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Tha ... agam

I have ...

Joy explains the two ways of expressing possession.

There are already a couple of grammar points we need to take into consideration. 

We already met the following way to express possession. 

agam = aig + mi (have / at + mi)

agaibh = aig + sibh (have / at + you)

This is generally used to express items which are not physically close to you. There is another way of expressing possession used for talking about the following: 

People close to your heart 

Food 

Body parts 

The home 

Clothing 

mo* 
do* 
a* 
+ a h- 
ar  + a n- 
ur / bhur   + a n- 
an / am  

We have already met this when we were discussing sickness and health.  

mo cheann

my head

The official name for this is the possessive article. If the article has * beside it, the following noun lenites. 

What is lenition?

Lenition means softening and it often means a change in the spelling of a word, by adding an ‘h’ after the first consonant. 

What letters take lenition when you spell them? 

B, C, D, F, G, H, M, P, S, T 

What letter never lenite? 

Vowels never lenite. The letters d, t and s don’t usually lenite if the word before them ends in an n, and words beginning with sg, sm, sp and st never lenite. 

m’ athair

my father

d’ athair

your father

a athair

his father

a h-athair

her father

ar n-athair

our father

ur n-athair

your father

an athair

their father