vaerov wrote:
Here is a linguistic question. My understanding is that there are no "yes" and "no" words in Irish. So, for example, to a question "Do you live here?" asked in Irish, the answer would be "I do not" instead of "No." Is this correct?
More or less. Strictly speaking, you answer a question using the verb that was used to ask the the question. So, in your example, "
do you live here/
an bhfuil tú i do chónaí anso?" you're right in answering "I
do/
tá mé", however, in questions based on verbs other than the substantive verb, "to be", you would still use the verb. For example, "
saw you .../
an bh'feaca tú ...?", you would answer "I
saw/
Do chonac"
vaerov wrote:
Are there any other pronounced differences when compared to English? My novel is written in English, but the characters are 16th century Gaelic Irish, so they're speaking Irish almost exclusively. My goal is to make the dialogue as authentic as possible while avoiding the common caricaturish tropes.
There would be quite a few pronunciation differences. 16th century Irish was quite different to modern standard Irish. Think about the difference between Shakespeare and the English that's spoken today.
Historically, also, things were quite different in 16th century Ireland. Most Irish written at the time was written by a small group of learned families; poets, nobility, etc. So, it tends to be in quite a high register. It's only around the turn of the last century that we see a lot of Irish being written based on the standard spoken by remaining native speakers. Again, think of the difference between the Queen's English, and what you might hear spoken day-to-day by the average person.