Fòram na Gàidhlig

I've been going through Series 4 of 'Speaking Our Language' and the conditional tense is taught in some of the episodes. I noticed that they teach the question form, 'would be?' as 'am bitheadh?', whereas on the Taic website it's taught as 'am bithinn'/'am biodh?'/'am biomaid?'. So what's the difference, and is there any difference in meaning between the different forms? Thanks.

Bhitheadh / Am bitheadh? are considered emphatic forms of the more commonly used Bhiodh/Am biodh?
Whichever you choose to use, these are used by second and third persons singular and plural: Bhiodh tu, Bhiodh e/i, Bhiodh sibh, Bhiodh iad.
Unlike other tenses, we still have synthetic forms for the first persons singular and plural:
Bhiodh + mi > Bhithinn.
and
Bhiodh + sinn > Bhiomaid (emphatic Bhitheamaid). Derived from older pronoun muid=sinn. This one is now mostly considered optional.

An dòchas gu bheil am mìneachadh seo gu feum dhuibh.

You might want to check out this page.

Ok thanks for the replies. I think I get the idea. So is this 'neutral' vs 'emphatic' concept only for the conditional tense, or can it apply to other tenses too?

Also, from reading that link, are you saying that in Gaelic any verb can have both a 'neutral' and 'stressed/emphathic' form, and if so is there a pattern for how I change a 'neutral' verb to make it 'emphatic'? (Ie what letters I add etc - I noticed you used the example of 'thuirt' vs 'thubhairt', but not sure for other verbs?).

The pattern is to insert consonant + h + another vowel. Which consonsnt to use is historical. It's only used for a restricted set of forms though, so you'll have to learn that bit just like irregular verbs. For now, I'd say just keep in the back of your head that it exists and notice it when you come across it - once you've seen enough of it, it will come to you naturally.

Mostly it applies to the irregular verbs. Not all have separate written forms, for instance tha varies between [haː] ~ [ha] ~ [hə], chaidh can be [xaːj] ~ [xaj] but there's no *thà or *chathaidh spelling.

As in any language, there's a little bit of leeway with all verbs - but not much because if you make it too long, it becomes a long vowel and you can't do that in Gaelic i.e. if you go overboard and turn seas into *[ʃeːs] you'll get funny looks. At your stage, I'd restrict doing this actively to the irregular verbs only to be on the safe side.

Thanks, I think I get the idea, and no doubt I'll get used to this in time.

akerbeltz wrote:Mostly it applies to the irregular verbs. Not all have separate written forms, for instance tha varies between [haː] ~ [ha] ~ [hə], chaidh can be [xaːj] ~ [xaj] but there's no *thà or *chathaidh spelling.

There is thatha occasionally, though, isn't there? Or did the exam board kill that with GOC?

I've only seen thatha rarely, in fairly old texts usually, but yes, that would be one