Fòram na Gàidhlig

hoigh,

Tha aon ceirt agam: ciamar a chanas mi seo ceart?
"I'll see you at [place] at [time]"?
A bheil e "Chi mi aig an taigh agad aig ceithir uairean thu" no "Chi mi thu(sa) aig [aite] aig [tide]" ?

Tapadh leibh,
s.

I'd go with the latter.

One of the most underrated rules in linguistics is "end weighting", ie "leave the long bits to last".

In English, we can say
"I gave it to him" or "I gave him it" pretty much interchangeably, but we would probably say "I gave him that thing he wanted" rather than "I gave that thing he wanted to him", and we would only say "I gave it to the guy that came round looking for it" and never "*I gave the guy that came round looking for it it".

I know that Gaelic's not English, but the point behind end-weighting in English is that it is really hard to keep the full sentence in your head, and any long phrases in the middle "interrupt" your processing of it. This seems to be a universal rule of language. Some languages prefer to stick the long information at the start, others at the end (and normally there is a mechanism for doing it the other way round when required), but the human mind can't cope with it being in the middle.

Disclaimer: I'm a learner!

Hm i'd be a touch more careful on the universals, after all, a lot of that falls over in languages with a high degree of marking and flexible syntax.

Anyway, the chap didn't want a lecture so I'll keep it short

Whatever the motivation, Niall is right. In an unmarked sentence, Gaelic tends to put place and time after anything else and time usually as far to the back as possible. I tend to explain it as "the least important info goes at the end" but that's my own interpretation of it.

Also
"ciamar a chanas mi seo ceart?"
I think that should be "gu ceart", although I might be wrong. In English, "right" means the same as both "correct" and "correctly", but in Gaelic, I believe that "ceart" is just "correct" and that you need "gu ceart" for "correctly".

("gu ceart" brings back 3,350 hits in Google, so it seems like good Gaelic to me.)

akerbeltz wrote: Anyway, the chap didn't want a lecture so I'll keep it short

yes he did...
seriously, any bit of information, is appreciated

akerbeltz wrote: In an unmarked sentence, Gaelic tends to put place and time after anything else and time usually as far to the back as possible. I tend to explain it as "the least important info goes at the end" but that's my own interpretation of it.

That word "unmarked" needs an explanation, I think.

In language, we "mark" language to make it stand out, and we do that by applying unusual grammar.

Old King Cole was a merry old soul (unmarked, normal word order)
And a merry old sould was he (marked, the switching of the items both sides of "was" makes it stand out, so is emphatic).

In English, see you tomorrow or see you later is marked, because you would expect "I'll". Compare see you tomorrow and I'll see you tomorrow. They feel different, right? The first is a form of goodbye, the second feels more like a statement.

Chì mi a-maireach thu and chì mi a-rithist thu are "marked" -- the thu and a-maireach/a-rithist have switched out of their normal places. I believe that it's these phrases that are causing your confusion. They're special cases, not the basic pattern.

Níall Beag wrote:Also
"ciamar a chanas mi seo ceart?"
I think that should be "gu ceart", although I might be wrong. In English, "right" means the same as both "correct" and "correctly", but in Gaelic, I believe that "ceart" is just "correct" and that you need "gu ceart" for "correctly".

("gu ceart" brings back 3,350 hits in Google, so it seems like good Gaelic to me.)

Tha thu ceart.

ceart modifies a verb here (chanas), so you need an ad-verb. You form adverbs in Gaelic by putting gu in front of it, in English by adding -ly at the end.

Seo na thachair nuair a tha clientèle agaibh a tha air an cànan ionnsachadh (no a tha fhathast ga ionnsachadh...).

Chì mi a-rithist sibh, gun teagamh. Galdegaia?

Ez zakiat ba... emaiguk beste bat?

Seonaidh wrote:Seo na thachair nuair a tha clientèle agaibh a tha air an cànan ionnsachadh (no a tha fhathast ga ionnsachadh...).

Chì mi a-rithist sibh, gun teagamh. Galdegaia?

The closest equivalent to galdegai in Gaelic would have to be fronting. There's no other specific position in play here -- I mean which would you say is focussed here: a-rithist or sibh?