a fhios a bheith agat

Irish

Verb

a fhios a bheith agat

  1. to know (be certain or sure about (something); have knowledge of; be informed about)
    Tá a fhios agam go bhfuil an ceart agam.
    I know that I am right.
    An raibh fios an scéil ag Seán?
    Did John know about the matter?

Usage notes

Literally means "its knowledge is at you". The tense of English know is reflected by the tense of the verb "to be" in Irish, while the subject of know in English is the object of the preposition ag in Irish. A noun governed by about in English is rendered by a genitive in Irish, in which case a fhios becomes simply fios.

After an inflected form of bí, a fhios is pronounced simply /(ə)sˠ/; compare the following examples from Ulster Irish:[1]

  • tá a fhios agam (“I know”) /ˈt̪ˠaːsˠ əɡəmˠ/
  • níl a fhios agam (“I do not know”) /ˈn̠ʲɨlʲ əsˠ əɡəmˠ/
  • ní raibh a fhios agam (“I did not know”) /n̠ʲiː ˈɾˠoːsˠ əɡəmˠ/
  • dhá mbeadh a fhios agam (“if I had known”) /ə ˈmʲɞwəsˠ əɡəmˠ/

Inflection

References

  1. ^ Quiggin, E. C. (1906) A Dialect of Donegal, Cambridge University Press, § 485, page 154

Further reading

  • Dinneen, Patrick S. (1927) “fios”, in Foclóir Gaeḋilge agus Béarla, 2nd edition, Dublin: Irish Texts Society, page 459; reprinted with additions 1996, →ISBN
  • Ó Dónaill, Niall (1977) “fios”, in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, Dublin: An Gúm, →ISBN
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.