Bilingual transcription: Put on (you)!

Bilingual transcription: Cuir ort!

Watch this clip where Joy explains CUIR ORT/DHÌOT – AIR + DE.

In English, prepositions are used before a noun or pronoun, like ‘off the wall’, ‘before them’, ‘through it’; but they can also be used as stand-alone adverbs, like: ‘I switched my phone off’, ‘I’ve told you before’, ‘a message came through’.

But in Gaelic prepositions can only be used with a noun or a pronoun, and for the stand-alone examples we need to use ‘it’, the third person masculine.

Cuiribh dheth ur fònaichean, is literally ‘turn off-it your phones’ [‘Turn off your phones’.]

‘I’ve told you before’, Dh’innis mi dhut roimhe, literally ‘before it’.

‘A message came through’, Thàinig fios troimhe, ‘through it’.

In a few idioms, though, the prepositional pronoun links up to the person in the sentence: ‘Take off your coat’ is Cuir dhìot do chòta, literally ‘Take off-you your coat’.

“I‘ll take off my coat” Cuiridh mi dhìom mo chòta. ‘Off-me’, dhìom