franc 91 wrote:
Could you tell me what the nuance between chun, chuig and go dtí is, please? (and there's probably a difference in the way they're used, I suppose)
There is no semantic difference between
chun and
chuig. The only differences are:
a) that
chun governs the genitive while
chuig governs the accusative;
b) that
chuig is more commonly used in Ulster than in the other dialects, while
chun is slightly less commonly used there
Go dtí refers only to motion (spatial or temporal) up to a certain point/place.
Chun/chuig have broader meanings. If you think of
go dtí in its historical sense (
go ‘until’ +
(d)tí ‘come/go’, an old subjunctive form of
téigh, nowadays
go dté when meant literally), you can get a feeling for what it really means: ‘until X is reached’ or ‘until X comes’.
When denoting motion towards a place, you can sometimes argue that
go dtí means ‘up to (but not necessarily into)’, while
chun/chuig means ‘up to (and into)’. For example,
chuaigh sé go dtí an siopa ‘he went over to the store’ (but he didn’t necessarily go into it, maybe he just went to get something he’d left on the parking lot outside it or something), but
chuaigh sé chuig an tsiopa ‘he went to the store’ (he definitely went inside).
The differences are minor, though, and if you use the ‘wrong’ one sometimes, nobody will bat an eye (if they’ll even notice).
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