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Possessives and Syllabic Structure or Ar n-Athair a tha air Nèamh

Well, maybe prayer is called for when learning Gaelic ... Where shall we start?  Well, let's be pompous: Gaelic, like many other languages does not have a verb for 'to have' and distinguishes between alienable and inalienable possession.

It is nowhere near as horrible as it may look at first sight.  There are two ways of expressing possession, so let us start with an overview over the two:

So what is this all about?  For one thing note the lenition, prefixing of n- and ellision of vowels.  A noun beginning with a consonant is lenited by mo, do and a (his); a (her), ar, ur and an cause no changes.  A noun beginning with a vowel will cause the vowels in mo and do to drop off yielding m' and d'; a (his) disappears completely (both in pronunciation and writing) while a (her) prefixes h- (No, this is not madness without reason - for those of you curious about the reason, read the historical note at the bottom of this page).  Of the last three, ar and ur prefix n-; an does nothing except to change to am before labial consonants (b p m f), for the same reason the definite article does.

Note on Pronunciation
"Why?  The sounds all look pretty straightforward (as straightforward as <n> sounds get in Gaelic anyway)!"  Unfortunately there is a tiny snag with ar and ur ...

Because the prefixed n- historically is part of the possessive pronoun and not the noun, this influences their pronounciation.  Meaning?

That the n- in ar n-athair and ur n-athair does not get pronounced as a broad <n> would normally be pronounced but rather as a single, slender <n> just as if it still were attached to ar and ur.

It IS important to get this distinction (and your vowel length) right in Gaelic, as the above example shows, because otherwise it will seem to a native speaker that you are talking about snakes rather than someones father!  This is also where it is important you have your L N R sounds sorted, because these are likewise lenited my mo, do and a, particularly in the case of <his> and <her> where lenition or the lack of it is very significant (See the special chapter on leniting LNR)!

So, back to the constructions.  The second one is a perifrastic (roundabout) way of expressing possession by using the preposition aig 'at' either with or without the definite article depending on what you are trying to say.  So, tha cat agam lit. 'be cat at-me' expresses the concept of 'I have a cat' and similarly tha an cat agam lit. 'be the cat at-me' expresses 'I have the cat'.

And no, you can not just use either indiscriminately, which is where this stuff about alienable and inalienable comes in.  This essentially means that anything that is considered to be connected to you in such a way it can not be taken away from you (=inalienable) or considered to be very close and personal to you requires the first type (mo, do etc).  Anything else requires the second - mostly material possessions like your herd of gnus, TV, ocean liner, fire extinguisher and automatic grape peeler.

So what is considered inalienable in Gaelic?  Blood relatives are, a wife (but not a husband!), clothes, children, parts of your body and certain special entities as kings, queens and religious icons.  A very nice illustrative example is the difference between mo làmh and an làmh agam.  The first one talks about your hand (being attached to your body and therefore inalienable) - but the second expression would suggest you are talking about a severed hand that you are holding in your own hand!!!  Or, less macabre, seo an làmh agam might mean you are showing your hand in a game of cards - this is my hand (of cards).

Another nice examples are the two sentences tha i a' sguabadh na fiaclan aice and tha i a' sguabadh a fiaclan.  In the first case granny is treating you to one of those unforgettable moments where she's holding her false teeth and brushing them with a toothbrush that belonged to her great-uncle Seumas.  In the second case, she's standing in the bathroom brushing her own Mother Nature® teeth.

Now, bearing in mind two things, firstly that this distinction is not 100% clear cut and secondly that the first type (mo, do ...) is getting less common in modern Gaelic, here is a indicative list of when to use the first (with special attention given to personal relations as they are particularly tricky):

* mo nighean is permissible, but it would imply the girl being your girlfriend rather than daughter

Beyond this business of alienable vs inalienable, as you can see the use of mo vs agam can mark a perceived closeness, for example mo charaid implies a much closer friendship than an caraid agam.  If in doubt, use the an X agam construction, it will seem less odd if used inappropriately to the attuned native ear than an overuse of mo, do etc.

One last thing to note is that a noun followed by either of these constructions will cause them to appear in the genitive case, e.g. taigh mo mhàthar 'my mothers house', càr a' mhanaidsear aige 'his manager's car' ...

Historical note for the curious
So why is this not madness without reason, because it sure looks like it ...  As with a number of things in Gaelic (and Irish and Manx) the reasons for prefixing h- and n- go back a long time.  A very long time actually, way back to Indo-European more than 4000 or so years ago.  This is what happened: