Scottish Gaelic verbs
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Verbs
You may find Gaelic verbs to be simpler than verbs in other languages, because unlike English, Spanish, French, Italian, and a whole slew of other languages, Gaelic verb forms are identical regardless of person. There is one exception, the conditional tense. Remember that in Gaelic the verb is always the first element of the sentence.
Let's start with one of the most widely used verbs in Gaelic, tha, it is also one of only 11 irregular verbs.
Tha is translated as am, is, or are, depending on the subject. As I said above, the same form is used for each person.
| Gaelic | English |
|---|---|
| Tha mi | I am |
| Tha thu | You are |
| Tha e | He is |
| Tha i | She is |
| Tha sinn | We are |
| Tha sibh | You are |
| Tha iad | They are |
The information above is not very useful, as what you have above will not make a complete sentence. So how can we use the verb tha? We can use this verb together with adjectives to describe people, places, or things.
For example: Tha e caol. He is thin.
For more on adjectives, see Adjectives
We can also combine tha with other verbs to say what people are doing at the current time. We simply add the word ag if the verb begins with a vowel, or a' if it begins with a consonant. This is how Gaelic forms the present tense, as there is no simple present in Gaelic.
I could say, Tha iad ag ithe.
They are eating.
These forms that follow the word ag are called verbal nouns. They function similar to the gerund in English. By the way, even tha has a verbal noun form, a' bith.
Some common verbal nouns:
ag iarraidh wanting
ag ràdh saying
a' bruidhinn speaking
ag ionnsachadh learning
a' smaoineachadh thinking
a' dol going
Questions
You might be wondering how you might ask a question. With tha, you simply replace it with a bheil.
So A bheil e caol? would mean Is he thin?.
(Bh)eil is the dependent form of tha. The question, negative, and negative question moods are all formed with the dependent. What this means is that it has to be used with another word to have meaning. In this case, the word a. Other verbs use an. If they begin with b, f, m, or p, they use am instead of an.
Negation
Negation is how we say what something is not. In Gaelic, we use the word cha or chan if the word begins with a vowel.
With tha we use chan eil.
Chan eil e caol. He is not thin.
You can negate a question using nach. Again with tha, this would be nach eil.
So Nach eil e caol? would mean Isn't he thin?
Tenses
You already know that the present tense is formed with tha and the verbal now. But not every tense is formed with tha. Gaelic also has past, future, and conditional tenses.
Past tense
The past tense of tha is bha. The dependent form is robh. For the moods above, this gives us: bha, an robh?, cha robh, and nach robh?. With the irregular verbs, you'll have to memorize the forms.
Regular verbs form their past tense by leniting the root. So if I take the root of a regular verb, say buail (to hit), the past tense is formed by lenition, which is to add an H after the initial consonant in writing. This changes the sound slightly in spoken Gaelic. So the past tense of buail is bhuail. The question, negative, and negative questions are formed using the word do between an, chan, and nach and the verb. This gives us Cha do bhuail, an do bhuail, and nach do bhuail.
The past tense of verbs beginning with a vowel or the letter f + a vowel are formed by prefixing the word with dh'. Example: Above we had the verbal noun ionnsachadh. The root form is ionnsaich. Therefore the past tense is dh'ionnsaich. The other moods are form the same way as if the verb began with a consonant, with one exception. The question form changes from an do to na. So we have cha do dh'ionnsaich, na dh'ionnsaich, and nach do dh'ionnsaich.
Future tense
The future tense of tha is bidh or bithidh when emphasis is wanted. The negative, interrogative, & negative interogative are cha bhi, am bi, and nach bi respectively.
The future tense of other verbs are formed by adding the suffix -idh to the root if the last vowel of the root is slender, or -aidh to the root if the last vowel is broad. The other moods are formed by adding cha, an, and nach respectively. Remember that cha causes lenition. Cha also changes to chan before words beginning with a vowel. An, for the interrogative mood, changes to am before verbs beginning with b, f, m, or p.
Conditional tense
The conditional tense is used when talking about things that would take place, or things that used to take place regularly.
The conditional of tha is bhiodh. The other forms are cha bhiodh, am biodh, and nach biodh.
The conditional tense also takes two special forms in the first person singular and plural forms. The first person singular form of bhiodh is bhithinn (I would be); the plural form is bhiomaid (we would be). The pronouns mi and sinn are omitted, as the endings tell who the subject is.
Regular verbs form the conditional tense by taking the root, leniting the first letter, and then adding the suffix -eadh if the last vowel is slender, or -adh if the last letter is broad. Verbs beginning with vowels cannot be lenited, but add dh' to the beginning of the word. Questions, negative questions, and negative statements are formed in the same way.
The first person tenses substitute the normal ending for -inn in the singular (the "I" form) if the last vowel is slender; -ainn if the last vowel is broad. The plural ending (the "we" form) adds -eamaid if the last vowel is slender and -amaid if broad. As with bhithinn and bhiomaid the pronouns mi and sinn are unnecessary.
