Gu (preposition)

• for a complete list of prepositions see Prepositions

Gaelic preposition, meaning roughly "until" or "to". It governs the dative case, and triggers lenition on following indefinite nouns.

Simple forms

• bare form: gu^L 'up to a'
• definite form: chun^L 'up to the' (or more archaically, thun)

Basic inflected forms

Like most prepositions, gu can be inflected for person, number, and gender. For example, to say "to me", we use the single word thugam. The forms beginning with ch are rarely used anymore.

		singular	plural
1st		(th)ugam/chugam	(th)ugainn/chugainn
2nd		(th)ugad/chugad	(th)ugaibh/chugaibh
3rd	Masc	(th)uige/chuige	(th)uca/chuca
	Fem	(th)uice/chuice

Emphatic Inflected forms

Special emphatic forms are used if we want to emphasize the pronoun in the inflected preposition. (e.g. ormsa "on ME")

		singular	plural
1st		thugam-sa	thugainn-ne
2nd		thugad-sa/dhuit-sa	thugaibh-se
3rd	Masc	thuige-san	thuca-san
	Fem	thuice-se

Possessive inflected forms:

There are three possible forms for combinations of the preposition with a possessive pronoun. There are forms without contraction, and two different kinds of contraction where one is lenited and the other is not

Uncontracted forms

		singular	plural
1st		do moL	do arN
2nd		do doL	do urN
3rd	Masc	do aL	do anN
	Fem	do aH

do am is used instead of do an "to their" in front of words beginning with the labial consonants <b>, <p>, <m>, and <f>

Lenited Contracted forms

		singular	plural
1st		L	N
2nd		L	N
3rd		dhaL	N
	Fem	H

Unlenited Contracted forms

		singular	plural
1st		L	N
2nd		L	N
3rd	Masc	L	N
	Fem	H

References

Mark, Colin (2004) The Gaelic-English Dictionary/Am Faclair Gàidhlig-Beurla. London: Routledge

Notes

In this document, as elsewhere, ^L indicates lenition and ^N indicates eclipsis, (prefixation of an n- before a word beginning with vowels, and a nasalization of the next consonant (not indicated in the orthography) and ^H indicates antilenition (the prefixation of h before words beginning with vowels).