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Expressions of Time

Temporal adverbial expressions - or how to say when something happened.  Let's take a look at what choices we have to start with:

1. Adverbs of Time
These are itsy words that you can add on to a phrase or sentence to tell people when something happened.

Now this does not mean that you can not say <year after next> in Gaelic, it just means that there is no single, easy word for it.  Instead you have to employ perifrastic expressions.

2. The Days of the Week

Sunday is also called Latha na Sàbaid. Traditionally the usage between the two depends on your denomination - Catholics and Episcopalians using the DiDòmhnaich and Presbyterians Latha na Sàbaid.  For non-denominational reasons, we prefer DiDòmhnaich because it fits in with the rest of the paradigm.  Be sure to pronounce the long vowel in Sàbaid, otherwise it becomes Latha na Sabaid 'the Day of Fighting'.

The prefix Di- is the equivalant of the English -day suffix.  Unlike in English however, it is the prefix that is modified to express the concepts of <Monday afternoon>, <Friday night> etc:

That is the theory anyway ... in colloquial usage, you will often hear people saying things like Feasgar DihAoine, Madainn DiMàirt etc.  The most common ones in colloquial usage are the expressions with oidhche such as Oidhche Luain, Oidhche Mhàrt etc.

3. The Months
Genitives are given in square brackets.  For purposes of memorisation it is useful to note that from Septemeber onwards all months are feminine in gender!  There are alternate names for some of the months, but we strongly suggest you stick with the recommended ones.  Learning a language is difficult enough without having to worry about having 5 different choices for one term...

The date in Gaelic is given in the form of the Xth day of the [month].  A few examples:

Individual years are said by giving the 'hundreds' first and then the 'tens' (without is between the hundreds and the tens) i.e. 

B.C. and A.D. are expressed similar to English as: R.C. (ro Chrìosd) and A.D. (as déidh Chrìosd), e.g. 347 B.C. is trì ceud dà fhichead is a seachd ro Chrìosd.  Optionally sa bhliadhna can be prefixed to any date for clarification, i.e. sa bhliadhna naoi ceud deug trì fichead is a ceithir <in the year 1964>.

BCE?  No we don't as it's pointless - it still uses the same date as a reference point so it's no less "offensive" (???) that BC or AD and just adds to the confusion.

The four seasons are expressed as follows (note that the short form of saying <in X> differs slightly from the long form!):

4. The Holidays of the Year
Genitives are given in square brackets.

5. Other Adverbs of Time
Most adverbs are formed by the prepositon gu + ADJ, but there are a number of adverbs that have different formations:

Adverbs of time in Gaelic do not require a preposition as certain English expressions do and are simply attached at the end of the phrase, e.g.:

Particularly the most overused word in modern Gaelic should be avoided - airson.