dia daoibh,

this one always gives me trouble so I've decided to get stuck into it tonight. I've read over it a bit and just want to make sure I have things staright in my head....so;

Tá an ríomhaire á chur ar siúl agam. (The computer is being turned on by me) ("h" in "cur" as "ríomhaire" is masc)

BUT

Táim ag cur an ríomhaire ar siúl. (I am turning on the computer)

an bhfuil an ceart agam?


GRMA

Yes, that literally means ‘the computer is at its turning on by me’. Á means ‘at his/her/its’ and is contraction of ‘ag a’.


That literally means ‘I am at the computer’s turning on’.

And you could also say táim á chur ar siúl (‘I am turning it on’, ‘I am at its turning on’).

That’s because the verbal noun takes object in genitive (léamh an leabhair means ‘reading of the book’ or ‘the book’s reading’), and there are no genitive forms of personal pronouns in Irish – so now, if you want to put pronoun as the object of a verbal noun, you have no other grammatically correct way, as to use a possessive pronoun (mo, do, a etc.). So ‘reading it’ becomes a léamh (lit. ‘its reading’), ‘kissing me’ becomes mo phógadh, ‘understanding them’ becomes a dtuiscint.

Now, dialects contracted ag + possessive pronouns, – and each of them did it differently – and now you write and say:
táim á léamh / ghá léamh – ‘I am reading it’
tá sí do mo phógadh / am’ pógadh – ‘she is kissing me’
níl sé á / ghá dtuiscint – ‘he is not understanding them’

But, when the possessive pronoun refers to the subject itself (has a reflexive meaning), the sentence becomes passive (starts to tell that something is being acted upon, and does not itself act upon something else):

táim do mo phógadh / am’ pógadh (aici) – ‘I am being kissed (by her)’ (lit. ‘I am at my kissing (by her)’)
tá sé á léamh – either ‘he is reading it/them’ (‘he is at its reading’) or ‘it is being read’ (‘it is at its own reading’)
srl.

ar fheabhas! go raibh míle maith agat a chara, achomair ar fad

So between what I've read and what I've taken from your explanation it would be as follows (using door as an example)

Táim ag dúnadh an doras (I am closing the door)

Táim á dhúnadh (I am closing it)
Táim á ndúnadh (I am closing them)

Tá an doras á dhúnadh agam (the door is being closed by me)
Tá na doirse á ndúnadh acu (the doors are being closed by them)

Tá sé á dhúnadh agam (It is being closed by me?) That one threw me for some reason.

GRMA

ag dúnadh an dorais

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