I’d like to ask about plural forms of concrete nouns with the -acht suffix in those Munster dialects that still use dative plural forms.
Eg. if one says
ar chosaibh, how would they say ‘the Gaeltachts’ and ‘in the Gaeltachts’? Would it be
na Gaeltachta and
sna Gaeltachtaibh, or
na Gaeltachtaibh and
sna Gaeltachtaibh? Or does anyone just uses
Gaeltachtaí in plural?
I see that the
-achtaí ending etymologically comes
from the dative -achtaibh as pronounced by Connacht speakers, and originally
the plural nominative was with -achta.
Searching through the corkirish blog I could find only two examples of such dative:
nom. Connachta – dat. Connachtaibh (plurale tantum) and
nom.sg. cómhacht, nom.pl. cómhachta, dat.pl cómhachtaibh (CO nom.sg.
cumhacht, nom.dat.pl.
cumhachtaí). Are those forms still used anywhere?
I started to wonder about it after I tried to write ‘in Gaeltachts’ using dative and realized that I have no idea if that should be
i nGaeltachtaibh or
i nGaeltachtaíbh. And then I realized that I have no idea what the plural nominative actually would be in Cork as
Gaeltachtaí seems to be a Connacht form…