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annathepiper- Gaelic has no indefinite articles. You do not say 'there is a cat'. You just say 'there is cat'.
- Gaelic has no possessive case. You do not say 'I have a cat'. You say 'Cat is at me' (because there's no indefinite articles; see rule #1).
- And for that matter, you would actually say 'is cat at me', because verbs go at the beginning of the sentence!
- Adjectives follow nouns. So if I wanted to say something about what color my cat is, I would say 'is cat brown at me'.
- Who the heck thought that changing the way your name is pronounced and spelled if you're being addressed was a good idea?! Furthermore, the rules on this are different depending on whether you're a male or a female, and whether your name starts with a vowel!
- There is no word for 'it'. All things are 'he' or 'she'.
- Apparently, the Scots count by twenties. Twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven... what I have not managed to determine yet is whether thirty comes after twenty-nineteen, or forty.
- Did the same person who thought multiple spellings and pronunciations of names was a good idea also come up with consonant combinations like 'sg'?
All I've got to say is, this better durned well help me out singing Celtic ditties, and figuring out what the heck passing Scottish strangers are saying when we go back to Scotland for Worldcon in 2005!
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no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 04:13 pm (UTC)Many languages have everything having gender. It's English that is odd there.
Adjectives following nouns is also familiar from Spanish (Which I'm not sure uses its indefinite articles)
Rules changing if you are male or female is fairly familiar to. I'm not sure what the reason would be behind this. Unless cause of titles ahead of it in the past?
What is this counting by 20s thing?
Note verbs that change depending on their tense in most languages. Forms of a verb. etc/
no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 04:45 pm (UTC)Only most Romance languages. (French, Spanish, Italian, etc.) While English is from bizzaro-world in many cases, that isn't one of them. Russian, Japanese, and I'm pretty sure Chinese (Cantonese) don't. (I don't know firsthand about the Caontonese, but I remember somebody saying that.) Finnish doesn't - in fact, if I remember correctly, they don't even have gender-specific pronouns! It's kind of hard to tell who that is over there in the MASSIVE PARKA anyway, so who cares? ^_^
no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 09:21 pm (UTC)Leis a h-uile beannachd. :-)
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Date: 2002-11-25 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 09:27 pm (UTC)Counting by 20's is that in Gaelic, or at least in Scots Gaelic because I have not yet confirmed whether this also happens in Irish, if you want to count up from 29 you go twenty-nine, twenty-ten (instead of thirty), twenty-eleven, etc., up through twenty-nineteen. What I don't know yet is whether you then go to thirty or forty. I.e., whether the Scots just count in base twenty. ;) According to my book a decimal system of counting has been instituted in the Gaelic language but as of the writing of said book (1993) it was apparently not in common usage in Gaelic-speaking communities; I don't know if this is still the case.
Verbs doing wacky things, not really much of a problem. :) Used to that from German, and heck, English as well!
no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 09:59 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-11-25 10:23 pm (UTC)tioraidh (pronounced 'tcheerie', and roughly equivalent to 'cheers' or 'cheerio')
no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 10:32 pm (UTC)--Quatre-vingt, quatre-vingt et un... quatre-vingt-dix, quatre-vingt-onze... quatre-vingt-dix-neuf. So it happens a bit earlier na'Gaidhlig....
Are you sure
no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 11:38 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-11-26 12:06 am (UTC)I can also say "Ciamar a tha thu?" and "Ciamar a tha sibh fhèin" and "Tapadh leit" and "Tha mi sgìth".
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Date: 2002-11-26 12:07 am (UTC)And oh goody, Livejournal at least in IE understands the HTML tricks to make the letters with grave accents on 'em. ^_^
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Date: 2002-11-26 12:08 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-11-26 12:09 am (UTC)I think I'll just stick with trying to learn three foreign languages at once, for the moment. That one sounds like it'd melt my brain even more than I'm trying to melt it now. ;)
no subject
Date: 2002-11-26 05:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-11-26 08:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-11-26 09:58 am (UTC)Now, Latin, I don't even wanna go there.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-26 10:00 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-11-26 10:27 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-11-26 08:52 pm (UTC)In general, 'sg' is pronounced as if it were 'sk' an Beurla- as in a Scotsman's sock knife- a sgian dubh (pronounced 'skean doov')
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Date: 2002-11-26 10:14 pm (UTC)I am not on good terms with equine creatures. The last time I tried to get on one, I had no idea how to get off;
Which is what I wound up doing. *blush* :)
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Date: 2002-11-26 10:15 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-11-27 05:23 am (UTC)The most painful day for me was also the highlight of my trip - we were down on an empty beach and we galloped the horses across the surf and sand. It was heavenly.
Ireland was wonderful. People friendly, although the pubs were not as hopping as I'd hope, I think it was because they were waiting for the tourists to scram before doing anything good ;)
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Date: 2002-11-29 05:50 pm (UTC)We'll see if I get to see Ireland someday. I'll be happy to work on seeing more of Scotland in 2005 though. :)