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The Irish demonstrative ‘úd’/‘siúd’
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In addition to the demonstratives seo and sin, meaning this/these and that/those respectively, Irish has a third one: úd, which sometimes appears as siúd. It's considerably less common than the other two but you may have seen it occasionally. Its meaning is more or less identical to sin that/those. We will look at what it means in detail later, but first let's see how it is used.
How to use it
When this demonstrative modifies a noun, the form úd is used:
an fear úd that man
an bhean úd that woman
na daoine úd those people
When it is used in combination with a pronoun, it takes the form siúd:
cé hí siúd? who is that (woman)?
an maith leat iad siúd? do you like those?
Unlike seo and sin, úd/siúd cannot be used on its own (without a noun or pronoun).
What it means
Because English has two pairs of demonstratives, namely this/these and that/those, you could say that English demonstratives form a two-way system:
- this/these meaning "the one(s) here"
- that/those meaning "the one(s) there"
In contrast, Irish has traditionally had a three-way system of demonstratives:
- seo meaning the one(s) here"
- sin meaning "the one(s) there"
- úd/siúd meaning "the one(s) over there somewhere vaguely far away in the distance"
Basically, úd/siúd differs from sin in two ways: it is more distant (the thing we are describing is further away) and it is more vague (we don't know or don't care where exactly it is). However, this is a pretty sublime distinction. In real life, úd/siúd is used quite rarely, as little more than a stylistic variant of sin.
The only situation where úd/siúd is used almost exclusively (and sin almost never) is when the demonstrative follows the pronoun iad and is followed by a relative clause, meaning those who or those which:
iad siúd nár rugadh go fóill those who haven't been born yet
iad siúd agaibh nach bhfuair an t-airgead those of you who didn't get the money
dóibh siúd nár chuala an chéad uair mé for those who didn't hear me the first time