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What Went Wrong?

Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2017 9:04 am
by Raghnaid NicGaraidh
Recently I posted the following paragraph on Facebook:
Tha mi ag iarraidh an cèist seo a chur bho chionn cùplan mìoson. Am faod sinn duilleag facebook air an Còisir a dheanamh?

Along with this tr*nsl*t**n:
I've been meaning to ask for a while, but could we make a facebook page for the Choir?

Someone replied in the comments with:
"Tha mi air a bhi airson an ceist seo a dh' iarraidh bho chionn beagan mhìosan. An tèid againn air duilleag facebook a dhèanadh 'son na còisire..?"

It's obviously a correction (although completely unnecessary in the context). I was fairly sure about the first sentence, less about the second. What did I do wrong, and why exactly is it wrong? Constructive criticism is good for improvement, I know, but it's got to be constructive: i.e, actually telling me what the problem is, rather than just rephrasing whatever I've written.

Thanks in advance.

What Went Wrong?

Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2017 10:10 pm
by akerbeltz
First off, the "correction" is only marginally less wrong that what you wrote :priob:

So you wrote
Tha mi ag iarraidh an cèist seo a chur bho chionn cùplan mìoson. Am faod sinn duilleag facebook air an Còisir a dheanamh?
1. cèist » ceist
2. cùplan mìoson : cùplan is common in Irish but less so in ScG. Grunn mhìosan or mìos no dhà would be better
3. Am faod : is mainly asking permission (it's more complicated that that but it'll do for now). So unless you were asking permission to make a FB page, more commonly one might say an urrainn dhuinn (can we) or an dèan sinn... (will/can we make...)
4. air an còisir : you CAN use air for indicating that something is the topic but you need to lenite i.e. air a' chòisir. But more commonly this would be mu dhèidhinn na còisir or mun chòisir or airson na còisir.
5. The idiom (both of the correction and your version) for the first part of the question is un-Gaelically convoluted. Gaelic on the whole avoids these pluperfect / passive constructions if it can get away with a simple past tense - which most of the time you can.

So just correcting the bare essentials (to make it grammatical) your question ought to be
Bha mi ag iarraidh a' cheist seo a chur bho chionn grunn mhìosan. An urrainn dhuinn sinn duilleag Facebook air a' chòisir a dhèanamh?[/quote]

To make it idiomatic and Gaelic-sounding, I would have put this as
Bha mi airson faighneachd fad mìos no dhà an urrainn dhuinn duilleag FB a dhèanamh dhan chòisir
or
An dèan sinn duilleag FB dhan chòisir, bha mi airson seo fhaighneachd fad mìos no dhà.

There are obviously many other options beyond these.

In terms of the correction, apart from the convolution of the first part, this is horrendous:
a dhèanadh 'son na còisire.
First off, it ought to be a dhèanamh (unless the writer uses a pretty unusual dialect). Secondly, if they're going to be colloquial and reduce airson to son (which is ok), the this would no longer (in most cases) invoke a genitive but just a nominative: son a' chòisir. It's like mixing "cometh thou" and "yo man" in the same English sentence.

Hope that helps!

What Went Wrong?

Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2017 8:36 am
by GunChleoc
You forgot to delete a word while fixing:

An urrainn dhuinn sinn duilleag Facebook air a' chòisir a dhèanamh

What Went Wrong?

Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2017 11:42 am
by akerbeltz
Bhups