--- title: "Timcheal air dà uair dheug ‘san oidhche – Lesson 5" date: 2014-11-17T07:09:19Z Blog: ["Kilted Scot"] categories: ["Gàidhlig"] tags: ["Gaelic","term1","week5"] image: /images/IMAG0612_1-edited.jpg draft: false --- It has been a frenetic month and due to several disruptive weeks in court as a juror I not only missed some classes but also fell behind with blog updates. So somewhat tardily this is my round up of week 5’s lesson and you’ll notice some familiar shades from week 4’s post as we re-visited time, again. It turns out that time and numbers in general are a bit of a head-scratcher for the wide-eyed beginner Gaelic student and due to considerable confusion during the previous week’s class (which I missed) we focussed largely on both topics again this week. (Note: I’m writing this 3 weeks after the class, so apologies if this merely adds to the confusion!). ***An Uair*** **– The Time** We went over time in my last lesson post so I’ll try to avoid any repetition, however I left off wondering how to tell the time when it was x amount of minutes past or to the hour (rather than half past, quarter to etc.) and I can give some examples of this now: | **Gàidhlig** | **English** | | --- | --- | | _còig uairean ‘sa mhadainn_ | 5.00am | | _leth-uair an deidh sia_ | 6:30pm | | _cairteal an deidh dhà ‘sa mhadainn_ | 2:15am | | _cairteal gu aon uair ‘sa mhadainn_ | 12:45am | | _cairteal an deidh trì uairean feasgar_ | 3:15pm | | _aon uair deug ‘san oidhche_ | 11:00pm | | _cairteal gu còig uairean ‘sa mhadainn_ | 4:45am | | _trì mionadean an deidh còig ‘sa mhadainn_ | 5:03am | | _fichead ‘sa dà mhionaid an deidh dà uair feasgar_ | 2:22pm | | _deich mionaidean an deidh naoi ‘san oidhche_ | 9:10pm | | _ceithir mionaidean deug an deidh ochd ‘sa mhadainn_ | 8:14am | _Sìmplidh_, no? The main cause of confusion is down to the number two and the rules surrounding it in Gaelic. I’ll try to explain as best I can! As I’ve mentioned in a previous post _dà_ is considered as one unit rather, it refers to a couple and therefore it doesn’t take a plural. Additionally, if _dà_ is followed by a vowel then it becomes the lenited _dhà_ this is because vowels cannot be lenited. There is apparently nothing that _dà_ likes more than to lenite the following word but in the case of words starting with ‘sg’, ‘sm’, ‘sp’ or ‘st’ these cannot be lenited. Everything else is fair game it seems. Another confusion is that if there is a noun following a ‘teen then the word order becomes curious. The noun in these cases would go between the defining number and the ‘teen itself, for example, _dà mhoinaid dheug_ is 12 minutes (2 minute teen) and note the double lenition.. dagnammed _dà_! Just like in English the word for ‘hour’ or ‘o’clock’ can be dropped except when it’s eleven or twelve o’clock, then _uair_ must be included. Got all that, seems relatively straight forward now that its written down, doesn’t it? Additional notes relating to time is that ‘past’ or ‘after’ is _an deidh_ and ‘to’ or ‘before’ is _gu_. The _‘sa_ and _‘san_ seen prior to _mhadainn_ and _oidhche_ are abbreviations of _anns a’_ and _anns an_ both meaning ‘in the’. If being specific about time is a little too complex (and it is!) then you can use either _timchael air_ .. which means ‘approximately’ or _faisg air_.. which means ‘close to’ followed by the approximate time. Time may seem like a simple topic but it took our class two weeks to sort of get our heads around it, partially of course as counting in Gaelic is new to us, partially because this is all new vocabulary but largely because for such a simple process there are several gotchas involved that completely undermine your confidence just when you think you have it nailed. So for some light relief! This week’s song is _Fear A’ Bhàta_ (The Boatman) which is a beautiful song with a eerily familiar tune which I can’t quite place. Enjoy!