Thanks lads.

Franc, I never made a connection between casóg and cassock until you mentioned it. I wonder if the two words are related.

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

Well that's the connection I made when I saw the word (rightly or wrongly)

Since people are on chapter 3. I should say that:

The Dative Plural -(a)ibh is unusual in typical speech, outside of fearaibh and mnáibh, nowadays. However you will hear it in fixed phrases and everybody does understand it. It also depends on the speaker, some people do use it more.

The Dative Singular is still commonly used in words where it was traditionally made by dropping the -e from the genitive. Quite often, if there is an adjective after the noun, it will drop back to the nominative, but I think older speakers prefer you not to do this and not everybody does this. Also in the dative there is the standard rule that you don't prefix t to masculine nouns starting with a vowel, an t-úll, but ar an úll. However everybody seems to say "ar an t-Athair Peadar Ua Laoghaire", a man so special he breaks the dative!

The Genitive Plural is still completely active. Except sometimes with words ending in -ach, where the nominative plural is used.

The Vocative Plural Adding the -a for masculine nouns is quite rare now, most people either say the nominative plural or dative plural for the vocative plural. (Even though they've stopped using it in the actual dative.)

For me, the declension system is the strangest difference between Cork and Kerry. In Kerry there seems to be different rules for every generation, with some people mixing the rules and the complexities and exceptions are insane, where as most people keep the older rules in Cork and things are quite regular. Would anybody know more about Corca Dhuibhne and An Rinn.

I'll make a longer post about the genitive tomorrow, since there are a few things that would be hard to find out unless you go to Cúil Aodha or the area around it.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Have you got - 'An Teanga Bheo - Corca Dhuibhne' by Diarmuid Ó Sé ?

Yeah, I do indeed and its big brother 'Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne'. Great books, particularly the later. It has a very good run down of the language of older speakers. The small book is better as a look at the dialect overall, all age groups.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Okay, I finished lesson 3. If you count spelling mistakes, I got most of the English to Irish translation exercises wrong. I think that I more or less got the gist of it, but I'll definitely need a lot more work with the noun cases.

To be honest Matt, I haven't even tried writing out the translations. I've just been saying the sentences out loud.

My spoken Irish is the area I'm really working hard on at the moment. I meet up with a few friends every Monday night for some Irish conversation in the pub, and I always find I can understand a lot more than I can speak.

But I think I'll start writing out the exercises as well. No harm in practicing my written and spoken Irish at the same time.

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

Odd things about An Tuiseal Ginideach.

1. If a woman's name is qualified by an adjective the genitive is removed:

Fear Ghobnatan = Gobnait's husband.

Fear Ghobnait Rua = Red haired Gobnait's husband.

2. Some people don't use the genitive with ordinal numbers after céad.
Tarna uses the same article in the feminine genitive.

An tarna bean.
Mac an tarna mná.

However Dara does not:

An dara bean
Mac na dara mná.

(Tarna is far more common than dara though.)

3. Dia is one of the few proper nouns not lenited in the genitive.
Mac Dé, rather than Mac Dhé.

4. The genitive of Turas is Turais, unless it's a journey to a holy well, then the genitive is Turasa.

5. After the verbal noun the noun is in the genitive. If the noun is indefinite and the action described by the verbal noun
and the noun itself naturally belong together and the phrase is very common, then the noun is lentied.

ag baint phrátaí
ag imirt chluiche
ag aoireacht bhó
ag bailiú chaoireach isteach
ag briseadh chloch
ag baint mhóna
ag cur sheaca, Tá sé ag cur sheaca = It's freezing (weather).

6. Whenever an noun is put in the genitive to act as an adjective for another noun (mar shampla: Buidéal Bainne, Aimsir sheaca) it basically becomes an adjective as far as the grammar is concerned. It follows all the lenition rules a normal adjective would, for example:

.... ar an mbuidéal bhainne.
.... i gcaitheamh na h-aimsire seaca.

It's also an adjective with no plural form: Na buidéil bhainne.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Thanks Lon Dubh. Some of those I knew, but a few things I didn't.


Is that just for holy wells, or is it for all kinds of religious pilgrimages?

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

Just for holy wells. There's a church ruin in Kilkenny with the name Cill an Turasa right next to the Tipperary border, so it is/was in Déise Irish as well I guess.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal