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Irish Gaelic - Donegal dialect | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| zorbo Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6031 days ago 7 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, FrenchC2 Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 9 of 9 22 June 2009 at 10:32pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you, Prof. Argüelles and everyone for your generous feedback. I'm sorry it took me so long to respond to you all.
"I think it is very much a question, not so much of perspective, but of having your microscope turned to the maximum magnification, as it were, and that it is also quite possible to turn it down a bit and to treat “Gaelic” as a whole diachronic entity beginning with Old Irish and including all of the Irish AND Scottish dialects and even shading into Manx, which does indeed seem to be a bit more truly different." I think that this is a wonderful observation and would that I could heed it! Actually, with one semester of Irish under my best (with a Donegal native speaker using the O'Siadhail method), I do have a slightly more nuanced take on these matters. I still want to focus on the Donegal dialect using the texts that I have been able to find. I have been mostly relying on "Tús Maith" which is a method of studying Irish Gaelic that takes its inspiration mostly from Ulster Irish. However, it is more true (and I have found this to be the case with "Now You're Talking" as well) that these methods can perhaps be more accurately described as teaching a mix of Ulster and Standard Irish. This, of course, is a language that only learners speak. To remedy this situation, I have been in contact with a very helpful person, Lughaidh (who is studying for his PhD in Celtic Linguistics), who actually sponsors a free Yahoo! group dedicated to helping learners study Ulster Irish. In this group, some of those who have gone before me have submitted parts of these methods and the moderator updates the Standard forms so that they are more in line with the Irish Gaelic spoken in Donegal. He has been very generous in responding to my many questions. Here is the name of the group: http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/ulsteririshstudy/ On another website, Lughaidh provides recorded examples of the traditional (and wonderfully complex) sounds of Irish Gaelic, the majority of which are common to all the Irish dialects. See phouka.com (Sounds of Irish). Many learners of Irish don't realize how important it is to learn these sounds, especially the distinctions between the distinctions between broad and slender sounds. I have also learned that the Irish language traditionally has 4 different r sounds (two broad and two slender), none of them being like anything like the rhotic "r" used that in most of the United States/Canada, some dialects of British English, and most of Ireland today. One of the books in my arsenal is a compilation of stories recorded ca. 1957 by a Conemara native, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, who went to several areas in Donegal and made recordings of traditional stories, before the advent of the television and the radio in many of the these areas. The book, which is called "Ó Cadhain i dTír Chonaill" comes with a CD which unfortunately doesn't contain all the stories, but many more stories are recorded as podcasts here, and one story seems to be added monthly: http://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_ocadhain.xml From Oideas Gael (thank you very much Stephen from Australia), I have gotten "Taisce Focal" which are modern stories for the more advanced reader entirely in the Donegal dialect and these stories are read by native speakers with the traditional native pronunciation. Both the lay-out of book and the reading style are very tasteful and engaging. Also, there is a book on the life of one of Ireland's finest speakers of the language, John Ghráinne Ó Duibheannaigh (from Rannafast, Co. Donegal) who in "An áit a n-ólann an t-uan an bainne" recounts the story of his life in his dialect. I believe that what he said was recorded and then transcribed into the book. Finally, I have managed to acquire an old grammar book (ca. 1940s/50s) that lays out the grammar of Donegal Irish in pre-Standardized Irish. I had to scour the Internet for this one and, after a few months, I was in luck. It's a real gem: it's written in English but when it uses Gaelic, it uses the old Irish letters which takes a bit of getting used to, for me, it's primarily telling the difference between the "r" and the "s". "where you can apologize for any other dialectal traits you may have picked up (as well as for having been given a Welsh name!)" I had to laugh at this. Apparently, "Owen" with that spelling is common around those areas, but my teacher who is from that area says that it should be written "Eoghan" in Irish, ("Eoin" being another word for "John") Thank you all so much for your help and feedback! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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