "-s" has been disappearing before possessives too -- "nam aonar le mo smuaintean" (late 20th century) vs "Grad a b' aill leis mo lamh ag aomadh" (James MacPherson's book of Ossianic poetry, published early 19th century).