Hello, I'm new here. I'm probably the youngest person here: I'm 15. Surprisingly, I actually don't know how to use forums or any other social apps, even though children these days are supposed to be tech-savvy and whatnot. So, I hope that don't break something or mess up this line of messages. Anyways, I want to see if someone can help me with translations of this short homemade song I'm trying to make. I have a thing for non-English songs. I actually sing in all types of languages and one day, I came across this song called " Amhran na farraige " and I loved it. I'm also trying to become an author, I'm already planning future books, and one of them includes Irish characters. So, I wanted to make a little lament for a character. I haven't finished it yet because I'm been slowly finding out how difficult Irish actually is and I'm literally too scared to write another sentence that might be grammatically wrong. The lament goes like this:

My struggling Irish translation:
Come back, return to me. Teacht ar ais, fill orm.
My little butterfly, find your Mo féileacán beag, faigh do
way home. bhealach abhaile.

...That's it, at that point, I found about gender nouns, VSO, copulas, thousands of soul-crushing blogs, and a new-founded sense of paranoia. However, I'm hoping that this forum can help me finish this forsaken song (┬┬﹏┬┬). I really appreciate the help ( in advance). I also apologize sorry for any trouble ( in advance).

You're fine. No worries.

How about "Tar ar ais, ar ais chugam, a fhéileacán beag, aimsigh do bhealach abhaile"?

A couple things I'm not sure about. Wait for more comments.

Tim

Thank you, Mr. Tim, for your help so far! I actually was going to use " chugam " but I didn't know where to put it, so I decided to use " fill " instead. I found " fill " in this other song that I like called " Fill, fill a run o ". It's really traditional and old, it was made by a mother who was mourning her son who converted himself to the protestant faith long ago and the new version of the song was made in 1998. The song was sort of popular, so I thought I could dabble in some of the aged wisdom because people kept singing it, so the grammar should be decent, right? An Irish dictionary and a few traditional songs are all I had before I came here. It was really hard to find good sources these days because Irish is not famous as Japanese and Spanish and it's slowly dying out, so I really, really am thankful for your help. I also apologize for these college entrance essay messages I've been typing, I'll try to keep it short from now on.

You could probably use the verb fill as well. It has slightly different connotations, but you have a few options:

Tar ar ais chugam - come back to me
Fill chugam - return to me
Fill ar ais chugam - return back to me

My suggestion for the translation is as follows. I think it has some nice internal rhyme in the first two lines between tar and thar as well as bhig and aimsigh:

Tar thar n-ais, fill chugam.
A fhéileacáin bhig, aimsigh do
bhealach abhaile.

Come back, return to me.
My little butterfly, find your
way home.

You have choices here too, though, if you don't like the meter in the last line, for example. You could use the subjunctive:

Tar thar n-ais, fill chugam.
A fhéileacáin bhig,
go n-aimsí tú bealach abhaile.

Come back, return to me.
My little butterfly,
may you find a way home.



Surely a fhéileacáin bhig, as it's a 1st declension masc. noun?

I think I'm going to pick " Tar thar n-ais, fill chugam. A fhéileacáin bhig, aimsigh do bhealach abhaile.". I think it's very nice. I'll be sure to come back when I update the song. Quick question though, when I've been singing songs, I've been getting confused about how to pronounce certain words that start with " bh ". For example, I've been listening to two songs and one has " bhig " and the other has " bhaigh". To me. " bh " sounds similar to a V sound. I know I shouldn't compare two very different languages, but it's how I get my pronunciation down. Or is it a little softened/silent because I know some words that start with a " ch " that the C isn't really pronounced that strongly as the H , like the word " chroi".

At the start of a word, including bhig, a V sound would be appropriate. Particularly if you're going with the translation with thar n-ais instead of ar ais. In the middle of a word it's generally a W sound that's used for bh, and some dialects will have more of a W sound at the start of a word too. But the dialect that tends to say thar n-ais would be more likely to have a strong V sound at a word's beginning.

Thank you, Ade!

Yes, that was what I was looking for. I wasn't sure.
Also, I would go along with your other suggestions.

Tair thar n-ais, fíll chúm,
a pheidhleacáin bhig,
go raibh slí abhaile aimsithe agat.

Djwebb2021, can you explain the changes you made to me, please?