An fhreagairt / am freagairt

MarcMacUilleim · Sat Jul 25, 2015 8:36 pm

Hi,

I seem to be seeing "the answer" in the nominative more and more often as "am freagairt" rather than "an fhreagairt", e.g. https://twitter.com/GAIDHLIGTV/status/6 ... 3242631168

I can't find the word listed as (optionally) masculine in any dictionary. Is this maybe a regional thing?

M

P.S. obviously, "am freagairt" could mean "their answer", but it certainly doesn't seem to have that meaning in the above tweet.

Unread post by **faoileag** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 9:47 pm

As there are other let us say non-standard usages in that tweet, I would not be taking anything in it as a model.

The slender ending and tradition would have me using "an fhreagairt" in any exam.

Having said that, the usual "regional" (and "the language is changing") arguments could apply, especially as regards gender.

MarcMacUilleim · Sat Jul 25, 2015 9:56 pm

Yes indeed. I wonder, though, if it's a symptom of the language gradually losing its gender of nouns, in keeping with a recent thread describing the increasing tendency to use 'e' instead of 'i' when referring to inanimate feminine nouns.

I know several native speakers who refer to both 'beatha' and 'mearachd' as if they were masculine. Maybe it's just the b,f, m, p feminine nouns...?

Unread post by **Níall Beag** » Sun Jul 26, 2015 9:02 am

I completely get the arguments about dialect and natural language change, but as a learner I always try to be fairly conservative, because we currently have precious little data about what the changes and variations are, and I've heard it too often as an excuse for things that are clearly just learner errors.

(Besides, language change is a job for the native speakers, not people like myself.)

Unread post by **faoileag** » Mon Jul 27, 2015 2:36 pm

I agree entirely with Niall. However well I've learned another language, I don't feel it's mine to try to influence.

I get the impression too that native-speakers of most languages are more comfortable if learners are "conservative" in that way - learners trying to thow in Gaelic / English / German / French slang, swear-words or bits of dialect amid schoolroom-learned language and with a foreign accent never seems to go down well. Maybe it's just the mixed register sending irritating cross-signals, maybe it's a deeper issue of sense of possession.

This may be open to argument, but it's what I have experienced, on both sides of the dialogue.

Unread post by **akerbeltz** » Tue Jul 28, 2015 5:29 pm

Seadh... the person who's manning that Twitterfeed is not fully fluent. I always urge caution and a dictionary when posting to a public site as a learner

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