More than the Cúpla Focal: The most common mistakes to do with the Irish language

From cúpla focal and common misspellings to grammatically nonsensical sentences and bad tattoos, there are plenty of little and not-so-little mistakes that Irish learners do. After years of observing, below are in my opinion the standouts.

Cúpla Focal vs Cúpla Focail

“Cúpla focail” is a common recurring error seen not just among learners but the media too (see below).

Those with their English-thinking caps on may be thinking “Why? Is it not ‘words’ not ‘word’?” Well, the sooner you separate yourself from thinking in English the better! In this case, what’s happening is because of the word ‘cúpla’. The correct way to write this phrase is cúpla focal NOT cúpla focail.

Cúpla (a couple) takes the nominative singular after it. And the nominative singular of focal is focal. That’s simply it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Take ‘a couple of questions’ as another example. What would that be in Irish? Well, taking what I said just above, to create this phrase we would need the nominative singular. Below are various forms for ‘ceist’ so with the below in mind, what could the answer be?

That’s right, cúpla ceist!

Tá sé fear – Not understanding the Copula

Tá mé múinteoir. These examples are by far the most common mistakes that I come across when interacting with learners. Understanding the copula is fundamental but so many of us get it wrong. You can read my in-depth piece on the copula here.

Siúl vs Súil

Siúl is the verbal noun of the verb e.g. she walks the dogs / tugann sí na madraí ag siúl

Siúil the verb, and is used to talk about walking or travelling in general e.g. don’t walk on the grass / ná siúil ar an bhféar, we trekked through the hills / chuamar de shiúl na gcos trí na cnoic

Siúlóid is a noun for a walk/hike e.g. a gentle hike / siúlóid réidh

The word súil on the other hand means ‘eye’.

Ar shiúl vs Ar siúl

Following the above, another common mistake is mixing up ar shiúl and ar siúl. The phrase ar siúl means “taking place”, “happening” or “on”. For example, tá cóisir ar siúl anocht! (There’s a party on tonight!), Cad atá ar siúl anseo? (What’s going on/happening here?)

Whereas ar shiúl means absent or gone e.g.

Gaelgóir vs Gaeilgeoir vs Gaelgoer

I’ve seen many spellings of this word that means ‘Irish-speaking person’, but the correct one is Gaeilgeoir.

English phonetics

I spoke about this in my post ‘a caution to learners of Irish‘ but it is worth mentioning here again. Many people use English phonetics to reflect Irish pronunciations. This poses problems for a few reasons:

1. You might not be a native speaker learning English so your pronunciation of English words is different.
2. Even if you are a native English speaker, you might be American, Canadian, Australian, English etc. etc. and thus similarly to the above how you pronounce things in English may not be the same as the ‘phonetics’ that are written. You end up with anglicised pronunciation which sounds unnatural and jarring to native speakers.
3. Ultimately English phonetics do not reflect the Irish pronunciation. I touch on this in my piece on the síneadh fada.

Instead, it is better to focus on things like the International Phonetic Alphabet (I.P.A.), native Irish speakers, sound files through, for example, fuaimeanna.ie, teanglann.ie, native speakers on Raidió na Gaeltachta, and practice.

Aifreann vs Ifreann

I spotted this amusing error in translation while browsing online. Aifreann does not mean Hell, but it does mean ‘Mass’. Whereas Ifreann means ‘Hell’ and is quite contrasting to Mass!

Thinking carr is just an anglicisation

Often you will hear people say: ‘it’s not carr, it’s gluaisteán‘ as a gotcha moment, or that carr is just an anglicisaiton of the word car or that gluaisteán just looks better than carr.

Well, the truth is, carr is in fact a much older word than gluaisteán and regardless, both are perfectly fine to use. You can also use mótar, and cairt.

Carr comes from a Celtic word, whereas car in English is a cognate, ultimately from a word meaning chariot or something like a trailer.

Éire, Éireann, Éirinn

The word ‘Ireland’ has three forms, which are not all interchangeable.

Éire

This is the nominative case, meaning it’s used when “Ireland” is the subject of the sentence. Éire is the Irish Gaelic name for “Ireland” but just the country.

If it were in a list of other countries in the Irish language, it would be for example, Éire, An Fhrainc agus Sasana. If you were to say you were from Ireland you would also say, for example, “Is as Éirinn mé”. You could also say something like, Is aoibhinn liom Éire (I love Ireland), Tá Éire go hálainn. (Ireland is beautiful). Another example is if you can imagine yourself posting a letter and the address is in Irish, Ireland would also be written as Éire in this context.

In English-speaking contexts, Éire is often used as a stand-alone name for Ireland (in English legal and geographical contexts).

Éirinn

Éire is one of the few words with a distinct dative form. Thus, we get in Éirinn for ‘in Ireland.’ Éirinn is the dative case, used after certain prepositions like “in” or “to.” Examples of usage include:

Éirinn is often recognised through its poetic usage in songs or phrases like “Erin go Bragh” stemming from Éirinn go Brách. This reflects older uses of the language that are still preserved in literary works.

Éireann

This is the genitive case, used to show possession or association with Ireland. This version of the word usually when seen referring to ‘of Ireland’. It often appears in set phrases, organizations, and titles, where “Ireland” is not the subject but is showing ownership or relation. The “h” prefixing na hÉireann appears because it reflects the grammar rules for genitive feminine nouns that follow the article “na.” Examples include:

One more thing:

Direct Word-for-Word Translation from English

Many learners translate English phrases directly into Irish, which often results in unnatural, janky phrasing. The below example makes very little sense and is clearly a very poor translation:

You see accounts like this spread across Instagram, and the unfortunate thing is that a learner, who has no foundation in Irish, will take what they’re touting as the truth. A real shame.

Badly translated tattoos

Coming on from the above, badly translated Irish tattoos are quite the problem. Many people love getting tattoos in Irish, but they don’t always realise the difficulties of getting a proper, accurate translation.

When a new tattoo mishap surfaces on social media the reaction is all too familiar. Irish speakers facepalm and sigh. There’s quite the feeling of secondhand embarrassment and sometimes, we can’t help but laugh at the irony. So what can you do to avoid this?

1. Get a reputable translator
2. Know some that you trust has great Irish but know that they might be willing to do it if they’re not confident either
3. Don’t get it if you’re not 100% sure
4. Consider searching for a seanfhocal (proverb) instead as those are set phrases with thoughtful meanings

While you can use an Irish language dictionary, you do need background knowledge of Irish to understand what word/phrase is more accurate. For example, say you want a tattoo that says: Live, Laugh, Love. A dictionary might tell you that words separately are ‘beo’, ‘gáire’ and ‘grá’. And you may think putting together is simply ‘beo, gáire, grá’. In reality, though, this translation is janky, and clunky and doesn’t really make sense as you can’t translate like this.

Relying on Google Translate, Chat GPT or any other AI tool

Tying into the above, relying on Google Translate will give you the result: ‘beo, gáire, grá’ as well without any context as to why it’s a good/bad translation. An Irish speaker would see through it in a split second.

Similarly, with ChatGPT, you will net other results and while it may attempt to explain why it’s chosen the results, it’s hard to verify that it’s true. I have used ChatGPT to test the Irish language before and it’s consistently come up with inaccurate Irish. But remember, a learner won’t know any different.

Relying on Duolingo

Duolingo is handy as a supplementary tool. However, it’s not as good as it used to be and I don’t recommend it as the tool to learn Irish. Duolingo no longer uses native Irish language audio and has closed its forums. The forums were invaluable for those who wished to ask questions. This post on “Why not Duolingo, and what to use instead?” sums everything up well.

Mixing Tenses

Consider the following sentence that is incorrect in Irish:

Beidh áthas ar Shéan nuair a chríochnaíonn sé a obair bhaile.
Seán will be happy when he finishes his homework.

To an English speaker, the Irish sentence makes perfect sense, but this would not be considered the best way of expressing sentiment contained in the English sentence in Irish. The way the future tense is used in Irish is different to that of English. It is important to understand that in Irish we try not to mix the use of the present and the future tense in one sentence.

The use of the second verb to finish in the present tense is incorrect. In Irish the future tense form of this verb should be used as the act of finishing has not yet occurred. Therefore, as it happens in the future, the future tense form of the verb should be used.

A correct translation of the English sentence above is:

Beidh áthas ar Shéan nuair a chríochnóidh sé a obair bhaile.

Forgetting to add the síneadh fada

You may be forgiven if you don’t know how to add it, however, the síneadh fada is quite an essential aspect of the language. Here is my in-depth piece about it (with a few humorous examples) and also a guide on how to get it on mobile and computer.

Choosing a BAD Irish language teacher

Learners will consistently come across so-called ‘teachers’ or native speakers of Irish on language sites like Italki, Preply, HiNative etc. that claim to have good spoken Irish. They’re rife on Instagram and YouTube too.

For tutors on sites like this, only a few are truly proficient speakers – even the most popular ones. Most are not, and many don’t even teach grammar. It’s shocking and frustrating that people are paying to learn subpar Irish from these tutors.

The troubling thing is, is that the folks teaching Irish probably don’t think they have poor Irish either. A guy on preply says in his intro video ‘Is as an Éireann mé’ which makes absolutely no sense and we’ve no idea how he has the confidence to mark that he’s a ‘native’ Irish speaker. It was perplexing that he states that he has had requests for translations and for wedding speeches.

There’s also quite a well known Irish language teacher with hundreds of thousands of followers who spreads all sort of misinformation with regards to pronunciation through English style ‘phonetics’ e.g. in her pronunciation guide she has: “Slender d sounds like /j/ in the English word “juice” e.g. deoch = drink / jukk /”

We recommend two teachers on iTalki: Patchy and Daniel
We also recommend Fionnán Ó Conaola based on Inis Oírr (he shared his email online: gaeilge55[at]gmail.com)

Bonus: The spelling of Craic vs Crack

This doesn’t have to do with the Irish language but it does have to do with our version of the word craic. While it’s not an error per se, and there’s no difference in that sense of the word when referring to fun, it just depends on the context and whether you’re in Ireland / Irish. Here at least we spell it as ‘craic’. Crack has a few other meanings as well of course. A common Irish phrase is simply, ‘What’s the craic?’.

Warning: Cráic is anus in Irish. Be careful of the síneadh fada. More on that here.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay