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Tangweeds Irish (& French) TAC 2015 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tangleweeds Groupie United States Joined 3574 days ago 70 posts - 105 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Irish, French | Message 1 of 40 14 February 2015 at 1:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Since I'm a total newbie to the forum, maybe I should include a little background to create
context for my Irish study. I've studied languages in a variety of school contexts: (USA) grade school through high school study, a summer immersion program, and standard US college courses. I reached the equivalent of about 2 years university study in French, Latin, and Japanese... and forgot them all because that was so very long ago (I'm now in my mid-50's). In the past several years, I've tried to re-learn Japanese, and to learn Russian, both outside of a classroom environment, but unfortunately both times I lost momentum within a few months. Looking back there may have been too steep a learning curve with unfamiliar writing systems, and no structured classroom to prod me through. (My Japanese study program had been conversation focused, to the point of functional illiteratacy). I've been successful with recreational self-study of mathematics, computer languages, and learning to play a few musical instruments, so I know I *can* learn things on my own. But I may need more structure and accountability to maintain steady progress, which is why I was so happy to find this subforum. I have family and cultural connections to Ireland, but I was frightened of learning the language because the writing behaved by no phonetic rules I could figure out. My Irish study began because Duolingo Irish just come out of beta, I got intrigued, and it was fun and addictive... but it lacked enough grammar to keep me happy, as I had studied linguistics and loved syntax. So on a late-night whim I bought a couple of book/CD sets suggested by Amazon, and got a step more serious about the whole thing. Not that I'm being an intellectual heavyweight here. I'm continuing to enjoy Duolingo Irish, but also working from Teach Yourself: Complete Irish by Diarmuid Ó Sé, and Living Language Spoken World: Irish. For now I'm learning standard Caighdeán Irish, which is fine with me because I'm still just getting acquainted with the general layout of the language. Recognizing the similarities/differences between similar languages or dialects has always helped me remember both, so transitioning to a more authentic dialect shouldn't be too scary. I have Ó Siadhail's Learning Irish, but it's too heavy going for someone as out of practice with language study as I currently am. As soon the budget recovers, I plan to get a copy of Colloquial Irish as an introduction to the Cois Fhairrge dialect, to ease the transition into working from Learning Irish as well. But for now I'm solidifying the dialogue from Chapter One of Ó Sé, and getting acquainted with the audio from Lesson One of Spoken World. My intuition is to begin by learning to speak (and of course understand) the Irish sentences provided for me, then move on to the chapter's (loose change) vocabulary, stuff that doesn't get used in recorded sentences. Those ones can be substitute in once I'm comfortable with the basic sentence format. My experience has been that vocabulary words learned in isolation don't stick as well long term. I need to practice by using them. Oh, I'm also doing listening practice from both books' pronunciation sections, listening and re-listening to the words demonstrating broad and slender consonants. I'm only hear the distinction about half of the time, and when I try to say them they come out amusingly awry. But do feel like I'm making progress. Edited by tangleweeds on 01 April 2015 at 5:27am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tangleweeds Groupie United States Joined 3574 days ago 70 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Irish, French | Message 2 of 40 16 February 2015 at 7:04am | IP Logged | ||
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One of the thing I want to keep track of is the amount of time I spend doing peripheral
software preparation to actual study, such as chopping up audio files in Audacity, and entering new cards into Anki. It necessarily takes time to get up to speed with the tools for a new task, but experience has taught me to stay aware of how large a time and energy leak this puttering around with software can become. I'm really liking the latest incarnation of Anki, though. Both the user interface and documentation have been refined to make it much more transparent to use. But however improved, it's still different from the last time I used it, and I've been spending time referring to the documentation and learning the new procedures. Audacity is less familiar to me, but I've used similar software (but much more candy coated) on my Mac for speed shifting and transcribing music. Now I'm on a Linux/Ubuntu/Unity laptop, and Audacity is the tool at hand. It certainly has the capacity to do everything I need it to, but again I've been spending a lot of time between the documentation and testing out new (to me) features. I have found a method that seems effective for simultaneously studying, segmenting, and transcribing my audio file chunks. I'm going to describe what I'm doing, both so I remember it myself, and so maybe someday another newbie/re-beginner might find it useful too. I stretch out the file display in Audacity (this skill accounted for one dive into the documentation) so that I can pretty much see the individual words in the wave form. This makes it easy to select a sentence or phrase, via the time scale and the start/end fields. First I set my chosen segment looping (shift + spacebar => another trip into the documentation), then I alternate listening and talking along with it. Next I practice reading it in the book as I listen and speak it, and pretend that that crazy Irish spelling makes total sense in my mind, and I completely understand what it's saying. Usually I can just about convince myself this is true, and after that it's pretty easy to transcribe the phrase. I type the phrase into the audio segment's label, which becomes its filename when the original file's segments are all exported into individual files, for Anki and other purposes. This actually works pretty well to drive the sentence or phrase pretty deep into my head, so I feel less like I'm wasting time than when I'm just mindlessly chugging along chopping files into pieces. The downsides are that there's no way I can do this when my roommate is home (it's a very small house)... and if I let the phrase loop a bit too long, I myself want to bolt out of the room clutching my head and screaming. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tangleweeds Groupie United States Joined 3574 days ago 70 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Irish, French | Message 3 of 40 18 February 2015 at 10:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Tonight's accomplishment was finding a television program I truly enjoyed in the archives
of TG4, the Irish language TV channel. It's called "Muintir na Mara" which seems to roughly translates as People/Community of the Sea, though I'm not sure quite how "na" is funcitoning in that context. There's a guy with a little rowing boat (currach?) on top of his minivan, and he drives, rows, and bikes around and talks to people about interesting stuff, especially as relates to the sea. From what I can tell he's headed west and north up the shore of Connacht from Galway, and it's a landscape that I love. The reason this is such a massive accomplishment that TV rarely holds my interest. I honestly think I suffer from some kind of audiovisual dyslexia, because film/TV/video media are exhausting for me to watch, and I rarely come out much wiser than I went in. But I enjoyed this show, enough to two whole episodes (maybe about 50 minutes total). Yesterday and the day before I was studying a lot of grammar, skimming ahead into the next couple of chapters, pursuing further insight the behavior of "agam" and "duit". I found enough to content me for the moment, plus several sets of pronouns to explore. I've been continuing to enjoy doing my Anki cards too, but it's time to get to work on constructing more. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4603 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 40 18 February 2015 at 11:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi tangleweeds, Muintir na Mara is indeed a great program, a genuine look at the
lives of the people on the west coast. The "na" in the title is the definite article in the genitive case for feminine nouns. The nominative case of the word sea is "muir". Proceeded by the definite article it's "an mhuir". See that h? That indicates that it's a feminine noun! Common feminine nouns: an bhean - the woman an bhó - the cow an mhéar - the finger an ghruaig- the hair The genitive case marks possession, like English "of" or 's. Think of the title of the program as "The People of the Sea". In this case, an changes to na and muir changes to mara (quite irregular). The above nouns would undergo the following changes in the genitive: ainm na mná - the woman's name (again, one of a handful of irregular changes) bainne na bó - the cow's milk ionga na méire- the nail of the finger dath na gruaige- the colour of the hair. Tá súil agam go gcuideoidh an méid sin leat! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tangleweeds Groupie United States Joined 3574 days ago 70 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Irish, French | Message 5 of 40 21 February 2015 at 2:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Go raibh maith agat, liammcg! That was very helpful.
Today's accomplishment was setting up time logging software on my phone, so this log can have weekly time totals. So far my categories are (suggestions welcome!)
As I said above, suggestions or amendments welcome. ETA: I have more free time, so I'll add another thought here, rather than re-bump my thread with a second post for the day. I have been rethinking my choice for my next book, and may opt for Gaeilge gan Stró instead of Colloquial Irish. I'm still waffling about which dialect to focus on, and I've read that Gaeilge gan Stró opts for a variety, rather than focusing more a single one, like Colloquial Irish. I've also read that Gaeilge gan Stró is somewhat lighter on grammar, but there's a grammar book by the same author, which might balance that out for me, as grammar is my friend. Feel free to attempt to sway my decision! Edited by tangleweeds on 21 February 2015 at 5:09am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tangleweeds Groupie United States Joined 3574 days ago 70 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Irish, French | Message 6 of 40 25 February 2015 at 9:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Well I've had my first slump, caused by a worsening of a very occasional but recurrent
inner ear problem which had come back more than a week ago. Over the past weekend I had an ill-considered adventure that made it worse, and ended up with what was possibly a weird migraine variant, one that centers around the inner ear. Not conducive to concentration. I wasn't completely useless, as I studied my Anki cards, but didn't do much more for a couple of days. Feeling somewhat better today, I opened a thread on the Irish Language (& Learners') Forum http://irishlearner.awyr.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=353 0 because one of the speakers on my Spoken World Irish CDs sounded more like a native English speaker to me, and the native speakers at that forum seem motivated to support or critique learning materials based on how whether they hear fellow native speakers in the demo recordings. I asked for advice on which alternative book/CDs-format beginner tutorial I should choose for purely native speaker recordings. I had been wavering between Colloquial Irish and Gailge gan Stró, since the latter uses speakers from different regions, and it seemed reasonable to actually hear the different dialects a bit before choosing which to focus on. ETA: I also discovered the readlang plugin (free version), and a teachers' / kids' material website to use it on: http://www.resources.teachnet.ie/clane/2008/index.html The naíonáin material is just my speed. Edited by tangleweeds on 25 February 2015 at 9:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tangleweeds Groupie United States Joined 3574 days ago 70 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Irish, French | Message 7 of 40 08 March 2015 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Posts rescued from the lost week:
Well it seems like the forum has continued to limp along, sans front page. I had been feeling pretty demoralized by its apparent demise, happening in the middle of my first slump. But on the bright side, this slump was not a standstill, as I did steadily ongoing (though not daily) Anki study, harvested & studied new vocab via readlang, and read up on a number of lingering grammatical questions. Things I need to work on: my fear of lentition and eclipsis, and more thorough study of pronunciation rules. I think I will need to work on spelling, pronunciation and mutation rules in a particularly methodical manner, as I'm bad at that kind of thing even in English. I've always been a natural "whole word" reader, so I need to apply extra/different attention to even see the details of spelling. In other news, I decided to order Gaeilge gan Stró (beginner level) on the basis of positive feedback over on the Irish language and learners' forum (URL for that thread in post above). I also got the latest edition of the Irish grammar book from Teach Yourself, for logical reasons 1) I'm already studying from Teach Yourself's Irish book, so one might hope the two books overlap (and agree) in content, and because 2) it's by the same author as Gaeilge gan Stró (which I've read is not grammar heavy) and one might hope that two books by the same guy agree on the relevant content for the beginner to Irish. But all logical reasons aside, it's been fun reading up on the grammar I've seen in action so far, and getting a peek at what's to come. I've always loved grammar, syntax, patterns of usage... There's more I want to say but I've got to stop for now. I'll probably edit and add to this post later when I find more time.
Thanks jbadg76421! I caught your intro in the Team Celts thread, and was very happy to see another Irish beginner on board. I've been continuing to explore the first few chapters of Learning Irish, and it continues to look intriguing... but very dense, in the old fashioned textbook style that brings back memories of my prep school Latin textbooks, back in the days when I learned programming via teletype and punched paper tape. Old fashioned isn't bad; I want to be working from Learning Irish too in the relatively near future. But I'm still needing gentler re-introduction to language study. I've found the Living Language Spoken World Irish course to be very well calibrated to someone like me, who successfully studied languages in the past, but not recently. But on the down side, some native speakers on the Irish Language/Learners' Forum did express concerns about whether the man sounded entirely native. On the up side, the woman sounded good to everyone who spoke about her. One problem everyone seemed to agree on though, was that it's hard to sound natural and normal when speaking so very slowly and clearly. I myself prefer to have faster, more natural speech in my example recording, but a big factor in that is that I'm comfortable using software to slow down recordings. This iffy news fuelled my slump a bit, as I really like this method. It comes with *lots* of spoken material, 3 CDs for use with the book, and 3 CDs appropriate for use in the car, exercising, etc. And all the example sentences from the book are on the CDs for use with the book. Teach Yourself: Complete Irish has been a decent fit for my situation as well, but perhaps optimized for someone a bit more in-practice with language study than I am. I also discovered, via comparing library copies and the one I recently got, this course has been repackaged by Teach Yourself under several different titles over quite a few years now. Judging from the sample chapter I downloaded from the publisher's page, Gaeilge gan Stró looks more like modern textbooks, and I worry I'll find the flashy modern layout distracting enough to annoy. But maybe better graphics will help me find and remember what I need more easily, as they're meant to do. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tangleweeds Groupie United States Joined 3574 days ago 70 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Irish, French | Message 8 of 40 19 March 2015 at 8:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Influenza!! I had this year's flu shot, but I read later that they predicted the wrong
strains of flu virus for this year's vaccine. I had the classic temperature, body aches, and nasty cough for a week, then a nice relapse after overestimating my recovery. Meanwhile my residual vertigo problem created a horrible synergy with the fever and coughing, so extremely strange things happened to my sense of spatial orientation whenever a coughing fit made me sit up abruptly during the night. "Ground control to Major Tom..." Audio editing and transcription of a phonetically confusing language were not within my mental capabilities while under the influence of influenza, but I am fortunate that I enjoy doing Anki, so when I had a working voice, I kept up with that to some degree. I am running out of fresh cards though, so it's time to get back to Audacity. Gaeilge gan Stró arrived about 12 days after I ordered it from Gaelchultúr via Amazon.com. It is certainly very colorful and graphically busy in the modern textbook way; a friend who taught English as a second language in Spanish confirmed its similarity to textbooks he'd used. The pages are very full, with no empty space for notes. This might prove interesting for me, as I am a horrible defacer of textbooks. I use several colors of highlighter, write marginal notes and summaries, and add colorful post-its as index tabs. I remember better when I can visualize where on the page I read something, so it helps to make each page as unique and interactive as possible. But in this book they've already done all of that for me. I also ordered Buntús Cainte part one from the Book Depository, which arrived about 10 days after ordering. That looks pretty amusing, actually, and appears to have lots of everyday vocabulary that I could use to talk to myself in Irish. That has always been the tipping point for me with learning a new language, when I can leverage the mindless chatterbox in my head to subvocalize all kinds of trivial observations my TL, like "Look, three blue cars," "That cat is fat," "It's raining again," or "Where am I?" I've been augmenting Buntús Cainte with grammar gleaned from Learning Irish. But I haven't been doing anything to sort out the audio and connect it to the text in any systematic way that helps me study. That's what I want to do next, I think. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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