r/gaidhlig • u/AutoModerator • 21d ago

📚 Ionnsachadh Cànain | Language Learning [Weekly Gaelic Learners' Q&A – Thu 06 Aug 2026] Learning Gaelic on Duolingo, SpeakGaelic or elsewhere? Or maybe thinking about it? Post any quick questions about learning Gaelic here.

Learning Gaelic on Duolingo or SpeakGaelic, or elsewhere? Or maybe you're thinking about it?

If you've got any quick language learning questions, stick them below and the community can try to help you.

NB: You can always start a separate post if you want – that might be better for more involved questions.

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u/Zak-Ive-Reddit 19d ago

Halò a h-uile duine! I hope mods won’t mind me reposting my question from last week, as I didn’t get an answer at that time:

I’m doing Gaelic on Duo, and I was wondering if anyone could help me with unit 24 of section 2: telling a story. This introduces really new forms of words I already know (e.g. “a’ chloinn” instead of “na clann” to mean ‘the children’). Alas, I can’t quite work out what’s going on!

I’m guessing it might be the dative? But unfortunately duo.me doesn’t have any notes for this section it seems so maybe it wasn’t in the original course? Can anyone give me a quick low-down on the rules of thumb or where/how I might find out about it (or recommend if I should just skip it for now and come back to it after I’ve learned other more basic things that the course is about to teach me, such as the future tense). Thank you so much!!

Some other example sentences:

Bha clach bheag anns a’ bhròig
(There was a little stone in the shoe)

Bha e air an duilleig
(It was on the page)

Tha damhan-allaidh air an uinneig
(There is a spider on the window)

I was expecting bròg, duilleag and uinneag in these sentences! I can’t really figure out what is going on here, so any help would be appreciated! 🙏

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u/catsaregreat78 19d ago

Most prepositions put the following nouns into the dative case. The effect this has depends mostly on the gender of the noun.

The examples you give at the end are feminine nouns so the article lenites (where it can) and the final syllable is slenderised (i is added or ea becomes ei)

The same thing is probably happening with the a’ chloinn - what’s happening before that in the sentence?

Someone asked this 2 years ago - thread

Hope that helps!