ASPIRING LESBIAN DADS CLUB. it makes sense when you understand that he/they lesbians have gender shrimp colors.
LESBIAN DADS!!! LESBIAN DADS!! and we do. we so do. it's the only tie to feminity and womanhood being our love for women. it makes things spicy. I am a man except in the ways I love and sometimes when it suits me. wearing womanhood and feminity like a Halloween costume.
also. I want to be a lesbian dad so much. I want to come across as a cishet family with my wife and children until u look and u go. wait. wait. what?. I want to fake being cishet and for people to be incredibly confused as to what I'm bringing to the table exactly. and then I say I'm a lesbian and every cishet in a 100 meters goes '??????'. also I want kids so bad I want to carry a baby on my hip and then be the kind of dad that embarrasses his kids so badly with my terrible music taste and no shame
I ran into this topic quite by accident, while looking for gender rules for loan words (nearly all masculine, by the way, and not worth writing at length about).
There are certain words whose grammatical genders are pretty mixed up. This means they vary either by dialect; change genders depending on the form they are in; or based on their surroundings.
You may find these useful:
Grammatical Gender Rules
Grammar Glossary
Dialects
The gender of a noun can differ from dialect to dialect. Take the word buicéad, for example.
With the article an, it is:
An buicéad in Munster and Connacht (masculine)
An bhucáid in Ulster (feminine)
Similarly, according to Ó Sé (1995), Ó Murchú (1998) and Ó Siadhail (1989):
Ainm is feminine in Munster, masculine everywhere else
Asal is feminine in Donegal, masculine everywhere else
Loch is feminine in Connacht, masculine everywhere else
Mí is masculine in Munster, feminine everywhere else
What Form?
Sometimes, nouns also change gender depending on the form they are in. Am is masculine, but its genitive ama in North Galway and Donegal is actually feminine (Ó hÚiginn, 1994; Ó Siadhail, 1989).
Ó Siadhail (1989) lists some examples of gender switching between the nominative and genitive cases:
Note: The little letter pairs after each example denote different dialects.
Gd: Gaoth Dothair (Donegal, Ulster)
Cf: Cois Fharraige (Connemara, Connacht)
Ky: Kerry (West Munster)
Environment
Nouns can also be affected by their environment to change genders.Take eolas, for example. The Ó Dónaill dictionary gives the word eolas to be masculine. In Rules: Gender Nouns, I wrote that for masculine nouns a definite article beginning with a vowel is prefixed with a t: an t-uisce.
Naturally, then, with the article an, it becomes an t-eolas.
However, when surrounded by an adjective, this happens:
Eolas mhaith
Recall from Rules: Gender Nouns, the following:
Masculine nouns: adjectives make no change (fear bocht)
Feminine nouns: adjectives give séimhiú (beoir fhuar)
Ó Siadhail (1989) proposes this is because eolas is affected by similar, related words such as aithne (feminine). He also lists several other words affected by their environments:
For cleachtadh, Ó Siadhail’s reason is a little bit of a reach, where he suggests that cleachtadh turns feminine as influenced by the word taithí (feminine, meaning experience).
He also says that oftentimes, despite being masculine, the nouns are switched because the usage befits a feminine noun and vice versa.
You’ve probably seen the form ‘sea or is ea by now. This is where you’ll most often see the now-archaic neuter pronoun ea (archaic spelling eadh). The neuter pronoun ea regularly referred to non-humans, regardless of their grammatical gender.
Today, remnants of the neuter pronoun remain largely in placenames and tied with the copula. Examples include is ea (meaning ‘yes’; ‘it is so’) and ní hea (meaning 'no’; ‘it isn’t’).
An ea?
Is it so?
Más ea
even if it is so
Imreoir an-iomaíoch is ea é
Literally, A very aggressive player it is that he is
He is a very aggressive player
Eadhon
Eadhon is the contraction of eadh and ón. It is the emphatic form of ea. You may see it in older literary texts, where it means “namely”, equivalent to the Latin id est, or i.e. You can see eadhon in my list of shorthand words.
Amhlaidh
Amhlaidh is a contraction of amhail (meaning “like”) and eadh. It means “thus” or “so”. You may see it in certain set phrases, such as:
Sula and roimh both mean before. Sula is a conjunction and comes before a verb, while roimh is a preposition and precedes a noun. In other words, sula joins two ideas, while roimh give us a relative idea.
Beidh ort fanacht tamall sula gcuirfidh tú ort í
Rinne mé m'obair roimh dhinnéar
Sheas mé roimh an uisce
Notice that roimh takes séimhiú while sula triggers urú. The past tense sular also takes a séimhiú.
Note
I have also crafted a sneaky wee opportunity to explain something else: we know that uisce, as a masculine noun, should take a t- prefix when it is a definite article: an t-uisce.
However, when we are referring to a body of water, it should remain an uisce.
Try it
Translate these:
1. She was here before then
2. Before he bought the car
Hover below for answers
1. Bhí sí anseo roimhe sin
2. Sula cheannaigh sé an carr
When nouns are plural, the adjectives attached to them must also take plural forms. Here is a general guide on the various plural forms for adjectives:
Ending in a vowel
These usually do not change with the plural noun (exceptions include breá → breátha and te → teo)
tanaí → daoine tanaí
One syllable
Often, adjectives with one syllable get an -a suffix in the plural for broad ending nouns, and -e for slender ending nouns:
mór → buachaillí móra
binn → guthanna binne
Adjectives already in plural forms
Adjectives that are already in the plural form take on their singular forms:
Ending in -úil
Adjectives ending -úil become -úla:
fear dathúil → fir dathúla
Ending in -air
Adjectives ending -air become -ra:
leabhar deacair → leabhair dheacra
Feminine nouns
The adjectives here do not take a séimhiú:
oíche fhuar → oícheanta fuar
Masculine nouns ending in slender syllables
These will take a séimhiú:
amhrán fada → amhráin fhada
Try it
Translate these:
1. Sweet apples
2. Small books
3. Soft ears
4. Common questions (Hint: you can spot this somewhere on Butt Gaeilge)
In the genitive case, the singular article can be na instead of an. This is used when the noun is feminine.
So we can have an doras, and the singular doras na scoile.
Compare the genitive cases of doras (masculine) and tine (feminine) with the singular article:
ag oscailt an dorais
ag lasadh na tine
And for masculine nouns beginning with ‘S’ (with some exceptions), the genitive singular offers the t- prefix.
doras an tsiopa
dath na súile
In the genitive case, definite articles with a séimhiú lose them, while those without gain them. Compare the masculine fear with the feminine fuinneog:
An fear
An fhuinneog
→
→
Obair an fhir
Ag glanadh na fuinneoige
Try it
Translate these:
1. The school board
2. County championship
3. Nightfall
Hover below for answers
1. Bord an scoile
2. Craobh an chontae
3. Titim na hoíche
Definite article beginning with a consonant: no change (an pobal)
Definite article beginning with a vowel: t-prefix (an t-uisce)
Adjectives: no change (fear bocht)
Genitive case: noun, an, then second noun with séimhiú and, in most cases, a slightly different spelling (Oifig an Phoist)
Note:
Certain words do not change in the genitive case (lána bus)
Certain phrases do not have an in the middle (cúirt leadóige)
Feminine words
Definite articles beginning with consonants: séimhiú (an chistin)
Definite article beginning with a vowel: no change (an oifig)
Definite articles beginning with s: t-prefix (an tseachtain)
Adjectives: séimhiú (beoir fhuar)
Genitive case: noun, na, then second noun with, in most cases, a slightly different spelling (Cumann na mBan)
Further reading: The Article in the Genitive
Note:
Certain words do not change in the genitive case (Cogadh na Saoirse)
Certain phrases do not have na in the middle (mála scoile)
The most common exception to these rules are words beginning with D, N, T, L, or S. If these letters are next to each other in a sentence, the second word doesn’t get a séimhiú.
Also, t-prefixes only apply to the definite article, and not when it is in the genitive or with a preposition. (chonaic mé an t-iriseoir but ar an iriseoir; obair an iriseora)
However, with attribute adjectives, we have an exception to the exception: an bhean dheas is correct.
Identifying Genders
Try it
Translate these:
1. The game
2. The woman
3. Nightfall
Hover below for answers
1. An cluiche
2. An bhean
3. Titim na hoíche / teacht na hoíche
How do you know which nouns are feminine and which are masculine? The basis of words being masculine or feminine is not very regular. Fear is masculine, bean is feminine, but cailín is masculine. Generally, words associated with women are feminine, such as cistin, cuisneoir, clann, ceol, and ealín and words associated with men are masculine, such as carr, ríomhaire, and teach. However, most seem completely arbitrary.
I do not recommend memorising the rules below because the gender of a noun becomes easier to decipher as you become more familiar with the language. You’ll soon realise that phrases like an chóisir sound right and ones like an aerfort don’t.
The below are some general guidelines, but they’re not golden rules by any means:
