Fòram na Gàidhlig

1. 'S toil leis a bhith a' dèanamh bàtaichean.
   He likes (to be) making boats.
2. 'S toil leis a dhèanamh bàtaichean.
   He likes to make boats.
3. 'S toil leis a' dèanamh bàtaichean.
   He likes making boats

1&2: I'm sure are correct (assuming I've got the right form of 'boats').

3: I've a feeling is not good or even valid Gaelic. Is the 'a bhith' necessary before a verbal noun in this kind of sentence?

1. is correct, 2. and 3 are wrong:

'S toil leis bàtaichean a dhèanamh.

Your grammar search keyword here is "inversion".

Sorry, I actually had an idea about that, someone once told me folk were forgiving about which side the noun sits in colloquial Gaelic, which might be wrong. Point taken.

So if we fix that, my question is still: is the following correct…

'S toil leis bàtaichean a' dèanamh.

…or must you use 'a bhith' (as in ex.1) to express, for example, "He likes making boats"?

The correct structures are:

'S toil leis a bhith a' dèanamh bàtaichean
'S toil leis bàtaichean a dhèanamh

He likes to make them:

'S toil leis an dèanamh

Better try to stick to the correct word order - Gaelic isn't really flexible about that. You can always pick up bad habits later

ithinkitsnice wrote:someone once told me folk were forgiving about which side the noun sits in colloquial Gaelic, which might be wrong.

That sentence confuses two claims.

1) That people are forgiving of it, but that it is still wrong.
2) That it is an optional part of "colloquial Gaelic".

Certainly, people are very forgiving of it. Getting it wrong rarely obscures the meaning, and it is such a common learner error that everyone's used to it.

But is it wrong?

Well, I have met native speakers who don't tend to stick to the traditional order, but only a couple of them.

I would be loathe to tell a native speaker they were speaking "incorrectly", but equally, it's such a rare thing among genuinely strong native speakers that I would never, ever suggest a learner should take that as a model.

That's not exactly what I thought I said, but point taken.

Cha dèan mi sin tuilleadh, tha mi sin a ghealladh.

Cha dèan thu a dh'aona-ghnothaich e co-dhiù, ach bi an dùil gun dèan thu a' mhearachd seo fhathast greis - chan eil duine gun mhearachd

You won't do it on purpose anyway, but expect that you will make this mistake for a while yet - everybody makes mistakes.

I promise we won't take your head off for it