kittydesade | (no subject)

You may say in Irish that you live somewhere by saying that you are in your living in it. (No, Jag, we're learning Irish, not comparing language structures.) This requires the preposition i (in) and the possessive adjectives given in the previous section (which I still need to type up.) Placing the i (in) before a (his/her) gives ina.

Tá mé i mo chónaí i Luimneach. I live in Limerick (lit. I am in my living in Limerick.)
Tá Seán ina chónaí i Londain. Sean/John lives in London (Lit. John is in his living in London.)
Tá Máire ina cónaí i Meiriceá. Mary lives in America (Lit. Mary is in her living in America.)

Conas tá tú/do mháthair/d'athair/do shlaghdán/an aimsir?
How is/are you/your mother/your father/your cold/the weather?

Agus has a short form is, which was given in the formal greeting Dia is Muire dhuit for Dia agus Muire... Be careful not to confuse this with the copula is, which, though usually at the beginning of a sentence, sometimes isn't. For example: Cad is ainm duit? What's your name? (Lit. What is name to you?)

Unlike in English (and every other language I can think of except German in certain circumstances and cases where the ... never mind) the verb comes before its subject in Irish. Compare the order of elements in these Irish and English sentences:

Tá Seán anseo. Sean/John is here.
Tá sé anseo. He is here.

A word qualifying another word comes after it (adjectives, etc)
uimhir teileafóin - telephone number
Sráid Mhór - Main Street

I've hit that stage of learning Irish where I want to get past the simple Please and Thank you and What is your name phrases and get to making the damn sentences already. And yes, I do need a dictionary, but I don't have the grammar to make even basic The cat sat on the mat sentences, so. I also want to line all the Pleases and Thank yous up against each other and compare the formation of each one in all the languages I know. No, I'm not a complete nerd, why do you ask?

Okay, a brief dorking. In English, What is your name? The idea of the name is the subject of the sentence. In Spanish, you can ask the same, but what I learned as more common growing up (there may be regional differences) is How are you called?, which is the same in French. In Russian we have a variation on the theme, How [they is implied] call you. In Irish, the name is the subject again, in German we're back to How are you called? So... So. Only in English and Irish is the name the subject of the question, all other languages the person is the subject of the question.

ANYWAY. Seriously, these are the things I consider. And then I consider what that means for the language in general. Like, seriously, Latin and Japanese are the only two languages I can think of off the top of my head where the verb comes at the end. ... I'm going to stop dorking about this, I swear.

Completely spent most of yesterday night asleep for some reason. Which, I know, is what you're supposed to do at night, but I have languages to study and writing to do and guitar to practice. So not sure why I was so tired but, eh, hopefully whatever it was my body needed to do got done with all the damn sleep. Today I think I need to poke my organizational list, which, thank god, is much smaller. See what else I need to do. And I think today we'll be going to Best Buy to spend my gift certificate on a set of headphones so I don't wake the boy with my bad guitar playing. And. Stuff. Things. I'm sure you all desperately wanted to know all of this.

And now I have everyone weighing in on all the language dorking ever. This amuses me endlessly. Okay, folks:

Person as subject/focus of sentence	Name as subject/focus of sentence
Spanish: ¿Como te llamas?*	English: What is your name?
French: Comment t'appelle?	Irish: Cad is ainm duit?**
Russian: Как вас зовут?	Hebrew: Ma shmech?
German: Wie heißt du?	Dutch: Wat is uw naam? Wat is jouw naam?
--	Finnish: Mikä sinun nimesi on?

* This is only the more common form of asking for a person's name; you can also ask ¿Que es su nombre? but it... well, to me it sounds clumsy and it's the sort of question I would expect from a census taker or a receptionist with an incomplete intake form.

** Since this is still only the first chapter I'm not sure if, like Spanish, both ways are used and one is used for more formal/statistical things and one is used in all other contexts, or if that's really the way you say it in all contexts.