Gaeltacht Minnesota
Grammar Review
Adjective – Aidíocht
A word, that is not another noun, which describes or modifies a noun.
There are two main types of adjectives, attributive and predicative.
Attributive adjectives modify a noun directly. Predicative adjectives are part of the verb phrase.
Attributive adjectives usually come right after an article, and right before the noun in English.
a happy boy
but right after the noun in Irish.
an buachaill sona
There are notable and common exceptions in Irish, which appear before a noun, as prefixes. Sean – old, and fíor – true, can become prefixes on their own, while dona – bád, and deas – nice, change to droch- and dea-, respectively.
seanduine – old man, drochaimsir – bad weather.
Attributive adjectives technically agree with the nouns they modify in number, gender, and case. There are pretty much only two options for each of those, thankfully.
an ceann beag – the little head, na cinn beaga – the little heads,
barr an chinn bhig – the top of the little head, barra na gceann beag – the tops of the little heads
an bhó bheag – the small cow, na bá beaga – the small cows,
ceann na bó bhig – the head of the small cow, cinn na mbó beag – the heads of the small cows
For our purposes, unless you're a real stickler, we can probably limit our focus to leniting adjectives after feminine singular nouns, and masculine genitive nouns, as well as making sure plural adjectives end in a vowel.
Even now in standard spoken Irish, adjectives modifying feminine genitive nouns are not being changed at all.
Anyone who insists on a degree of accuracy above that, might not be so nice to talk to anyways.
Predicative adjectives usually come somewhere after the verb in English, and are part of the verb phrase. Since the verb comes first in Irish, attributive and predicative adjectives may unfortunately be right next to each other.
The little cow is white. – Tá an bhó bheag buí.
The little cows are white. – Tá na tithe beaga buí.
1) A predicative adjective never changes. It only has one form.
2) If a sentence ends in a string of adjectives, the last one is a predicative one.
Thosaigh an seanláir bhrónach bhriste liath chnámhach óg.
The sad broken gray bony old mare started out young.
Concerning order, the easiest rule is to put the whole adjective chain behind the noun in Irish, as we find them in English
English: adj 1, adj 2, adj 3, adj 4, noun – Irish: noun, adj 1, adj 2, adj 3, adj 4
Eight predicative adjectives require the particle 'go' to precede them, but lose it in their directly attributive form.
go maith, go breá, go deas, go hálainn, go haoibhin, go hiontach, go dona, and go holc
Tá an lá go breá. – The day is fine
but
Tá an lá breá fada – The fine day is long.
The comparative and the superlative forms.
In English, we either add -er or -est to the end of a one or two syllable adjective, or we put the word more or most in front of the unchanged adjective. In Irish there's only one way. The word 'níos' comes before a modified form of the adjective, and the word 'is' comes before the superlative. In both cases the modified form is the same.
blue, bluer, bluest – gorm, níos gorma, is gorma
dry, drier, driest – tirim, níos tirime, is tirime
For many of the most common adjectives, just like in English, the comparative and superlative forms are irregular, and change completely.
small, smaller, smallest – beag, níos lú, is lú
big, bigger, biggest – mór, níos mó, is mó
Some suffixes that make nouns into adjectives are -úil, -mhar, -ach, and -ta.
suim – interest → suimiúil – interesting
grian – sun → grianmhar – sunny
brón – sorrow → brónach – sorry
réasún – reason → réasúnta – reasonably
For a more thorough breakdown of all parts of speech, see Nancy Stenson's Basic Irish. You'll find adjectives in Unit 21.
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