Negative of "Is"

virtualvinodh · Mon Dec 16, 2013 6:59 pm

Hi,

Verb constructions with "Tha" can be negated with "Chan eil". I was wondering what is the negative of the verb form "is".

Consider this:

I am Indian - 'S e Innseanach a tha annam
I am Vinodh - 'S mise Vinodh

How do you say the following:

I am not English
I am not John

V

Unread post by **Níall Beag** » Mon Dec 16, 2013 9:25 pm

It's cha/chan -- it's the same as the "negative particle" before the dependent form of the verb.

So "Who was it who killed the goldfish?" "Cha mhise!"

virtualvinodh · Mon Dec 16, 2013 10:58 pm

Thanks.

So would these be correct ?

Chan e Sasannach a th' annam
Cha mhise Iain

V

Unread post by **GunChleoc** » Wed Dec 18, 2013 10:22 am

Tha sin ceart

And for questions:

Nach e Innseanach a th' annad? An e Sasannach a th' annad?

Nach tusa Vinodh? An tusa Iain?

The verb "is" likes to hide, doesn't it

virtualvinodh · Wed Dec 18, 2013 4:26 pm

Nach tusa Vinodh? An tusa Iain?

Why is it "tusa" instead of "thusa" ?

The verb "is" likes to hide, doesn't it

Tha gu dearbh

V

Seonaidh · Unread post by **Seonaidh** » Fri Dec 20, 2013 5:45 pm

Did you not mean to say, "The verb 'is' likes to hide, isn't it?"?

(or even "innit?")

Well, I s'pose you could say "thusa", but it comes originally from "tusa" and in some usages it tends to stick like that.

Unread post by **Níall Beag** » Fri Dec 20, 2013 8:58 pm

virtualvinodh wrote:
Nach tusa Vinodh? An tusa Iain?
Why is it "tusa" instead of "thusa" ?

This is a hangover from the old case system.

Modern Irish preserves a distinction between nominative and oblique cases for certain pronouns.
Tú is the nominative, thú is the oblique.
Sé, sí, siad are nominative, é, í, iad are oblique.

Scottish Gaelic has lost the systematic difference entirely, and as you can seem the Scottish Gaelic forms are more or less the same as the Irish oblique.

The old nominative "tusa" remains in a few specific situations. One of them is with the verb "is", which is the situation above; the only other one I'm aware of is with the conditional.

alasdair_maolchriosd · Sat Dec 21, 2013 12:51 am

I suspect that phonetics is mainly at work here with tusa ~ thusa. Remember that th was pronounced [θ] back in the day. It's near impossible to pronounce s+th [sθ], it naturally assimilates to [st], so this probably blocked the lenition of the original t. A sort of parallel 'blocked mutation' is found with sean-duine rather than *sean-dhuine. Similar exceptions to 'rules' are found in other Celtic languages.

OTOH I say am faca tu sin? Have I remembered that correctly, because clearly the above explanation won't work here.

And also (according to the book) am bu tusa a rinn sin? etc. So maybe just ignore everything I've just written ...

Unread post by **akerbeltz** » Sun Dec 22, 2013 11:09 am

bu used to be *bud, yes, it's a sort of phonetic rule which preserves older /t/ (i.e. it prevented the lenition)

Unread post by **GunChleoc** » Tue Dec 24, 2013 2:43 pm

another case and for this are the future and conditional tenses - Bidh tu, bhiodh tu, biodh tu, a bhios tu. But: Cha bhi thu.

bb3ca201 · Unread post by **bb3ca201** » Tue May 06, 2014 5:26 pm

virtualvinodh wrote:Thanks.

So would these be correct ?

Chan e Sasannach a th' annam
Cha mhise Iain

V

Good for you! Well done!

MarcMacUilleim · Sun Jun 29, 2014 11:30 am

Is also 'hides' with simple expressions involving 'sin' and 'seo', e.g.

Sin na rinn mi!
An e?
'S e gu dearbh.

Fòram na Gàidhlig

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