Hi Everyone,

I was hoping to get some help with the translation of this phrase involving the copula:

"Is é rud é is éagsamhlaí dár airíos riamh" translation?"

What I've come up with so far is the following:

- "Is é rud" might be the same as Is é an rud which can be contracted to séard meaning "what..." e.g. Séard a thógann sé ná teach = What he builds, is a house

The only similar translation I could find for "is éagsamhlaí" was the superlative form of éagsamhlach which can mean “extraordinary, uncommon”
(https://corkirish.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/ot5.pdf)

So to begin with "what is most extraordinary/uncommon..."

Next, "airíos" can mean feel/find according to teanglann.ie

Bit unsure how to approach the dár and whether this can be used to connect the two clauses, if there are 2 clauses to connect at all...

Two possibilities (1) compound of prep. like to our/from our
(2) meaning from which/to which (unsure about this one)

Any help understanding this a bit more would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

As a last thing, another way of writing it according to (https://corkirish.wordpress.com/2012/03 ... n-nolan-3/) is:
is é rud is éagsamhlaí dár airíos riamh é
I know people may say just read what is written there but that is just explaining the structure of the sentence. It doesn't give a translation.

Do the phrases differ in meaning and regarding the structure, why can they be written differently?
I don't understand the rationale for the structure of the two sentences.

I’d translate it as: ‘it is the strangest/most extraordinary thing of all that I’ve ever heard’.

rud is éagsamhlaí, the predicate of the sentence, means ‘the most extraordinaty/uncommon thing’ (it would be rud is éagsúlaí in Caighdeán Oifigiúil, from éagsúlach ‘strange’)

The subject, according to corkirish blog, is the second é, ‘it’.

airíos is the past first person form of airigh ‘perceive, sense’ but often also ‘hear’, so airíos ‘I heard’.

dár is the contraction of de ‘from, off’ + ar ‘all that…’, the generalizing past indirect relative pronoun, thus dár ‘from, of all those that…’

Hence the whole translation of
Is é rud é is éagsamhlaí dár airíos riamh
is
‘it is the strangest thing of all that I’ve ever heard’

Ar in "dár" isn't exactly the indirect relative particle.

It is a pronoun (called comprehensive or antecedent relative pronoun, forainm coibhneasta réamhtheachtach) meaning "all that". It is its own antecedent, so it doesn't refer back to a noun
so dár = of all that

de is partitive, so "the strangest thing" is part of "all that".
dá/dár is often used following superlatives: an rud is fearr dá bhfuil anseo = the best thing [of all] that is here

Yeah, I realized that and managed to edit my post (and add a link to the relevant GnaG page) before you submitted your reply, but thanks for catching this mistake and for the explanation.

Thank you both very much for your replies.

What I don't understand is this:

(1) Why doesn't rud keep its definite article and

(2) why isn't it phrased "Is é an rud is éagsamhlaí é dár airíos riamh" rather than the way it currently is?

My understanding was for a definite article involving the copula, it would be constructed "Is é an ____ é" assuming the translation is He/It is the ___. However, that is not the case here.

Why is that? Are there exceptions to this rule?

This I don’t know, I guess it just isn’t necessary. GnaG gives examples with the article, but perhaps in some dialects it is common to omit the article in superlaltives, or maybe it’s just a matter of style?

I guess, since there is only one ‘strangest thing’, rud is éagsamhlaí is just as definite as an rud is éagsamhlaí (although, I myself would write the latter).


I think this phrasing is OK too. As probably would be Is é an rud is éagsamhlaí dár airíos riamh é (alhough some might find it clumsy to put the subject of the copula so far away, after the whole long predicate).



The rule is not for a definite article involving the copula but for a definite noun phrase, regardless whether the definite article is explicitly present or not. Eg. is é mo thigh é ‘it is my house’, or is é tigh m’athar é ‘it is my father’s house’, Is é ceann stáit na hÉireann an tUachtarán ‘the president is the head of the Irish state’ all need the temporary pronoun predicate inserted, because the predicate is definite (tigh m’athar means ‘the house of my father’ even though there is no definite article there in Irish), and in modern Irish a definite predicate cannot stand directly after the copula.

In Old Irish (and presumably later), according to Gerald O’Nolan, a definite predicate could be directly after the copula, but a subject could not – the copula always must have been followed by a predicate. But often there is a need for an idetification sentence to start with a subject and end with a predicate, hence sentences like is é Mícheál D. Ó hUiginn an tUachtarán reatha ‘Mícheál D. Ó hUiginn is the current president’ – here é is a temporary predicate, separating the copula is from the subject (Mícheál D. Ó hUiginn), while the sentence later specifies that é stands for an tUachtarán reatha (so a very literal translation would be Mícheál D. Ó hUiginn is it – the current president). The rule for inserting temporary pronoun predicate was later generalized also to separating definite predicate from the copula, so in modern Irish no definite noun phrase can stand next to the copula.

You can read more on the syntax of identification clauses (with the very sentence you used here as an example) in O’Nolan’s Studies in Modern Irish, vol. 1 (and in previous pages, a more general explanation of the copula).

But, frankly, I too struggle with identification sentences in Irish, and eg. in a sentence of a type is é an duine seo an duine sin I cannot tell whether it is supposed to mean ‘this person is that person’ or ‘that person is this person’ – which one is the subject, and which is the predicate? Is it ambiguous? If so, what would be the default? That is, the difference between a verb-predicate-subject like Is é ceann stáit na hÉireann an tUachtarán and verb-subject-predicate like is é Mícheál D. Ó hUiginn an tUachtarán reatha, which syntactically look identical, but have the structure inversed. I guess the default is the first, but the exceptional rule is for proper names, as GnaG puts it: This clause form [ie. VpSP] is then chosen, when: … the subject is a proper name (e.g.: Is é Seán an dochtúir. = Seán is the doctor. not: *Is é an dochtúir Seán)

There's often no need for the article in such copula sentences (i.e. with [sub]predicate "é" and a following relative clause - both define the noun sufficiantly, so the noun "rud" is definite or quasi definite without the article),
That's so especially (but not exclusively) in pseudo-cleft sentences (e.g. is é rud a ... ná ... = "What (it is) is a ...") .
You probably know the contractions séard (written out: is é rud - not: is é an rud), céard (< cé [hé] rud - not: cén rud) or déard (< cad é rud), all without a trace of the article.
Older grammars recommend or even dictate to leave out the article in such sentences .
But today, the article is often used though, esp. with other nouns instead of simple "rud".



That would be OK, too.

In copula clauses the relative clause is often divided from its antecedent.
A subject pronoun (here: é) often intervenes.
That's the case most often with indefinite predicates , e.g.
Is rud é atá .... = It is a thing that ...; é = subject)
But also with this kind of quasi, semi- or three-quarter-definite predicates as in "is é rud is ..".

'Sén rud is ait a chuala mé riamh é.
'Sén rud is aistí a chuala mé riamh

wouldn't the dá be needed here?

No, not needed.
Both are okay:
... a chuala - (the strangest thing) which I heard
... dár chuala - (the strangest thing) of all/those which I heard