dhá
Appearance
Irish
[edit]Etymology 1
[edit]← 1 | 2 | |
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Cardinal: dó Ordinal: dara, dóú Personal: beirt, dís Attributive: dhá |
From Old Irish dá, from Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁.
Pronunciation
[edit]Numeral
[edit]dhá (triggers lenition)
- two
- Tá dhá charr aige
- He has two cars
- dhá dóibh ― two of them (non-personal)
- Bheadh sé níos fearr dá bhféadfadh dhá de na rudaí ag deighilt
- It would be better if two of the things could be separated
Usage notes
[edit]- Used before nouns; dó is used when free-standing (counting, telling a row of numerals, etc). The following noun is in the singular nominative (or, in the few cases where distinct duals have survived, the dual nominative (e.g. dhá bhróig – "two shoes")) and is almost always lenited; the sole exception is with the third-person possessive determiner a, which triggers mutation as if the dhá simply was not there:
- a dhá chapall ― his two horses (lenition)
- a dhá húll ― her two apples (h-prothesis)
- a dhá dteach ― their two houses (eclipsis)
- When used with adjectives, the adjective is always in the nominative plural and is lenited by default:
- dhá bhád mhóra
- two big boats
- dhá mhadra dhubha
- two black dogs
- dhá amhrán ghearra
- two short songs
- The alternative form dá is used after the definite article (which is always in the singular and is always an, even with feminine nouns in the genitive), aon ("any"), and céad ("first"):
- an dá leabhar
- the two books
- teangacha an dá thír
- the two countries' languages
- aon dá áit
- any two places
- an chéad dá bhliain
- the first two years
- When referring to human beings, the personal form beirt is used.
Etymology 2
[edit]Lenited form of dá.
Pronunciation
[edit]Conjunction
[edit]dhá
- Alternative form of dá
Contraction
[edit]dhá
- Alternative form of dá
Derived terms
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Sjoestedt, M. L. (1931) Phonétique d’un parler irlandais de Kerry [Phonetics of an Irish Dialect of Kerry] (in French), Paris: Librairie Ernest Leroux, § 215, page 110
- ^ Finck, F. N. (1899) Die araner mundart [The Aran Dialect] (in German), volume II, Marburg: Elwert’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, page 136
- ^ Quiggin, E. C. (1906) A Dialect of Donegal, Cambridge University Press, § 285, page 101
Further reading
[edit]- Ó Dónaill, Niall (1977) “dhá”, in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, Dublin: An Gúm, →ISBN
- Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “dá”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language