Everything you need to know about Irish pronouns

Pronouns are words like me, you, it. This article will summarize pretty much everything you need to know about personal pronouns in Irish.

Nominative and accusative pronouns

You may already know that English has two sets of pronouns:

• One set of pronouns are used as subjects of verbs: she saw the dog.
• Another set of pronouns are used as objects of verbs: the dog saw her.

Irish also has two such sets of pronouns:

• Nominative pronouns are used as subjects of verbs: chonaic sí an madra  she saw the dog.
• Accusative pronouns are used as objects of verbs: chonaic an madra í  the dog saw her.

Here is a complete list of them. Nominative first:

• Singular: mé I, tú you, sé he, sí she
• Plural: muid or sinn we, sibh you, siad they

And the accusative forms:

• Singular: mé me, thú you, é him, í her
• Plural: muid or sinn us, sibh you, iad them

Notice than some are identical in both sets, for example mé means both I and me, while others are different.

The difference between tú and thú

Pay attention to the difference between tú (nominative) and thú (accusative), many learners keep mixing them up:

chonaic tú mé  you saw me

chonaic mé thú  I saw you

The difference between sé and é, etc.

Also, notice that in the third person, the accusative pronouns can be derived from the nominative ones by simply removing the initial s:

chonaic sé mé  he saw me

chonaic mé é  I saw him

chonaic sí mé  she saw me

chonaic mé í  I saw her

chonaic siad mé  they saw me

chonaic mé iad  I saw them

Translating you

You will have noticed that Irish has two seperate pronouns for you, a a singular one: tú/thú and a plural one: sibh. So, in Irish, you always need to know whether you are talking to one person or several and choose your pronouns accordingly.

And in case you were wondering, Irish does not distinguish between a "polite" and "informal" you, unlike many European languages like French and German. You always use tú/thú when talking to one person, regardless of who they are to you. This distinction did exist in Irish a long time ago (the "polite" you was sibh) and it does still exist in other Celtic languages including Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, but it has disappeared from Irish – although it may ocassionally crop up in older texts.

Translating it

It may have struck you that there is no equivalent for it among the Irish pronouns. Irish does not have such a pronoun. You use either the masculine sé/é or the feminine sí/í, depending on the grammatical gender of the noun you are referring to:

Goideadh mo charr! Cá bhfuil sé?  My car was stolen! Where is it?

Here, you use the masculine sé to refer to the masculine noun carr car.

Bhí fuinneog anseo. Cá bhfuil sí?  There was a window here. Where is it?

Here, you use the feminine sí to refer to the feminine noun fuinneog window.

When you are not referring to any noun in particular and the gender is therefore indeterminate, the default translation of it is the masculine sé/é:

tá sé deacair  it is is difficult

bhí sé go deas tú a fheiceáil  it was nice to see you

beidh sé ag cur báistí  it will be raining

tá sé fuar inniu  it is cold today