Chapter 17 of 17 · Explore the Irish path
Reading · Chapter 17 of 17
Try your first book
Four things this path skipped will turn up in a real book, and none of them has to stop you. Then open Twelve Tales from the Green Hill and read one scene with the English beside it.
≈ 2 min of reading · Practise at your own pace
What’s in this chapter
- Start with the Green Hill fables, which use deliberately limited language.
- Read the Irish line before looking across at the English.
- Tap an important unknown word once, read its meaning, and keep going.
- After Green Hill: Winnie-the-Pooh, then Doctor Dolittle.
What you have is a working model of how an Irish sentence holds together — the thing that cannot be looked up. A real book has longer sentences, more tenses, and words this path never gave you. That is expected, not a sign you started too early.
Four things this path skipped, and what to do about each
These four will turn up in a real book. None of them has to stop you reading.
| What you will meet | What to do |
|---|---|
| The genitive: an ending changes when a word belongs to something — teach an fhir | Recognise fhir as fear in different clothes; read on. |
| Mutations after little words you were not given | The dictionary word is underneath: delete the h, or what is bolted on in front. |
| Verb endings such as -tear and -adh | Somebody did it without saying who — read them as “was done” and carry on. |
| Dialect: Munster and Ulster differ, and older books use ar seisean | None of it is a different language. This path follows the Connacht-leaning standard. |
Come back to these chapters whenever you need them.All Irish chapters ↗