Bilingual transcription: Compound prepositions

Bilingual transcription: Roimhearan fillte

Watch this clip where Joy gives us some of her useful tips and favourite phrases.  

This time: a grammar byte featuring roimhearan fillte (compound prepositions). 

We’ve met às dèidh , after. But às is a preposition in its own right, meaning ‘out of’, as in the question

Co às a tha thu?

Its most basic form is à . Tha mi à Earra Ghàidheal , ‘I’m out of Argyll.'

You’ll notice that à or às is spelt with an accent. The accent in Gaelic usually means the vowel is long, but here it’s used to show that the sound is a nice open ‘a’.

Now as you’d expect, À has its own prepositional pronouns: asam and asad are like agam, and agad: Out of me, out of you, asam, asad.

Also: asainn and asaibh , out of us and out of you plural. Look out for the third person pronouns.

Out of him or it, is simply às . But be careful with, ‘out of her’ aiste , and ‘out of them’ asta . These can come in handy with special expressions, like a’ tarraing à , ‘taking the mickey’, ‘pulling a leg’:

Bha iad a’ tarraing asam , they were pulling my leg. Bha iad a’ tarraing asam.