BEGINNERS' BLAS

Gramadach/Grammar

Past and Past Habitual

Half the battle in learning a language is realising that each language is unique and that speaking it properly isn't just a matter of learning words and grammar rules, it's also about avoiding too strong an influence from your first language. The influence of English on the Irish of learners is often called Béarlachas. Usually it means that the speaker hasn't really grasped the idiom of the Irish language, and feels that anything can be said in Irish simply by translating from English. So when he wants to say 'that's not my cup of tea' he says ní hé sin mo chupán tae, a phrase which is meaningless in Irish.

But the influence of English can be felt at a grammatical level too. There are more tenses in Irish than in English, for example, and learners have problems dealing with those which have no direct equivalent in English. Even the most capable learners get tripped up by the past habitual in Irish, precisely because there's nothing quite like it in English. Here's what I mean: the same form of the verb 'to go' is used in these two English sentences: 'He went to the cinema last night' and 'He often went to the cinema'. In trying to say the same two sentences in Irish, the learner is tempted to rely on his or her knowledge of English. They might say Chuaigh sé chun na pictiúrlainne aréir for 'He went to the cinema last night' and Chuaigh sé chun na pictiúrlainne go minic for 'He often went to the cinema." The first one would be correct. We're only talking about one occasion here, something that was done once and not repeated. So we can use the simple past tense of the verb to go: chuaigh. [Always try, by the way, not to say 'hooey' when you mean chuaigh]. It would be the same for 'She made me a cup of tea' Rinne sí cupán tae dom and so on - a once-off action in the past tense.

But Irish differs from English in having tenses which describe repeated actions. We've already discussed this in reference to the present tense. 'There's a session in the hotel tonight' would be said as follows: Tá seisiún ceoil san óstán anocht but There's a session in the hotel on Sunday nights' would be as follows: Bíonn seisiún ceoil san óstán oíche Dhomhnaigh. We use bíonn instead of tá to describe repeated, habitual action - 'She's always reading' Bíonn sí i gcónaí ag léamh. It's fairly easy in the present tense because it's left its mark on our own dialect of English 'There does be music every Sunday' or even 'There be's music every Sunday.'

Somehow, we don't seem to have much problem with the present habitual, but it gets more difficult in the past tense. There is a past habitual tense that we should use in just the same way as the present habitual. If we did, we would see that Chuaigh sé chun na pictiúrlainne go minic couldn't be right, because we're talking about something that happened more than once. The form of the verb we need is théadh - the past habitual and the sentence would be Théadh sé chun na pictiúrlainne go minic. Bhíodh is used in the past tense where bíonn is used in the present. That hotel where the sessions are held - imagine it's closed down and you're talking about the good old days. You'd say Bhíodh seisiúin cheoil san óstán oíche Dhomhnaigh.

Now that shouldn't give listeners too many problems - once you can use the present habitual you can certainly grasp the past habitual - it's just a matter of sitting down and learning the forms of the verb - a bit of donkey work which sadly can't be avoided. One factor that confuses people is the similarity between the past habitual and the conditional tense. They both have séimhiú, usually, and they both end in adh, usually. It's particulary hard to distinguish between them in speech. He would send a letter, for example would be Chuirfeadh sé litir and he used to send a letter, regularly say would be Chuireadh sé litir. The only difference between them is that the conditional has the letter 'f' in the last element of the verb - it's spelt chuirfeadh. The spelling of the past habitual form is identical, except there's no 'f'.

So you can see how people confuse the two tenses, and generally it wouldn't matter, in normal speech anyway. But there are some irregular verbs which have completely different forms in the conditional and in the past habitual. We've already had the sentence Théadh sé chun na pictiúrlainne go minic, he often went to the cinema. Now, he would go to the cinema would be Rachadh sé chun na pictiúrlainne - so 'théadh' and 'rachadh' shouldn't really be confused. People do, though, even native speakers and very competent learners.

Another difficulty is pronunciation. In Ulster Irish we add an extra syllable to verbs in the future, conditional and past habitual tenses. We don't say Foghlaimeoidh mé Gaeilge - we say something like Foghlaimeochaidh mé Gaeilge. It's the experience of this learner that multi-syllabic verbs in the past habitual are (if I can borrow a phrase from Ulster Scots) a quare handlin' - real tongue twisters. I was relieved to find a way of avoiding them. You can use the phrase Ba ghnách liom followed by the verb in the infinitive, which we talked about a few weeks ago. So Théadh sé chun na pictiúrlainne go minic becomes Ba ghnách leis dul chun na pictiúrlainne. She used to learn one song a week, would be Ba ghnách léi amhrán amháin a fhoghlaim gach seachtain and believe me, that's much easier than the alternative. You can also say Ba nós liom or Bhí sé de nós agam or anything that translates as 'I used to'.

So that's the past habitual, something that you can avoid, up to a point, but which you really should recognise and know how to use.

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