Help With Nouns, Nomantive? Genetive? Dative? Help!

[Claidheamhair]

Hello there. I am new here, and to Gaelic. I have a question regardings nouns.

I study Scottish Broadsword fencing, and as part of that I have decided to learn Gaelic. To make it more personal though, I decided that I would sort of design my own vocabulary. Its more fun that way when I teach students, I can use the actual Gaelic words, and some conversation. I have a very good dictionary ( the giant Colin Marks one), but I’m afraid it doens’t explain everything. And when you are making flash cards, and don’t know the language that well, its nice to have every thing explained.

For example, I look up Sword, Claidheamh.
It gives the nominative singular; Claidheamh. I under stand that
It gives the genitive singular; chlaidheimh. I understand that
It gives the nominative plural, Chlaidhnean. I even understand that.

In the sample phrases though, they used the word Claidhimh;

Dh’aonaich e an duthaich le neart a’chlaidhimh
He united the country by the power of the sword


I check every source I can find and I cant find an explaination as to why the ‘ea’ would turn in to an i.

Does anyone know what case this is?
Is this a spelling rule when using the preposition “by the” ? if so, what is this rule?

Thank you.

[GunChleoc]

The rule is calles "slenderization" and is one method of doing grammatical stuff. Gaelic has two versions of each consonant, a road and a slender one, and you makr the difference with the vowels, since the Latin alphabet just doesn't have enough consonant symbols. Every consonant surrounded by e and i is slender, all other consonants are broad.

The difference between claidheimh and claidhimh is due to changes in the orthography. From claidheamh to claidheimh, the vowel also shift towards an i sound. The distinction between broad and slender mh has been lost, so you pronounce both the same. Note: mh turns the whole word nasal!

For ore info, go to www.akerbeltz.org and check out the beagan gàidhlig -> beagan gramair section.

[Claidheamhair]

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction! Though I don’t fully understand when you are supposed to slenderize ( especially since I only found it saying that you slenderize by replacing the last vowels in feminine nouns, and Claidheamh is a masculine noun), I think perhaps now is not the time when I should be focusing on such details, I should start a bit smaller with simple sentences and the like.

Thanks

[GunChleoc]

Slenderisation can be used for all kinds of things. It's a grammatical mechanism just like lenition or adding an ending.

You can find the whole noun declension paradigms here.

Examples for plural nominative:

balach - balaich
clachan - clachannan

Both are masculine, so you have to learn for each word how to form the plural.

The genitive singulars are balaich and clachain.

Most feminine nouns use the -(e)an ending for the plural, so that's easier. On the other hand, they have a lot of irregular genitive forms...

So, slenderisation per se has nothing to do with the gender of the word. Where you senderize of course then depends on it, as well as on the case and number.

Verbs also tend to be slender, e.g. tòisich with tòiseachadh as the corresponding verbal noun.

[Claidheamhair]

Oh my. That explained things so easily that Im printing it off now to carry with me forever.

Thanks very very much

[GunChleoc]

'S e do bheatha

You're welcome (lit. It's your life)