I'm struggling again with something I should probably know.

When indicating possession you use a séimhiú with a consonant to indicate male , A Chairt = his Car A Cairt = Her Car

With a Vowel you add H before the word to indicate her possession ,Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam dílis
vs Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis. = may she/he rest in peace

How do you indicate possession with something like Leabhar, or Lámh ?

_________________
Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

Do you mean how do you distinguish his book and her book?

There's no way really in Munster Irish. In other dialects there are still tense and lax versions of L,N and R (that is unlenited and lenited versions) indicating one with L and the other with l you would have:

a Leabhar = her book
a leabhar = his book

The difference is quite hard to hear, at least I found it hard, people from Mayo have the strongest version of it to my mind.

_________________
The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

I stumbled on this today when speaking, large gab as I tried to figure it out what I had heard before, and then when that failed did a run down of grammatical rules I knew , which didn't lend any to the flow of the conversation .

Any idea where I could hear an example of this tense and lax versions of L,N and R ? its the first ive heard of them.

_________________
Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

also is there anyway to edit a topic subject, His, hers might be a better title if someone else was looking for a similar answer.

_________________
Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

Broad n http://www.fuaimeanna.ie/en/Recordings. ... onemeID=41
Broad N http://www.fuaimeanna.ie/en/Recordings. ... onemeID=70
Slender n http://www.fuaimeanna.ie/en/Recordings. ... onemeID=42
Slender N http://www.fuaimeanna.ie/en/Recordings. ... onemeID=71

Broad l http://www.fuaimeanna.ie/en/Recordings. ... onemeID=37
Broad L http://www.fuaimeanna.ie/en/Recordings. ... onemeID=72
Slender l http://www.fuaimeanna.ie/en/Recordings. ... onemeID=38
Slender L http://www.fuaimeanna.ie/en/Recordings. ... onemeID=73

_________________
The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Thread title changed, in general you just edit the subject line of your opening post. I hope the new title is okay.

_________________
The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Jesus they are a bit hard to distinguish for me

_________________
Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

Damn sight better than yoohoo

_________________
Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

The Gaoth Dobhair and Conamara speakers are young(ish!) and don't articulate as strong as could be done. I would say that since tenseness comes into it, length does to. In otherwords, the stronger consonants are longer too. (By the way the broad 'd' in Donegal and Connachta is traditionally very tense as well, well, the t and and s I suppose as well)

If you consider 'pin', 'pill', as being light and 'bawn' and 'ball' as being dark, you have four of them. If you then imitate older Donegal and Conemara (and some Muster speakers) for the broad deep L and N (very thick and 'liquid' -the l-sound very similar to many Donegal and Derry people's general l in English) you have two more and the last two are in 'minion' and 'million', so you should be able to say:

lúb (the verb)/Lu:b/ vs. an lúb (the noun) /@ lu:b/
and liach (masc, 'depression') vs. an liach (feminine, 'measure') with confidence!

(Of course the prior n of the article might keep it strong anyway...also, there tend to be two weak slender allophones, a short, very crisp version before a front vowel and a palatised one before a back vowel -think leamhan/liún 'moth', mo liún vis. mo léir ('my ruin/woe')

_________________
__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

You can also say, or write an leabhar seo aige or an leabhar seo aici to differentiate.