Editing Openai/69186d20-2d14-8013-b9c6-c09000f173f6 (section)

=== Assistant: 2511141914ET ===
251114_1914ET

short answer:
* Yes, Irish still has a fully productive synthetic future.
* It still has a subjunctive, but it’s reduced to set phrases / stylistic uses.
'' The “''-ā- subjunctive/future” I mentioned is a reconstructed Italo-Celtic pattern visible behind some Latin and Old Irish forms; I’ll show very schematic examples, but details are debated.

==== Regular future is built with suffixes like -faidh / -fidh, -óidh / -eoidh (Class 1 vs 2, broad vs slender). ====

Examples:
* mol “praise” - molfaidh mé – I will praise - molfaidh tú – you (sg) will praise - molfaidh sé/sí – he/she will praise - molfaidh muid/sinn – we will praise
* inis “tell” - ínséod / inseoidh mé – I will tell (orthographic variation) - inseoidh tú – you will tell

Irregulars:
* beidh mé – I will be (from bí)
* rachaidh / rachaidh mé – I will go (from téigh)
* déanfaidh mé – I will do

So: future is absolutely productive and used all the time.

==== There is a distinct subjunctive mood, but outside grammar books it survives mostly in: ====
* Wishes / blessings / curses (especially with go): - Go maire tú an lá. – May you live to see the day. - Go n-éirí an bóthar leat. – May the road rise with you. - Go mbeannaí Dia duit. – May God bless you.
* Fixed politeness formulas: - Go raibh maith agat. – “Thank you.” (lit. “May there be good at you.”)

Morphology is messy, but for regular verbs the present subjunctive stem is often distinct from the indicative at least in 3sg:
* oscail “open” - Indicative: osclaíonn sé – he opens - Subjunctive in a wish: go n-osclaí Dia an doras – may God open the door
* bris “break” - Indic: briseann sé – he breaks - Subj: go mbrise sé – may he break

The subjunctive is not dead, but its productive use is limited; speakers often replace it with:
* future (especially after “má” for “if”), or
* conditional in hypothetical contexts.

For your purposes: treat it as a real but peripheral mood, mostly in formulaic/wishing domains.

==== This is technical and the details are argued over, but the core idea: ====
* PIE had a bunch of ways to mark subjunctive / future (different vowel grades, suffixes, etc.).
* In Italic + Celtic, you can reconstruct a pattern where a long ā-type vowel is used as a subjunctive/future marker on certain verb stems.
'' That ''-ā- element shows up as: - part of the Latin future/subjunctive system for some verbs, and - part of the Old Irish future/subjunctive system, especially the old “ā-future” and related forms.

Very schematic illustration (do not take these as exact forms, just the pattern):
'' PIE ''bher- “carry”
'' Proto-Italo-Celtic (schematic): - present: ''ber-e-ti “he carries” - subj/future: *ber-ā-t “may he carry / he will carry”

Reflexes:
* Latin (after Italic-specific reshaping): - present: fert “he carries” - aoristic/future–subj system with ā/ē vowels in some paradigms (e.g. feram “that I may carry”, not 1:1 but tracing back to that -ā- layer).
* Old Irish: for some verbs you see an opposition of present vs future where the future has an a-type theme vowel: - present: berid “he carries” - old future: beraid “he will carry” (older layer behind the modern system), with that -a- segment.

The Italo-Celtic claim is:

: 

Because:
* the morphology has been heavily remodeled independently in Latin and in Old Irish,
* and we have limited early Celtic data,

people now usually talk about individual reconstructed morphemes / patterns (like “an Italo-Celtic *-ā- subjunctive”) rather than a full Proto-Italo-Celtic paradigm.

If you want to dig further, the next useful step is: take one verb like ber- “carry” / fer- and walk its PIE → Proto-Italic → Latin and PIE → Proto-Celtic → Old Irish / Modern Irish paths side-by-side, watching where that a-theme shows up in subjunctive/future vs present.