🎶It's as easy as 1,2,3 🎶... em, not quite 😅

Counting things in Gaelic can be a little tricky- here's one of the key concepts to bear in mind:

In English, nouns can only be counted as singular or plural. In other words, there is either one of something or more than one of something.

In Gaelic however, nouns can be counted as singular, dual or plural- that's to say that there is one of something, two of something or more than two of something. Here are the rules for one and two taken from the SpeakGaelic website:

1. Aon lenites where possible, but not d, s or t:

• Tha aon bhràthair beag agam. • Tha aon taigh agam. 2.

A Dhà becomes dà when used to count a noun, this lenites and takes a singular noun:

• Tha dà phiuthar agam. • Tha dà thaigh agam.

In the examples given above, you can see that the plural form starts from three onwards and continues like this up until ten, 'trì caoraich*, ceithir caoraich, còig caoraich, sia caoraich...deich caoraich'. We'll leave the numbers after that for another time 😅🐑

*(In some dialects, you might hear the lenition continue on to three, so 'trì chaoraich' instead of 'trì caoraich')

Download the PDF below:

A' cunntais bheathaichean 1-3 (1)

.pdf

Download PDF • 9.01MB