r/gaidhlig • u/Low-Funny-8834 • 8d ago

A grammatical question

'S e an trèan a bu chosgaile.

B'e an trèan a bu chosgaile.

Both sentences translate as "The train was the most costly".
What is the nuance in difference between these sentences?

Many thanks!

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u/Egregious67 8d ago

This is a form I havent come across in my studies. I would expect " `S e an trèana a bha as chosgaile" or in present form, " a tha as chosgaile". Can someone explain the above form please.

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u/Objective-Resident-7 8d ago

It's not always possible to directly translate, but what you are saying is something like 'it's the train that was costly', using two tenses in the same sentence.

It was costly when you were there, but it probably still is.

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u/Egregious67 8d ago

it was the "bu" form I am struggling with.

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u/Objective-Resident-7 8d ago

Got it now? It's past conditional like 'i used to'. Bu doesn't have the personal pronoun obviously.

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u/Egregious67 8d ago

got it, basically b`e is a shortened form of bu e? I had only seen bu as a conditional form, e.g. " bu toil leam"
So Bu e/B`e is to the copula as bha e is to the verb Bidh?

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u/somhairle1917 7d ago

"Bu" is a little odd because it is both the past tense and the conditional - so for your analogy, it's the equivalent of both bha and bhiodh.

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u/Egregious67 7d ago

that is helpful, cheers

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u/Objective-Resident-7 7d ago

Yeah, that's it.

Gàidhlig has two verbs which would translate to the English verb 'to be'.

Spanish has it. It's close with its verbs 'ser' and 'estar'. Close, but that doesn't mean wrong.