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Jeff’s TAC 2015/Team Celts/Gaelic (Irish) log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 41 of 53 14 July 2014 at 7:44pm | IP Logged |
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Oops, time for an update.
Status report May Week 18 Grammar studies: 45 minutes (Basic Irish unit 19-23) Two hours of Old Irish exercises (lessons 29-31) Week 19 90 minutes of Old Irish exercises (lessons 32 and 33) Week 20 90 minutes of Old Irish exercises (lessons 34 and 35) Week 21 Two hours of Old Irish exercises (lessons 36-38) Week 22 90 minutes of Old Irish exercises (lessons 39 and 40) More will follow. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 42 of 53 15 July 2014 at 12:27am | IP Logged |
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Status report June
Week 23 Nothing! Week 24 Exam day for Old Irish - I spent the allocated two hours on finishing it. I wasn’t in a very good mood, since I had gotten basically no feedback at all on my assignments (10!) until the weekend before, but I nevertheless sat the exam and it went very well. On the Saturday, July 14th, I went to the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin and was pretty excited about the whole thing. It turned out that Irish was one of the minority languages at the Gathering, but I exchanged a couple of phrases with our own Benny Lewis, and one of the mornings I spoke to Simon “Omniglot” Ager (he wore an Oideas Gael shirt so that was a hint that he’d know Irish). Week 25 A bilingual hour (30 minutes Irish/30 minutes English) of An Hobad, pages 201-212. Week 26 Three more bilingual sessions, pages 213-224, 225-238 and 230-249. As you can see, it takes me about one hour to read ~10 pages of Irish aloud, and to have a glance at the English original at the same time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 43 of 53 23 October 2014 at 6:02pm | IP Logged |
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Better late than never - now it’s time for an update!
Week 27 Nothing! Week 28 Nothing! Week 29 14th of July - last bilingual session with An Hobad, pages 250-266. I can’t believe I finished a book in Irish. I did not pick up a lot of vocabulary (nor did I expect that, since my level of Irish is still too low - but I’m getting there!). With the recent discussions about TV methods in mind, my feeling is that previous knowledge of the language and the content (and possibly the writing system) will lead to better results. So, did I get anything out of this crazy reading experiment?
Could I have done anything better? Probably yes. I could have done more serious vocabulary work by using dictionaries (so I knew exactly what meant what, and why) and then use Anki to review the words and phrases. Next chapter: Summer in Ireland. Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 24 October 2014 at 2:11pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 44 of 53 24 October 2014 at 1:32pm | IP Logged |
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Comhghairdeas on finishing An Hobad, Jeff!
I also want to read it when I'm more advanced, but at the moment I'm busy with Teach Yourself and Learning Irish getting the basics down. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 45 of 53 24 October 2014 at 6:50pm | IP Logged |
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Great job, Jeff! It must have felt amazing to finish "An Hobad" in Irish, and I'm sure Tolkien, being a big fan himself of Celtic languages, is also smiling with approval somewhere in those Timeless Halls. Edited by Teango on 24 October 2014 at 6:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 46 of 53 13 December 2014 at 7:04pm | IP Logged |
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On the 16th of July I flew to Ireland for this year’s immersion. I spent the first three nights in Dublin, had the best chips ever (at Leo Burdock’s), and managed to squeeze in more museums/sights than I expected:
Trinity College (including Book of Kells and the long room), Douglas Hyde Gallery, Zoological Museum at TCD, Chester Beatty Library, National Gallery and Merrion Square, National History Museum, National Museum, National Library (a small James Joyce exhibition and a larger about William Butler Yeats), St Stephen's Green, Iveagh Gardens, Walton's music shop (where I tried some of their mandolins), a pop-in at Siopa Leabhar, the Famine Statues… At the museums, I constantly found myself reading the information texts in Irish first, and I also filled my shoulder bag with leaflets in every language available. I listened to a nice session at Hughes’ bar (behind the Four Courts) the second night, and played in one at the Cobblestone the third night. On the Saturday morning I took the bus to Donegal Town, had a nice lunch at the Blueberry (recommended by my landlord last year), bumped into a friend from last year’s class while waiting for the SITT bus (short for Seirbhís Iompair Tuaithe Teoranta) to Glencolmcille. Whether the driver remembered me from last year, or just had a good day, I don’t know, but he gave me a better price on the fare. While on the bus I chatted with a German woman who some hours later turned up in my class. When the bus drove into the glen it felt great to be back. A split-second after entering Oideas Gael, I met Liam Cunningham who immediately recognized me. Siobhan drove me to my B&B and we spoke Irish during the five-minute ride. They had finally managed to get me a single room including TV and radio, which meant that I also had access to Irish language media whenever I wanted. I took a walk around the village, went to down to the beach just to see the Atlantic ocean again, and headed back home to rest for a while. Almost home, I saw the Bus Éireann coach drive down into the village, possibly to drop off some language learners. Right I was. The first person I saw at the Orientation lecture at 9 pm was a friend from my home town! Shortly after, we bumped into Simon “Omniglot” Ager whom I had met in Berlin during the Polyglot Gathering earlier this summer. As his level of Irish was very high, he was taking harp classes instead. Other courses during the week was hill-walking and flute/whistle. After the short introduction some of us went to Roarty’s where there was a session. Sunday - at class allocation I chose level 3. The reasons were two:
My active skills were still not the best, but already during first coffee break it was suggested that I should move to level 4 - “Tá tú líofa!”. I chose not to. Our group was a nice mix of Americans, Germans, Irish and myself as the only Swede. The Sunday class was over in no-time. The evening céili was fun as usual, and afterwards I headed for Roarty’s where I was very happy to see Margaret and Derek again. To be continued. Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 13 December 2014 at 7:06pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 47 of 53 24 December 2014 at 1:24pm | IP Logged |
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Week 30
Monday - classes 10am–1pm, 3–5pm, with a long lunch break. Rumours had it that a celebrity was coming to town. Oh yes. A few minutes late, a guy named Joe joined our class. Later I found out that he was the Gaeltacht minister, Joe McHugh. He had got criticized in media the week before, and now felt pressured to improve his Irish. After classes, my landlords offered me a sight-seeing tour around the area. I took some really nice photos of Silver Strand, Malin Beg, Malin Mor and Slieve League. I had a veggie burger and then it was time for the singing event. The teacher from level 1 went through a handful of songs, among them Trásna na dTonnta and Téir Abhaile Riú. Two German women sang a song from their repertoire, and Simon sang his hit “Spollagyn son tey” (“Chips for tea” - in Manx!). As usual, I went to Roarty’s after, and on Mondays, that means a session with - the Byrnes! I had a lot of old and new tunes with the family. Tuesday - classes again. We did a lot of exercises on forming questions and answers in present tense and past tense: e.g. An imríonn tú X? Imrím/Ní imrím; An maith leat a bheith ag..? Is maith/Ní maith; listening comprehension (some dialogues with various accents). Two songs: Cad é sin don té sin? and Máili na gCuach Ní Chuilleannáin. Hobbies. Reading comprehension. Poetry was the evening activity. The teacher from level 2 read some poems for us, showed a clip of some poet and finally asked Sylvia Bledow to talk a little about her poetry. She had recently published the collection Finéid as an tSín - Seal i Yangshuo and finished the evening by reading a bilingual poem in Mandarin and Irish. A session with Margaret and Derek followed. Wednesday - a few seconds of fame! Since Joe was in our class, a local TV channel had chosen to do a spot. After that, we focused on prepositions, e.g. Tá meas agam air. Theip orm mo scrúdú. D’éirigh troid eadrainn. Adjectives, games, reading comprehension (from GGS2), another song (Brochan lom). I was looking forward to the evening concert. The opening act was a trio of young lads from Carrick (fiddle, whistle/accordion, banjo) and head act was Michelle O’Brien (fiddle) and Jesse Smith (fiddle, bouzouki) who played some really nice tunes. Then I had another session with the Byrnes. Scott, an American fellow, joined us with his flute, fiddle and high-level Irish. Thursday - more handouts with topics, exercises and games. A lot of the stuff we did throughout the week was conversations in couples or small groups. Everybody improved, little by little. Céili evening with the enthusastic Clement Gallagher. Last session with Margaret and Derek. The harp teacher had a go at Scott’s flute, a Bulgarian guy brought his set of bagpipes (loud!) and I took a break from my fiddle and played a tune or two on a mandolin. Friday - preparation for the final show, which was an acted version of the song Bean an Leanna. Level 4 did a hilarious school scene - their level of Irish was just superb. Two lads from the same group, Scott and Salvatore (from the lesser known Gaeltacht area in Rome, Italy;)), played a couple of tunes on flute and bodhrán. I finished my evening in Roarty’s and the session ended with Scott and me swapping instruments for a couple of minutes. Saturday - time to leave for Donegal town. I had coffee with my friend from Sweden, and then I took the four-hour bus to Dublin Airport where I also spent the night (due to a very early morning departure). I survived thanks to fast food, free wifi, reading material and crosswords/sudokus. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 48 of 53 24 December 2014 at 6:18pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, the Gaeltacht Minister himself! It's a shame he's not a fluent speaker in this position, but fair play to him, I'm glad he's keen to actively rekindle his Irish after 20 years. Actively relearning the language and taking classes should hopefully offer him a clearer perspective on what it's like for other Irish language learners around the country and how education and access to resources can be improved. I couldn't find any clips of him speaking much spontaneous Irish, but I did find this clip of him reading Irish aloud in parliament.
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