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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 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 53 07 May 2007 at 6:29pm | IP Logged |
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I continue my series about my language studies...
(first paragraph copied from this thread) Irish was the first language that I studied on my own (~1992). I got the Linguaphone course, studied for a while, then took a break, started again, then took another break et.c. A few years later I got books about Scots Gaelic and realised how much I "knew" already. Then I got addicted to Internet and joined Gaeilge-B, and read Teach Yourself Irish. And took a break for five-six years... Late December 2005/early January 2006 I thought I was very motivated and began following BBC's online course which was just what I needed to slowly recover what I once knew. Did I finish that one? Not a chance. Today it was time to dig out my old Linguaphone course. I think it may have been at least 12 years since I listened to the tapes, although I have flipped through the pages of the two books at the time I joined Gaeilge-B. First I listened to the sound of the language without paying any real attention to what was said. I understood (or rather, "remembered") almost everything from the introduction dialogues! Then I followed the text whilst listening to the tape, listened again and read the translation, and even had a go at shadowing. With my other languages in mind (the ones I should really focus on...), Irish is low priority, but I will try to maintain a semi-regular schedule. The chapters are a bit longer than Assimil (perhaps close to TY/Colloquial), and (from what I saw today, and still remember) have two parts where the first usually is a dialogue and the second a brief summary. I'll definitely consider converting the tapes to a more handy format, such as CD and/or mp3. Obvious goals: Not forgetting this course again... Finish it (by the end of this year, if not before) --- If I have time: Teach Yourself Irish. I have the book somewhere. --- Listening to songs in Irish. I should have quite a lot of that. --- Maybe having a look at some other material, e.g. Assimil (if they have an Irish course) This will serve as an introduction. I won't write each time I finish a new lesson... :) Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 10 October 2009 at 8:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 53 10 April 2013 at 12:06am | IP Logged |
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Wow, almost six years have gone! What have I done?
According to my spreadsheet, I did some impressive 45 minutes of shadowing in 2008 (how about that!). 2009 and 2010 passed without even thinking about the language. In 2011 it seems as if I listened to 8.5 hours (probably RnaG), and last year it seems as if I listened for another hour and also spent one hour on "analysis" (maybe I did a few lessons of TY Irish). Anyway, a couple of months ago I decided to join the TAC 2013, more precisely Team Lugus, but didn't do anything focused except flipping through TY Irish for some time. Until last week. *drum roll* I went to this Giota Beag site again. I thought I could at least listen to a few lessons while working on the computer. Believe it or not, but I was hooked after all these years. The lessons are ~10 minutes long, suitable for complete beginners. I've done one after another, three per evening. I've entered all the vocabulary and sentences into Anki, I've repeated every word and sentence aloud and done the occasional shadowing. There are 15 lessons of Giota Beag - I've only done each lesson once, so approximately 150 minutes (at most). It's somewhat shocking that I didn't even finish this extremely short series when I first found it over seven years ago. Now I'm eager to continue with Giota Beag Eile (for another five-six days), then have a serious look at TY Irish (again...) and then maybe my Linguaphone course. What else? Yes, I've thought about taking a week-long course at Oideas Gael this summer. Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 11 April 2013 at 10:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Khublei Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Yugoslavia homestayperu.net Joined 5345 days ago 90 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English*, Irish*, Spanish Studies: Russian, Khasi, French, Albanian | Message 3 of 53 13 April 2013 at 10:44pm | IP Logged |
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Best of luck. I can't help out much on resources, I never learned Irish per se. But I've heard good things about those
Oideal Gael courses. You've a very interesting history with Irish there! If you have any questions fire away. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 53 13 April 2013 at 11:54pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for stopping by!
The Giota Beag Eile lessons are longer and more intense than the first 15 lessons, but I'm still doing three a day, which means that I'll finish the course tomorrow. Of course, I won't have learned everything, but it has been an interesting experience rushing through all of it in less than two weeks. By the way, I sent an email to Oideas Gael earlier today and got a reply just an hour later. It looks promising. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4602 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 53 27 April 2013 at 11:50am | IP Logged |
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I've also heard great things about Oideas Gael, and Gleann Cholm Cille is breathtakingly
beautiful. Make sure to let us know how you get on! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 53 15 June 2013 at 11:34pm | IP Logged |
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I have barely opened Teach Yourself Irish, and my Linguaphone Cúrsa Gaeilge has collected even more dust. Besides the daily Anki reviews, I haven't done much except listening passively to RnaG and exchanging a couple of key phrases with a native speaker.
However, I'm still up for a week in Glencolumbkille by the end of June (or the week after). Is anybody else going? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 53 14 July 2013 at 1:44am | IP Logged |
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ALERT: long post
As I wrote in the Clan Lugus thread, I spent a week at Oideas Gael. After a long trip in order to get to Ireland in the first place, and then to Co. Donegal, I eventually reached GCC, and introduced myself to Liam Ó Cuinneagáin (one of the two directors) who drove me to my B&B. At the "Orientation lecture" at 9pm, I met a couple from Chicago, more or less fluent Irish speakers. It turned out that they were taking the Múineadh na Gaeilge course (Training Course for those Teaching Irish). I think we were just below 40 participants, including one girl from Argentina, another from Sweden, one from the Netherlands, another from the States, a handful of Germans, some from the UK (including Northern Ireland), quite a few from Ireland. After this some of us went to a pub (Roarty's) to play some music. There were going to be four levels this week, and everyone would choose a suitable level on Sunday afternoon (I chose level 2 - after all, I wasn’t totally new into the language). Then we had our first class 3–5pm. After the one hour it was suggested that I should change to level 3 instead, but I thought it would be better to solidify the basics. We did basic greetings, introductions, basic questions and answers in the present and past tense (An bhfuil …? Tá/Níl; An raibh …? Bhí/Ní raibh) time phrases (e.g. … seo caite, … seo chugainn etc.) and much more. There was a céili on Sunday evening, with our teacher and the guy from level 3 having us “dance” in rhythm. Bhí craic againn! A session at the Gleann Head followed. Monday - classes 10am–1pm, 3–5pm, with a long lunch break (I had a tasty vegetable soup at the Folk Village restaurant). Despite the low level of Irish in our group, our teacher spoke mostly Irish, with the occasional English word thrown in. Some of the stuff covered: the verb “to be”, verbal nouns, countries, some conjugated prepositions (liom/leat/etc.), describing your hometown … When I got home that day, I felt that I’d learned (or activated?) more than I had imagined and there were still four more days! The evening activity was singing. Two girls taught us four songs in Irish: Báidín Fheidhlimidh, Trasna na dTonnta, Beidh Aonach Amárach and Nóra Bheag. We all did our best. I went home for a short rest (and a cup of tea with two British ladies who stayed at the same B&B), and didn’t arrive to the session at Roarty’s until 11.30pm, but soon I found out that the ones I was playing with was the Byrne family. James Byrne, the famous Donegal fiddler, has passed away some years before, but here were his wife and two daughters playing away with this Swedish lad who knew a fair share of their repertoire. Tuesday - classes again. Topics covered: buildings (bank, library etc.), locations (right/left, up/down), family words, numbers (including persons), forming questions (Cé mhéad … ?), more phrases based on conjugated prepositions (dom/duit/dó/di), weather terms, a tongue-twister … During the afternoon tea break I had a chat (in Irish!) with a guy from Meath who apparently lived in Sweden. He mentioned that there was a course in Irish at the Uppsala University. Funnily enough, I already knew about it (I had applied for that one a few weeks before). One of the other teachers (from the Múineadh group, I think) read a few poems during the evening activity, went through line by line, including translations. At the end we listened to a recording from the early 1970s, probably a monolingual Irish speaker from the area. Great stuff! Another session at Roarty’s with a local couple. Some fantastic songs. Wednesday - more classes. Our group decided on doing a short “drama” (~5 minutes) for the finale on Friday evening. More on copula (tá vs bíonn), feelings (Tá X orm/ort/etc.), food (what you like and don’t like - Tá dúil agam i+eclipsis), progressive present tense (ithim, ólaim), describing pictures, drama … After the classes, I took a walk up the hill (not all the way up though) and took a some nice photographs. I found time to write some postcards (including one in Irish) when I came back to my B&B. At 8.30pm it was time for the weekly concert. For the mere amount of €8 we got an opening act with two local fiddlers/singers (plus a lad accompanying them on guitar) as well as the main act: Ciaran Ó Maonaigh (Donegal fiddler), Cáitlín Nic Gabhainn (concertina, dancing) and Caoimhín Ó Fearghail (guitar, uilleann pipes). This may very well have been the concert of the year. After that, some of us went to the pub again where the Byrne family played. Thursday - more on verbs, meals, pastimes, likes/dislikes, we finished writing all the parts of the skit and practiced a lot. Céili at 8.30pm. The teacher was a real pro. He was very enthusiastic and explained all the turns in Irish, and somehow we understood what he meant. Another session with the local couple. Friday - more on the copula, seasons of the years, occupation … Something we did a lot during the first half hour each day was reviewing what we had learned the day before, and as our vocabulary grew and the sense of grammar improved, our sentences got longer and longer. At times it felt like we had Michel Thomas teaching us Irish. I’ve never experienced anything like that! Although the tempo was sometimes annoyingly slow, I still think that I was in the right group. If I had studied Teach Yourself Irish in detail and really absorbed the content, I’m sure I could have been a level 3 student during the week. During the lunch break, I had a chat with my room mate, for the first time in Irish (it was his fourth and final week after a year of dedicated studies in Boston, so he had a leg up). After the class, I spent some time in the shop and got myself a copy of “An Hobad, nó Anonn agus Ar Ais Arís”. :D The finale was fun! Level 1 did basic introductions and a variant of our tongue-twister, we did our acting piece, level 3 did another, level 4 sang a handful of songs in Irish (among them Peigin Mo Chroi and An Poc ar Buile), and the múineadh group did a nice song - “Amhrán an Ghaeilgeora Mhóir” by Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin (video HERE, including lyrics and translation). Final session with the Byrnes, and the usual exchange of email addresses, cards etc. The week went by faster than I’d expected. Apart from learning and activating A LOT of Irish, I made some really good friends, and got plenty of opportunities to play music with the locals. On the way home I finished reading Teach Yourself Irish. For the past few days, I’ve been browsing web sites in Irish, viewing Youtube clips in Irish, reading about grammar … Today I finished typing all my notes for later reference (they’ll probably end up in Anki). It took four hours, more or less, (spread over a few days), but as I was typing, I was also reviewing the content, so it was definitely worth it. I plan to:
Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 29 November 2014 at 6:23pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4602 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 53 14 July 2013 at 11:39am | IP Logged |
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Very interesting to hear how you got on, the course seems to be well organised. I'm happy
to see that Irish seems to have gained a new lease of life, and I'm sure with some good quality work between now and October you'll be flying! On a side note, you play music?! Trad I assume? I play the box and fiddle myself :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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