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Team Celts, TAC 2014 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5555 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 69 13 December 2013 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Céad míle fáilte (Ir: "a hundred thousand welcomes") to our TAC 2014 thread for Team Celts! Are you sitting comfortably around the fire, a flicker of eager faces, some new, some known, waiting in the enveloping darkness of December? Perhaps you already have stories too tall to tell, or rather seek the company of a wee dram and a good tale to keep out the cold...well, then I'll begin. In 2013, 15 members of the Forum gathered together to form the first ever Celtic team in the TAC challenge: Clan Lugus. Our idea was to raise awareness of Celtic languages and culture, support each other in our studies, and share experiences and knowledge to help everyone move several steps closer to completing our goals. Altogether we studied a variety of languages (e.g., Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton) across levels ranging from complete beginner to advanced fluency, and collected some great tips and links to resources by native speakers, as well as from fellow members, passing guardian angels, and other blithe spirits and welcome visitors to our team blog. 
Some members finished off whole courses or otherwise made real strides forward and levelled up significantly, driving the team forward and giving us all hope on darker days. Others visited or immersed in native-speaking areas like the Gaeltacht in Ireland and allowed us to share vicariously in their vibrant experiences on their return. The most important thing, however, is that the journey was a good craic (Ir: "good fun", "a good time), and I think we did a seaworthy job of maintaining a strong sense of identity and team spirit throughout the challenge. Now we're fast approaching the start of 2014 and several members have already shown renewed interest to follow in these fledgling footsteps. It would be great to have a continued presence in the TAC after all the good groundwork we put in last year, and I'd like to call out to anyone who might be interested in studying a Celtic language next year to think about joining our little clan once again. All you need to do is post a comment on the TAC 2014 sign-up thread to say you'd like to join Team Celts, and just post a little introduction here to say "hi" to everyone and share something about your background and goals. I also have a few ideas to get us all started, change things up a bit, and hopefully make next year all the more interesting: - A shared online document of resources for Celtic languages that is quick and easier to access/edit (e.g., Google Doc, Wikipedia page, external language blog). - A short profile of one of the six Celtic nations every two months (i.e., Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, Breton, Cornwall), or perhaps even just an interesting aspect of the highlighted country's people and culture, and of course a cool picture to go with it. - Quarterly challenges (another little thought: perhaps these could coincide with the Six Week Challenges on the Forum). - More regular team updates (e.g., monthly summaries, like little sections in traditional newsletters). - Group collaboration on other useful projects (e.g., building dialogue islands, aligning texts, translations). - Meetups on Google Hangout for the brave at heart! Please feel free to add any suggestions, or comment and expand on any of the initial ideas above; the more the merrier. And most importantly, whatever path you choose to tread or mountain you're determined to conquer, go n-éirí an bóthar leat (Ir: roughly "may you succeed in your journey", "good luck")! 
Our team members are: Indíritheach (studying Irish) jeff_lindqvist (studying Irish) Lassus, previously known as Josquin (studying Irish) liammcg (studying Irish) Sabrina VG (studying Welsh) sctroyenne (studying Irish) Teango (studying Irish) vermillon (studying Breton) Edited by Teango on 16 May 2014 at 8:38pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 69 13 December 2013 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Won't be on the team next year, but for a way to end 2013 - please see my log, as I will
be interviewed on my learning of Breton this weekend (if all goes right). A hearty cheers to all my former teammates. Trugarez dit! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 69 13 December 2013 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great ideas, all of them! Some of our weekly assignments are more or less short monologues on certain topics, so I'll post them in my log along the road.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4603 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 69 13 December 2013 at 11:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Excellent introduction as always, Teango. Thanks for taking the time to lay the
foundations of what I'm sure will be another productive year of the TAC for Celtic us enthusiasts! You have some good ideas there and I'm looking forward to hearing more about them come the New Year. Just a brief introduction: My name is Liam, I'm 21 and come from the west of Ireland. I was raised in a monolingual home though my mother is a native speaker of Irish! I started learning Irish 'properly' when I was 16 having sat through classes the previous ten years without gaining any competence. Though I'm now very competent, I'm ALWAYS looking to improve. Last year I took up Scottish Gaelic for our TAC team and enjoyed the experience immensely. I've left Gaelic to the side for a while so that I can concentrate on other languages, namely French and German (and Irish I suppose!) but I will be dabbling with it throughout the year. I'm also likely to mess around with Welsh etc. Finally, I'd like to encourage all forum members studying a Celtic language to take part in our team, particularly those new to TAC. I can assure you that it is an excellent way of making contact with like-minded individuals and a useful source of motivation when one is feeling frustrated with any aspect of study. Sláinte! Edited by liammcg on 14 December 2013 at 12:08am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4843 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 5 of 69 13 December 2013 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great intro as usual, Teango! :)
I'm looking forward to being on the Celtic Team again, especially if those ideas of yours become reality. I can't wait to work actively on my Irish again. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4827 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 6 of 69 14 December 2013 at 12:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm personally uncomfortable around the concept of challenges and teams (perhaps a
reaction to the trauma of having gone to British schools....), and generally prefer to plough my own furrow. But I'm happy to encourage the study of Celtic languages, and will look upon Team Celts, from a slight distance, perhaps from the adjoining bar parlour, with affectionate interest, drinking to all of your health on a regular basis... :-) On the subject of Google+ hangouts, I'd certainly encourage them. Some of us from the SSiW crowd have been meeting on a fairly regular basis that way, and although there are technical problems sometimes, and G+H can be as annoying as it can be surprisingly good sometimes, it's worth the effort. One tip, probably fairly obvious, is to use headphones/earphones rather than speakers. I tried with in-ear sports earbuds (borrowed from my MP3 player, and that seemed to be a better aural experience than with headphones even (I suspected a slight sound "leakage" from the phones....not 100% sure about that. I also suspect that a microphone that is fairly close, but not too close, to your face/mouth works a bit better than one further away. Another tip is to make sure you have the latest Google Talk Plugin. One slightly annoying thing is that there seem to be no way of checking the sound setup in advance, on G+, in the way that you can do a test call on Skype. Another thing is that G+ takes control of the volume setting for your microphone. There is a way around that, but it means a registry edit. Pob lwc a hwyl fawr. 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 5555 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 7 of 69 14 December 2013 at 4:36am | IP Logged | ||
Guys, I just have to repost this from the "The role and usefulness of Irish" thread:
It's like Christmas has come early! (here's a direct link to some of TG Lurgan's music videos in Irish, many of which have accompanying lyrics, and that's just scratching the surface: here are a couple of further links to the school behind this and their inspiring projects). Edited by Teango on 14 December 2013 at 4:58am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5390 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 8 of 69 14 December 2013 at 9:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for the lovely introduction! I'm very excited to be joining you all this year
as my goal of finally learning Irish is actually happening! I made several false starts with the language because I found it intimidating at first and got sidetracked with other language projects but I finally decided to get serious around October once I had discovered Gaeilge gan Stró. Since then I've been working through that and Learning Irish now that it's not nearly as intimidating for me. I attended an immersion weekend with Language Hunters in Portland which gave me a lot to think about in my approach to language learning. I'm looking to attend their summer 5-day session if they have it again (and if the logistics work out that would allow me to go). It's quite an up and down struggle, learning Irish, but I just need to turn on some Aifric to feel optimistic again. I love the idea of having mini challenges and group activities. I find the team spirit is really important when learning a language such as this. The speech community is so small compared to other languages that you really just have to go out and create your own if you want to get practice. Also, it's not easy and having support can be vital to keeping spirits up. I joined a local study group through Meetup and it's so great seeing everyone pooling their resources and expertise to help each other in our crazy endeavor. I look forward to learning with all of you! 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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