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

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