Fòram na Gàidhlig

[quote="Níall Beag (at the "vegetarian" topic)"]
Careful -- "tha mi ag ithe" is I am eating, it is never *I eat. To describe something as habitual, use the future. If it's common for you, if it's normal for you, you'll do it plenty of times in the future. At most you will do it only once in the present, and quite often I will say "I eat meat" when I am not in the process of eating meat.[/quote]

This made me rather unhappy. Not so much because I probably should have known by now and hadn't, oh well, you live and learn. But because it means there are dozens of sentences where I would have used this structure, and now don't know whether I could, like:

• Tha mi ag obair ann am factaraidh.

• A bheil do mhac a' dol dhan sgoil fhathast?

• Tha mi ag òl uisge-beatha gach Oidhche Challainn.

• Càit a bheil thu a' ceannach bhrògan?

• Nach eil thu a' siubhal air a' bhus riamh?

and so forth and so forth.

Are all these wrong, and if not, how to discern when one can use the "bi + subject + participle" structure and when one can't? (And if they are all wrong, is "'s àbhaist do + subject + a bhith + participle" a common alternative to the future tense?)

Hi Graisg

Don't take it too hard

It's really just something that comes with practice and that you just learn when to use the future as opposed to the present.

I suppose you have to look at it in the sense of what you are describing is not something that you are doing at that specific time but something that you do alot of the time.

but as for the examples above, I would say that 1 and 2 could be used with the present tense and the other 3 would probably be better used with the future.

But it's not a major gaelic issue in my opinion

A 3sel,

thusa wrote:Tha mi ag obair ann am factaraidh.
A bheil do mhac a' dol dhan sgoil fhathast?
Tha mi ag òl uisge-beatha gach Oidhche Challainn.
Càit a bheil thu a' ceannach bhrògan?
Nach eil thu a' siubhal air a' bhus riamh?

Sa Bheurla, a bheil seo ag obair?:-
"I am working in a factory."
"Is your son going to school yet?"
"I'm drinking firewater every Hogmanay."
"Where are you buying shoes?"
"Aren't you ever travelling on the bus?"
Ma bhios iad ag obair mar seo sa Bheurla, cha bhi càil ceàrr leotha. Ach nam biodh tu airson sin gu shios a ràdh, 's dòcha gum biodh an teachdail nas fheàrr:-
"I work in a factory."
"Does your son go to school yet?"
"I drink vodka every New Year's Eve."
"Where do you buy shoes?"
"Don't you ever travel on the bus?"

A Sheonaidh, cha chanainn sa Bheurla "I am working in a factory", ach nam bithinn a' ciallachadh "I work in a factory" cha chanainn "I'll work in a factory" cuideachd, agus 's e sin as coireach a tha mi a' faighneachd. Tha diofair eadar "Does your son go to school yet?" agus "Will your son go to school yet?", tha "I'll drink fernet &c" a' coimhead mar a dh'fhuasgail mi sin a thòiseachadh a dhèanamh, amsaa.

(BTW thanks for the compliment, horogheallaidh! )

This is not as strange and unfamiliar as it seems at first. English does actually have some similar usages of future structures.

If you are describing recurrent behaviour, often irritating, you may well say:

And he'll be sitting there with his headphones on, tapping his feet and whistling through his teeth, when I'm trying to concentrate on University Challenge.

He will keep feeding the birds, even though I've told him not to.

Parallel constructions in the past, with 'would':

He would keep opening the window even when it was freezing outside.

And more neutrally: When I was young we would go to Skye on our holidays and a fisherman would take us out in his boat.

In addition, the choice of simple or continuous forms adds other dimensions or nuances to the meaning, but that's another topic!

Back to Gaelic usage. It all depends on context. A conversation might go back and fore like this:

A: A bheil obair agad a-nis?
B: Tha , tha mi ag obair anns an fhactoraidh-èisg. [establishing the ongoing situation NOW]
A: Obh, dè bhios thu a' dèanamh an sin?[moving to general, regular activities]
B: Bidh mi a' dràibheadh làraidh.
A: Obh, am bi thu a' dol gu àiteachan inntinneach?
B: Cha bhi. Cha bhi mi a' dràibheadh ach eadar Port Righ agus Slèite. Ach tha mi toilichte gu leòr [ongoing state, not a regular activity]. Bidh mi dhachaidh airson mo dhìnnearach gach oidhche. [regular activity]

Thanks for the examples, possibly I'm beginning to catch on. Would it do to say that "tha mi ag obair" is all right when you are actually referring to the fact that you're employed? So that one would say, e.g.
Tha mi ag obair ann am factaraidh, agus bidh mi ag obair o Dhiluain gu Dihaoine.

Or, to return to the second example that horogheallaidh tells me might work,
A bheil do mhac a' dol dhan sgoil fhathast? - Tha, ged nach bi e a' dol ann gu tric an-nis, on a tha àm nan deuchainn ann.

Or, to return even more to the "vegetarian debate" which set me on this,
Tha mi nam ghlasraichear. Tha mi a' cumail às fheòil ithe - cha bhi mi ga h-ithe riamh.

Am I getting there? (Putting aside for a moment that I don't know whether I can tr*nsl*t* "examination period" as àm nan deuchainn an "keep from" as cum às.)

Thrissel wrote:A Sheonaidh, cha chanainn sa Bheurla "I am working in a factory", ach nam bithinn a' ciallachadh "I work in a factory" cha chanainn "I'll work in a factory" cuideachd, agus 's e sin as coireach a tha mi a' faighneachd. Tha diofair eadar "Does your son go to school yet?" agus "Will your son go to school yet?", tha "I'll drink fernet &c" a' coimhead mar a dh'fhuasgail mi sin a thòiseachadh a dhèanamh, amsaa.

*shrug*
Well I personally say "I'm working in..." or "I'm working for..." when I talk about the company I work for or the location of my office. What I do say is "I work in IT". Effectively, my place of work is temporary, but my career is not.

"Tha mi ag obair ann an buidhean coimpiutaireachd."
ach
"´S e neach-chompiutair a th' annam."

This is just like talking about where you're from:
"Tha mi a' fuireach ann an Alba."
vs
"´S e Albannach a th' annam."

There's a difference between each pair of "is doing" "does" and "will do" in English, but Gaelic really only has two here.

The problem here is that everybody calls the Gaelic tense the "future" which we think of as the English "will".

Well no, actually. Most of the English future is "going to" -- "I'm going to go on holiday to the islands next year" "I'm going to study more Gaelic tomorrow" "I'm going to stop giving examples after this last one".

"Will" is a peculiar thing in English and isn't really the future at all.

The Gaelic future is something different again, and I'll have to give a bit of a boring linguistics lecture to explain it properly.

Classically (and in academia), what is now called a verb "tense" was described in terms of "tense and aspect". Tense just means "time", and aspect's a bit hard to explain, so I'll just demonstrate
"past perfect" -- tense=past, aspect=perfect
"present progressive" -- tense=present, aspect=progressive

Now there's an aspect that has dropped out of favour recently, but occurs in older grammars: aorist. Aorist is a Greek word meaning "without horizons". Alexander Stewart's Elements of Gaelic Grammar refers briefly to the Gaelic future as "Aorist of Future". He also presents the English "will" as aorist.

Think about it: "I will be here" vs "I'm going to be here". The first one should feel more unconditional, less restricted, but in the second, you would expect to be told when.

Now in English we have a distinction between present and future aorist: "I do" and "I will", but in Gaelic, these two are reduced to one, which is referred to as the future simply because traditional grammarians lacked imagination and chose to label everything based on Latin.

Do we need present and future aorists? Some churches use "I do" and some use "I will" for wedding vows -- they are functionally almost identical. And "I will always be here" does effectively say "I am always here" -- the different implications of the different forms are a bonus, but not strictly needed.

OK, winding it back.

The Gaelic present tense has a "progressive" ("doing") aspect. That is an aspect that has horizons, that has limits. I'm not going to be in my job forever, so it has to have horizons -- that's why in both English and Gaelic I saying "I am working in the outskirts of Edinburgh at the moment".

On the other hand, I like cycling, and even if I was to move job, move house etc etc etc I still wouldn't take the bus very often. It's not a situation that I really expect to change, so I want this aorist -- this unlimited aspect -- in what I say.

So maybe it was unclear of me to talk about present vs habitual. Perhaps I should have talked about "current status" vs "limitless normal state" or something like that.

The only minor complication (and really, it is only minor!) is trying to accept that from someone else's opinion of the difference between a limited and an unlimited state may differ from yours. When you're learning someone else's language, you have to learn their point of view -- you have to speak to and from their point of view.

It is for this reason that I say Gaelic will never be my language -- I can never impose my point of view, and must always defer to someone else's.

3sel - a bheil mi ceart nuair a chanas mi nach Beurla a tha do chiad chànan (no Gàidhlig...)? Oir tha rudan ann eadar a' Bheurla, a' Ghàidhlig is a' Chuimris nach eil air an lorg gu tric ann an cànanan Eòrpach eile, rudan mar "I am going", "Tha mi a' dol", "Rydw i'n mynd" amsaa.

Ged-thà, nuair a bhios na h-Eòrpaich (bho mhòr-thìr Eòrpa) ag ionnsachadh Beurla agus ga bruidhinn, gu tric tha "mearachdan" ann eadar rudan mar "I go" agus "I am going". Bidh seo a' coimhead beagan neònach do luchd-labhairt na Beurla, ach bidh iad ga thuigsinn ceart gu leòr.

Chan eil mi cinnteach mun Ghàidhlig, ach chuirte iongnadh orm nam biodh Gàidheal a' dìobradh gad thuigsinn nam canadh tu "tha mi ag obair ann am factaraidh" an àite "bidh mi ag obair ann am factaraidh".

Níall Beag wrote:Most of the English future is "going to" [...] "Will" [...] isn't really the future at all.

Níall Beag wrote:When you're learning someone else's language, you have to learn their point of view.

I guess the first is a good example of the other - I still can't make myself think of "to be going to" as a future tense, rather than just a way of expressing intention or expectation. By which I'm also answering an "of course" to Seonaidh's

Seonaidh wrote:a bheil mi ceart nuair a chanas mi nach Beurla a tha do chiad chànan (no Gàidhlig...)?

thus getting to the one which I was brought up in.

Níall Beag wrote:Classically (and in academia), what is now called a verb "tense" was described in terms of "tense and aspect".

Seonaidh wrote: Oir tha rudan ann eadar a' Bheurla, a' Ghàidhlig is a' Chuimris nach eil air an lorg gu tric ann an cànanan Eòrpach eile, rudan mar "I am going", "Tha mi a' dol", "Rydw i'n mynd" amsaa.

In Czech we have what AFAICT Czech linguists call a perfective and an imperfective aspect. (I don't know how much of the same thing the Czech imperfective and the Greek aorist are.) So to differentiate between going to a pub just now and going to a pub every Friday I don't choose between the progressive and simple tenses of "go", but between the perfective verb "jít" and the imperfective verb "chodit". By which I want to say that the difference is there all right, it's only expressed by using different means.

Seonaidh wrote: Bidh seo a' coimhead beagan neònach do luchd-labhairt na Beurla, ach bidh iad ga thuigsinn ceart gu leòr.

Chan eil mi cinnteach mun Ghàidhlig, ach chuirte iongnadh orm nam biodh Gàidheal a' dìobradh gad thuigsinn nam canadh tu "tha mi ag obair ann am factaraidh" an àite "bidh mi ag obair ann am factaraidh".

Of course, you can't always simply say "in Czech I use the perfective verb, a-ha, in English I must use the progressive tense". There are the different points of view. This can be probably even better seen in the treatment of reported speech: the Czech equivalent of the English "He said he didn't like it" would be, translated literally, "He said he doesn't like it". But this is exactly why I'm asking. I've no doubt a native English speaker would understand me if I said "He said he doesn't like it" - but I'd like to know that I should say "He said he didn't like it" instead. Surely it'll never come as natural to me as what I was brought up in, surely I'll always be making mistakes. But knowing this doesn't make me satisfied with "however unnatural what I say is, it's intelligible". I want to at least keep trying to make as few mistakes as possible.

I to disillusion you 3sel, but were you to say "He said he doesn't like it" instead of "He said he didn't like it" I doubt if many native English speakers would bat an eyelid. Mind, there can be subtle differences between "He said he didn't like it", "He said he doesn't like it", "He says he didn't like it" and "He says he doesn't like it", m.e. You surely don't expect all native English speakers to be consistent?

Seo "classic" à Manchester. Railway level crossing warning sign: "Wait while the light is red". Beurla choitcheann: "Wait during the display of the red light". Dualchainnt Mhanchester: "Wait UNTIL the red light displays"...

cha bhi mi ga h-ithe riamh.

riamh always points to the past:

Cha do dh'ith mi e riamh (I have ever eaten it)

For the future, you can use:

Chan ith mi e gu bràth
Chan ith mi e a chaoidh

Matched tenses were obligatory in Old Irish ie the tense/mood of your main clause had to match up with the tense/mood of any subclause. The same applies to traditional Gaelic (written Gaelic anyway) but in the spoken languages, tense is a lot more flexible.

Also, there were fine nuances of meaning between sentences like:
Tha a' ghrian ag éirigh
Éiridh a' ghrian
Bidh a' ghrian ag éirigh

But a lot of levelling is taking place and at times it feels to me like a bit of a free for all in terms of choosing tenses.

I don't have the answer to all the above questions either - just trying to point out that this is very much a system in flux so we should be clear about whether we're debating spoken vs written, formal vs colloquial.

Glè mhath, mòran taing dhuibh uile! Hopefully I've got some general idea and the rest will have to come through practice. So don't hesitate to correct me next time I make the wrong option. Even if it looks as though I just forgot to take care, which might well be true, because this

GunChleoc wrote:riamh always points to the past

is one of the types of corrections I need most: I know the rule, but have to be told a few times that I forgot to turn theory into practice, before I begin correcting myself soon after I do it, then immediately after I do it, then not do it at all.

(BTW, Mr S, I daresay that even I can see a subtle difference between "He says he didn't like it" and "He says he doesn't like it" .)

Ok, I know this isn't an English forum, but it's worth saying....

He said he didn't like it vs He said he doesn't like it

The difference is subtle but both are possible.

"He said he didn't like it" means that the "not liking" is in the past and is finished.

"He said he doesn't like it", on the other hand, says that we expect the disliking to continue.

An example:
"He said he doesn't like opera" -- this means he didn't like opera at the time, doesn't like opera now, and doesn't expect to like opera any time in the future (although he may change his mind).
"He said he didn't like the opera" -- in this case we're talking about a particular opera that he went to see. That opera has finished, so his dislike has finished, hence past tense.

Does that help?