chun vs do 'n

[Ionatan]

In Can Seo I learnt this a few weeks ago:

Tha mi a' dol do 'n chèilidh (I am going to the ceilidh)

...but now the same show (lesson 13) is teaching me this:

Tha mi a' dol chun a' chèilidh (I am going to the ceilidh)

I am confused - what is the difference and when would you choose do 'n vs chun or even a. Can seo just present these two constructions in different weeks (both involving ceilidhs - there's a lot of ceilidhs in Can Seo, ceilidhs and cold meat) but give no explanation.

[akerbeltz]

do in a directional sense is (in)to, gu is just to(wards), so tha mi a' dol do thaigh mo mhàthar > I'm going inside, tha mi a' dol gu taigh mo mhàthar > I'm not specifying if I'm going in, I may just throw a brick to get her to come downstairs or I may even stop at the pub next door to meet her there. In the main, it's less specific about the destination than do.

But there's a lot of grey fog between the two and even native speakers don't always use them consistently.

[Ionatan]

do in a directional sense is (in)to, gu is just to(wards)

Aha! That concurs with my understanding of gu in other contexts as in Tha mi gu math or Tha e cairteal gu trì (up to but not beyond)

But there's a lot of grey fog between the two and even native speakers don't always use them consistently.

OK - the hurling of brick-bats aside - I get the idea. English would have many similar things like: "I'm going down the pub" vs "I'm going to the pub" or "I'm going round my mum's" (which doesn't mean doing doughnuts around her presumably detached dwelling). I'm content, so long as I am not missing an important nuance or grammatical point.

Taing a-rithist!

[Níall Beag]

Aha! That concurs with my understanding of gu in other contexts as in Tha mi gu math or Tha e cairteal gu trì (up to but not beyond)

These are pretty different, though.

"gu" before an adjective is just a little particle that turns the adjective into an adverb.

The closest equivalent in English is the suffix -ly.

eg
sure -> surely
cinnteach -> gu cinnteach.

[akerbeltz]

Yes, what Niall said. Beware of homographs, it's a bit like pérmit and permít in English.

[AlexAkimov]

As an aside, I've never seen do 'n. I can guess what it means, and I'm sure it's a thing, but I'd say dhan i.e.

> Fàilte dhan Phlòc - Welcome to Plockton [this is the only Fàilte dhan sign I've seen - to me this is more welcoming than Fàilte gu]
> Tha mi a' dol dhan chèilidh ; Tha mi a' dol dhan a' chèilidh - I am going to the ceilidh [can use either, I tend to use the first]
> Tha mi a' dol dha na bùithean - I am going to the shops
> Tha mi a' dol chun an dorais* - I am going to the door [need to leave the article exposed i.e. can't say chun dorais, well, that's what a native speaker told me] *Note genitive after chun.

[akerbeltz]

do'n is just an old spelling of don, a variant of dhan.

[Ionatan]

do'n is just an old spelling of don, a variant of dhan.

Aha! This is the danger of using material produced in the 1970s (viz. Can Seo)! I've learnt to cope with both grave and acute accents, but there's plenty of other pre-modernisation gotchas!

In Can Seo, I learnt that do 'n is a concatenation of do + an so it makes a lot of sense to me and is actually a little more intuitively understandable (IMO) than don or dhan... but that is just this learner's perspective.