CAIBIDIOL A H-OCHTDEUG
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July 31, 2010
July 27, 2010
Using the possessive with the verbal noun
Sinéadw on Daltaí raises some interesting questions on that board. She asked about how to say in Irish, “I hope you won’t mind my writing to you”. Aonghus on that board gave her a good reply, indicating that it would be tá súil agam nach miste leat mise a bheith ag scríobh chugat.
This made me wonder when in Irish it would be appropriate to say “my writing”, “my doing”, “my going”, etc. I should point out that many of these sentences are colloquially “me writing” or “me doing” in British English: “do you mind ME being here?”, although “my being” is much more elegant.
Let us look at this sentence from chapter 14 of Séadna:
cad déarfá lem’ dhul chun cainte le Séadna féin ar dtúis?
This means:
what would you say to my going to speak with Séadna first? [how about my going to speak with Séadna first?]
Why was lem dhul used here? In Sinéadw’s sentence, I don’t think using a possessive with the verbal noun would be good. So why was lem dhul used in Séadna? My only conclusion is that the whole clause needed to be governed by le. Cad déarfá le + mé ag dul. Clearly, it is awkward to go straight from le to mé ag dul, and so the solution is to say “my going”, mo dhul, which can then be directly governed by le: lem dhul.
What would you say to my writing to him?
Cad déarfá lem’ sgrí’ chuige?
July 25, 2010
July 23, 2010
July 21, 2010
July 17, 2010
July 11, 2010
Towards a new foreign policy
A recent blogpost on VDARE.com expressed the view that the UK will be on India’s side in the eventual struggle for global dominance between China and India, whereas Australia would be pro-Chinese, and the US position is unclear. It is time we reconsidered our long-term foreign policy in the UK. Our overall strategy appears to be drifting, with continuance of the US lapdog strategy that has been in place for a long time, and a foot in the European camp too. But the US will not always be the leading power in the world, and will not always be an Anglo-Saxon-dominated (or in US parlance, “WASP”) country.
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