I have ...
Tha ... agam
Joy explains the two ways of expressing possession.
There are already a couple of grammar points we need to take into consideration.
We already met the following way to express possession.
agam = aig + mi (have / at + mi)
agaibh = aig + sibh (have / at + you)
This is generally used to express items which are not physically close to you. There is another way of expressing possession used for talking about the following:
People close to your heart
Food
Body parts
The home
Clothing
| mo* | |
| do* | |
| a* | |
| a | + a h- |
| ar | + a n- |
| ur / bhur | + a n- |
| an / am |
We have already met this when we were discussing sickness and health.
The official name for this is the possessive article. If the article has * beside it, the following noun lenites.
What is lenition?
Lenition means softening and it often means a change in the spelling of a word, by adding an ‘h’ after the first consonant.
What letters take lenition when you spell them?
B, C, D, F, G, H, M, P, S, T
What letter never lenite?
Vowels never lenite. The letters d , t and s don’t usually lenite if the word before them ends in an n , and words beginning with sg, sm, sp and st never lenite.