Ah, that was probably a bit sloppily worded (I’m sure a lot of it was—it was quite a bit of typing, and none of it was proofread—so if something seems to make no sense, point it out to me and I’ll see if it wasn’t just me leaving out half a sentence or something like that). No, I didn’t read is as if you were.

It’s just something I’ve heard many learners mention as one of the points of confusion when trying to set up rules in their head for how what mutates what. I suppose it probably stems from the fact that so many (especially online) places of teaching Irish just describe lenition as ‘adding an h’, and then the notion of adding an h to a consonant and adding an h before a vowel just get mixed up a bit, and people end up thinking they’re related or the same thing.


@ ‘mini-Béarltacht’

Yes, I had more exposure to the English language than most of my peers—but even without it, most well-educated Scandinavians would not have any trouble doing a write-up like that one up there in English, at least not if it’s within their own field of study. I would probably have found it a lot harder to write all that in Danish, actually, because there’s so much vocabulary relating to comparative linguistics that I more or less only use in English, since most of the articles I read and half my classes are in English.


What would an Anglo-Germanic turn of phrase be, as opposed to a Germanic one? Do you mean like the kind of phrase that native English-speakers living in a place like Germany sometimes adopt (unwittingly) from the local language there? Or something else entirely?

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Not a native speaker.

Always wait for at least three people to agree on a translation, especially if it’s for something permanent.

My translations are usually GU (Ulster Irish), unless CO (Standard Orthography) is requested.

yeah, even some (many?) schoolteachers teach that and then their pupils don't understand anything and think leniting a vowel is adding an h as well! Maybe these teachers don't know either...

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

I just felt odd saying that something was Germanic, but not "native" English, because English is still basically a Germanic language. I just meant something about the structure of a sentence that sounds foreign in a Germanic way (although God knows native English speakers often butcher the language in all sorts of weird ways which I guess we have to call "native", unless we call it "ignorant").

Some examples of what a German speaker often says (but you don't usually):
"Already in 2005 he was doing that" or "Also the Germans were doing that".
That sort of phrasing sounds very Germanic (at least to me, since I know how those words are usually placed in a normal German sentence).

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Ah, I see what you mean now. Yeah, I probably make a few of those here and there, if I’m not paying proper attention to what I’m writing.

Just earlier today, I was trying to find verbs in English that have ‘for-’ as a preverb (to make a point in a conversation), and one of the first ones that came to mind was ‘forpass’. It was about ten seconds and two whole sentences till it struck me that that’s a Danish word, not an English one!

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Not a native speaker.

Always wait for at least three people to agree on a translation, especially if it’s for something permanent.

My translations are usually GU (Ulster Irish), unless CO (Standard Orthography) is requested.

I haven't come across any such teachers - not secondary school teachers anyway, but they may well exist. Generally, aidiachtaí sealbhacha are taught as a formal grammar exercise in First Year of secondary school (I know my 9-year old kid has had some dealings with these words in primary school too). You just couldn't teach this stuff without knowing the rules, and stating that mo, for example, 'puts a h on the noun that follows' would cause such obvious difficulties for students that even the weakest teacher would soon be aware of the inaccuracy of the statement. For those teachers who don't know the rules, there's always the textbook to englighten them (although if someone is teaching Irish and hasn't already copped on to these simple rules after all their years of schooling, there are clearly big problems!)

They don't butcher the language, they just speak non-standard English. Would you say Ulster people butcher Irish since they don't speak standard Irish?...

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

Wow kokoshneta, that was a brilliant reply. I'm not very knowledgeable on Irish linguistics, so it's great to have somebody
put so much effort in. Cheers!