De do rium rium or How to crack prepositions

In this section we'll try to give you a fairly comprehensive overview over the Gaelic prepositions - including some of the more obscure issues and a fresh view on some old friends.

But before we start a quick anecdote about rules in language.

Linguists will tell you that some languages are PRO-drop languages and some aren't.  PRO stands for 'pronoun' and what that means is that in some languages, you are permitted to drop the pronoun in a sentence, generally because the verb alone already marks the grammatical person (i.e. you, me, he, they etc.).  Spanish is a PRO-drop language where you can either say yo tengo una cebra or tengo una cebra - both meaning "I have a zebra."  English on the other hand they will tell you is not a PRO-drop language, never ever ever.  Or is it?  I asked my partner a question this morning - "have you ever used the word "prune" as an insult?" ... and the answer came straight back "might have done" ... can YOU see a pronoun anywhere?  I can't.  Anyway, this isn't a blog but I thought I'd remind us all that languages are unruly things and while there are rules that you can learn and follow, they rarely apply in 100% of cases.  Still, 99% isn't bad either, is it? J

Use the follwing links to get to the different sections:

Simple Prepositions

Complex Prepositions
For the most part arranged in groups according to their first element;
e.g. for mu choinneimh look under mu

One thing we get asked a lot - is there an easy way to remember the conjugated prepositions.  Click here to find out.