Cliathach wrote:
Apologies for brining up an old thread but it's relevant to the question so thought it'd make more sense to revive this as opposed to starting a new one.
I had the chance to write an essay and hand it in for correction. The marker has a high level of Irish and when I got my essay back there was one or two corrections.
The one I wanted to ask about is as follows; "Ba é gasúr an fhir a n-oibrím leis é" (corrections in red).
Why the extra "é"? It'll be a while before I see them again to ask so thought i'd ask here.
GRMA
Labhrás once answered the question comprehensively for me back in February or March.
When a third person pronoun is one of the parties in a copula sentence (think "is/ní/an"), you must repeat it.
So:
Is é mo dheartháir é /
An iad do chairde iad? /
Ní hí m'iníon íé = mo dheartháir
As opposed to
Is é mo dheartháir an duine ag canadhmo dheartháir = an duine ag canadh (the pronoun is not one of the parties)
If you just have
Is é mo dheartháir then it means "My brother is..." whereas
Is é mo dheartháir é means "He is my brother"
So
Ba é gasúr an fhir a n-oibrím leis means "The man I work with's son was..." while
Ba é gasúr an fhir a n-oibrím leis é means "He was the man I work with's son"
Ba é gasúr an fhir a n-oibrím leis could also be followed by any other noun or pronoun. Like
Ba é gasúr an fhir a n-oibrím leis an duine a d'ól an méid is mó fíonaOr just
é... but never nothing