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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Talilugh Newbie United States Joined 4571 days ago 9 posts - 12 votes Studies: Irish | Message 1 of 5 29 May 2012 at 10:23pm | IP Logged |
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29 Bealtaine 2012
Dia dhaoibh Darn. So it turns out I won't have nearly as much time on my hands as I originally planned. With several distracting things going on at once, I'll be lucky to get in an hour a day studying any language, so I've decided to focus on Irish. That was my back-up plan anyways, if things got too unpredictable or if I found myself strapped for time I vowed I would set Welsh aside (not cast it away, just set it aside) for the time being and focus exclusively on Irish. In a way, I'm disappointed that life is conspiring against my desire to learn two Celtic languages at the same time, but in another way I feel sort of liberated that I won't have to divide my energies between two projects at once and that I can make more use of my ''down'' time. Also, I really really am falling deeper in love with the way spoken Irish sounds...aside from the Ulster dialect (and even that doesn't sound terrible, I just like the Connacht and Munster dialects better) an Ghaeilge seems to flow off the tongue and float around in the air for a while. It really makes me believe the old saying that ''broken Irish is better than good English''. Too bad more Irish people don't feel the same way. Oh well, Irish is still in better shape than Welsh or Gaelic. But back to the topic. So far today I've got about a solid hour in studying, and at work on breaks I was able to thumb through Teach Yourself Irish on my Android (using the Kindle app, very useful!). I'm also a big fan of Quizlet, it's a great program for flashcards, tests, etc. I'm still trying to figure out a good way to use it to study grammar...if anyone has any suggestions...Actually, does anyone have any good suggestions on how to study grammar in general, using any method? It's something I never learned how to do properly. Also, thanks to everyone who has tried to help me with the dilemma I ran into with the word de in Unit 8, I really appreciate the input. I figure that being a beginner it's good enough to do my best to understand whatever grammar points I can without killing myself...I'll save that for when I start Learning Irish, the grandaddy of all Irish textbooks. One of these days I'm going to go back over all of the grammar points from previous chapters one by one...maybe on my next day off. But for now I was excited today when, after about a month of study, I was able to put together sentences like Is liomsa an fón póca seo (''This cell phone is mine'') or Bhí muid ag snámh inné (''We were swimming yesterday'') with very little effort. I am still struggling with all the various rules of lenition but I figure that these will come with sufficient practice. It would, of course, help if I had someone to talk to, but I'm not holding my breath just yet. That's it for now, I'm going to try to get in some more study time tonight, but like I said, unfortunately life is unpredictable now. I'm bummed but at the same time you have to go with the flow. Ní hé lá na gaoithe lá na scolb. Oh! And I finally figured out that the newsanchor(s) on TG4 say Bail ó Dhia oraibh when signing on, and on RTÉ they say Dé bhur mbeatha, trivial I know but I've been trying to figure this out for weeks! Slán go fóill Talilugh Edited by Talilugh on 29 May 2012 at 10:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Talilugh Newbie United States Joined 4571 days ago 9 posts - 12 votes Studies: Irish | Message 2 of 5 30 May 2012 at 3:29am | IP Logged |
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29 Bealtaine 2012
I'm about to go to bed now, I have to get up early but I studied another hour of Irish before bed so that's a total of 2 hours today give or take. Not bad, seems like I'm averaging about 1:30 these days, more on days off. I took this time before bed to review Unit 7 of Teach Yourself Irish. Specifically, I'm reviewing the grammar section entitled Verbs in the Present Tense. Up until this Unit, I've been dealing mainly with the verbal noun. This corresponds in English to the progressive form of the verb. Tá mé ag dul I am going This is the only form of the verb I've come across and to be honest so far it's served me well, but now we come to an equally important form, the non-progressive: Téim I go The difference is strictly defined in both Irish and English. So naturally Unit 7 focuses mainly on occupation, i.e. what a person usually does and not what they are presently doing. Éirim ag leath i ndiaidh a sé... I get up at half past six... There are apparently two types of verbs in Irish. Type I does not have an í before the ending in the present tense. This includes all the verbs I have memorized so far, such as téann (goes), déanann(goes), fágann (leaves), etc. This last one is interesting because I have already learned it without realizing it - my Windows computer is set to display in Irish, and whenever you try to navigate away from a page it asks you if you want to Fág an Leathanach. So the full conjugation of the first type of verb is: téan (goes) téim I go téann tú you go téann sé he/it goes téann sí she goes téann muid we go or téimid (literary form and form still used in the Munster dialect. I prefer this form of the verb even though I am studying the Connacht dialect) téann sibh you (pl.) go téann siad they go Tomorrow I'll work on the conjugation of the Type 2 verb. Slán go fóill 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5064 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 3 of 5 30 May 2012 at 7:03am | IP Logged |
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I learnt in Munster they used míd, not mid.
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| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4630 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 4 of 5 30 May 2012 at 10:20am | IP Logged |
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I had the impression that Welsh is in better shape than Irish, strangely enough.
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| Talilugh Newbie United States Joined 4571 days ago 9 posts - 12 votes Studies: Irish | Message 5 of 5 30 May 2012 at 11:25am | IP Logged |
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Weird...my textbook says -imid is the ending for we in the Munster dialect, with no fada over the last i. Maybe they use both forms, I don't know and to be honest, since I'm going to wind up learning Connacht (more speakers), I don't care enough to research it further. I do like the Munster form though, just not the sound of the dialect.
As far as being in better shape than Welsh, none of the Celtic languages are in particularly good shape. Welsh does have official status in Wales, but since Wales is not a separate country, this doesn't really mean much. Irish is not only the first ''official'' language the Republic of Ireland (although the government doesn't really take this too seriously), it's an official language of the EU which means it can be spoken in the EU parliament (and it has, just not very often.) Again, none of these languages is in particularly good shape, which is sad,although there was an reported increase to 1.3 million speakers of Irish (compared with 480,000 speakers of Welsh). These numbers are not going to impress a learner of Chinese or Spanish, but then again I'm learning Irish because I want to, not because I need to! Speaking of which, I'd better get cracking! Slán 1 person has voted this message useful |
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