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Taigheadas

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Bilingual transcription: Roimhearan fillte

Bilingual transcription: Compound prepositions

Watch this clip where Joy gives us some of her useful tips and favourite phrases.  

This time: a grammar byte featuring roimhearan fillte (compound prepositions). 

We’ve met às dèidh, after. But às is a preposition in its own right, meaning ‘out of’, as in the question

Co às a tha thu?

Its most basic form is à. Tha mi à Earra Ghàidheal, ‘I’m out of Argyll.’

You’ll notice that à or às is spelt with an accent. The accent in Gaelic usually means the vowel is long, but here it’s used to show that the sound is a nice open ‘a’.

Now as you’d expect, À has its own prepositional pronouns: asam and asad are like agam, and agad: Out of me, out of you, asam, asad.

Also: asainn and asaibh, out of us and out of you plural. Look out for the third person pronouns.

Out of him or it, is simply às. But be careful with, ‘out of her’ aiste, and ‘out of them’ asta. These can come in handy with special expressions, like a’ tarraing à, ‘taking the mickey’, ‘pulling a leg’:

Bha iad a’ tarraing asam, they were pulling my leg. Bha iad a’ tarraing asam.