vocative form

Hi everyone this is my first post and just trying to get my head around the vocative case.

How do I know which letter to add to a persons name when addressing them or when not to add a letter

eg Seán  a Sheáin - a h is added

Mícheál - a Mhíchíl - a h is added - the e and are idropped and an í added

Aoife - a Aoife - no change

Is there an easy rule to learn?

Thanks for any help

Slán

Miriam

to seano

          i think English had a vocative case also, but it disappeared a long time ago. I think if Irish had not been suppressed for so long and more of the population used it on a daily basis it's vocative case would have disappeared a long time ago also. But seeing how a language gets suppressed it is hard for it to change or modernize if it is not being used on a daily basis. I think the Irish is a interesting language in that it is comprised of cultural traits, e.g. the way they looked at life and the world before Christianity came to them. For example, Irish does not have the word "have", things are at you, on you, with you, etc. or if one does not like to swim in English we say, "i don't like to swim", in Irish it is lit. "not good with me to be at swimming" Ni maith liom a bheidh ag snamh. It is just a matter of getting ones head around the way the Irish look at things or thinking the way they do so your speech becomes more natual and easy. Also the meaning of archaic words change, in English the word gay does not mean happy or carefree anymore.

 this is all just my opinion please don't take offense.

OK re "A Mhairéd", but what if you are addressing someone with a double-barrel first name, Margaret-Mary: Do you say, "A Mhairéad-M(h)áire":  should there be a 'h' on the second name?

Hi Miriam,

The pracice I follow is that the names of males are lenited and slenderised if they end with a broad consonant, so Seán becomes a Sheáin and Micheál becomes a Mhichíl. You would address me as a Bheairní, I guess. The names of females are lenited but not slenderised, as many already end with slender consonants.

Ádh mór,

Bearnaí

Hi folks, Sorry not to have replied sooner. I have been busy. I'm always busy on Lá Fhéile Pádraig! Anyway, that's an interesting question. First of all, I would have to say that these kind of double-barrelled names are quite a recent introduction in the language. They wouldn't have existed among Irish speakers a hundred years ago, so there is no long-established pattern. However, having said that, a grammarian would probably tell you not to change the second element. So you would say "a Chaitríona-Máire". This is taking both names as a unit and it seems the logical thing to do. Among native speakers, however, you will quite likely hear people say "a Chaitríona-Mháire". They will just apply the séimhiú without thinking..

One example of this kind of thing I have heard is the genitive of "seansaighdiúir", an old soldier. In the standard language the house of the old soldier is "teach an tseansaighdiúra" [tyakh an chan-seye-jura} but native speakers have been known to change both the prefix and the word it's prefixed to: "teach an tsean-tsaighdiúra" [tyakh an chan-teye-jura]. (Pronounce the eye as in the thing you see with, of course)

So, what's the answer? Well, I would recommend you treat a name like Caitríona-Máire as a unit and only change the first element (a Chaitríona- Máire) but if you or anyone else lenites both elements of the name, that's not wrong either.

Let a hundred flowers bloom but beware of poisonous weeds ...

Haigh a Bhearnaí, Cad é mar atá tú?

You are right about nearly everything there. When a man's name ends with a broad consonant, you make it slender. So a Mhíchíl (or a Mhícheáil in the north), a Shéamuis, a Chonaill, a Eoghain, a Sheáin. Liam is an exception. It's just "a Liam". And names like Bearnaí end in a vowel, so you couldn't make them slender - you wouldn't change Bearnaí except by putting the h in after the first letter. The very few female names which are broad at the end (like Mairéad) don't change at the end either. Hope this is clear!

I like what Richard had to say about the evolution of the language.  It seems Seano that you may be reading way more into what he's saying than what I or others might get.  Richard says " hard to change or modernize".  To me a/the language "changes/evolves" given its intense use.  Irish hasn't been used intensely by a large people group for a long time, so its change/development/modernization (whatever you care to call it) has probably been "arrested" in various ways I don't think he was saying "modernize" like the old thing was bad.  It will however change and probably is changing rapidly just because of where it is in history and where it is geographically and linguistically.  Those of us who are outside of Ireland are no doubt changing it to something we can get our hands, minds, and mouth around (we don't have the luxury of popping over to a weekend class in Kerry, Galway, Donegal or wherever).  But, in the end, probably knowing and speaking SOMETHING will be better than having Irish pass into the dust bin of linguistic history. 

Just a cúpla thoughts,

Faberm

Hi faberm, Thanks for that. I may well be reading too much into what Richard was saying. I just took these lines to mean that there is somehow an inevitability to the loss of the vocative and that languages will naturally lose their vocatives as they develop. 

"i think English had a vocative case also, but it disappeared a long time ago. I think if Irish had not been suppressed for so long and more of the population used it on a daily basis it's vocative case would have disappeared a long time ago also. But seeing how a language gets suppressed it is hard for it to change or modernize if it is not being used on a daily basis."

If that is what this means, then I would have to disagree, because as I say, I don't see anything inevitable about changes like this. There's no natural law stating that languages will start shedding grammatical cases when they reach a certain stage of cultural development.

However, there is another way of interpreting the lines above by Richard - that the language as spoken has already largely lost the vocative case, but the way the language is described and taught and written by grammarians tends to reflect the past rather than the current state of the language, so the vocative is given an importance it no longer really deserves in grammar books and learners' texts. Because English is used intensively, usage carries a lot of weight. In the case of Irish, usage counts for less because its use is marginalised and so the grammarians have more power to shape the language the way they want. 

If that's what you mean, then I am completely in agreement with you. The number system is already very different from what you'll find in the main grammar books. And people tend to say "ag bun páirc mhór" instead of "ag bun páirce móire".There are lots of small changes taking place in the grammar all the time, and so far most of the grammar books ignore them.

However, if a language changes too rapidly, especially a language like Irish which already has a weak constitution, there are dangers for that language. It would be terrible to end up with a kind of simplified Esperanto Irish, because all the collected richness of the language would be inaccessible, all the wealth of proverbs and poems and songs which were written in the older language. It seems to me that's a choice between death and dementia, and it's not much of a choice.

Seano:  Thanks much for your response.  We'll just have to wait and see (for a couple hundred years) how things move along.  As a child I learned classical latin.  When I was 17 I moved to Central America and learned Spanish in about 3-4 months.  Spanish is a beautiful rich language, but it is in essence Latin spoken with no case endings and a standardized orthography with simplified verbs  (I know I'm simplifying here).  I am sure the classical Romans might hear it and bemoan that their language has died and been replaced in part by dementia.  But, it was the product of intense usage in isolated pockets of the world.  Irish will have a different future given our abilities to communicate via the web. (I think the internet is probably turning the tide on much things Irish)

I of course am not advocating the disappearance of anything from classic Irish, but I'm pretty sure it will just happen.  As I am not able to ever hear native speakers, I would be interested for you to give a brief summary of how the vocatives are indeed changing and how the numbers are changing.  My text, Tús Maith, still pretty much uses both.  IF I might impose on you to do so, I'd like some examples of simplified numbers.  Perhaps you could give a "State of Irish Grammar 2010) summary for this forum.

Slán agus go raibh mile maith agat,

Faberm

By "intensive" I mean millions of people speaking a language in dozens or hundreds of different places.  Much like English

would be today.  It is spoken on the streets of Bombay in India, small rural communities in far west Texas, the

Queen's court in Buckingham palace to neighborhoods in Chile where 3rd generation Englishmen live, to the remote villages

of Orkney off of Scotland.  This creates dynamism that changes stuff.  It's just a by-product of being intensely used by 

diverse peoples.  English acts as a giant linguistic tornado sucking up and spitting out words, phrases and pronunciations

as it storms through time and space.  That's what I mean by intense.  Perhaps that was a poor word choice but it helps me

to visualize this tornado.

I look forward to you "cobbling" something together for all of us.  I'm quite curious what changes are occurring in Irish over

time and space (if any at all).  I know an older Kerryman whom I was sharing some Irish words with was surprised that he

couldn't recognize any words because the "dots" where gone.  The ones that have all been replaced by the seimhiu "h".

slán

Faber

I take that point and I'm sure there is a great dynamism to English because of this range of contexts and communities. Do you think there is a critical mass about these things though? Do you think that Icelandic is less dynamic because it has fewer speakers and is only spoken in one small country, even though it is used there in all contexts by doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientists? What then about a language like Dutch, which is only spoken in two countries, or does it reach critical mass when you've got more than a million speakers, or twenty million, or do you think of it just as a sliding scale? The more speakers, the more dynamism or intensity?  

I'm not really sure.  It's too intense to ponder in that I am in Derry tonight and am going out to speak Irish and drink a few pints of guinness.  I think that

will be more fun than working through this one.  Maybe my Irish will degenerate into a whole new dialect as the evening wears on.  Slán, Faberm