#learning gaeilge

[crimeronan]

since a ton of people are getting into music as gaeilge because of hozier, can i recommend my fave artist, róisín seoighe? she's a native irish speaker and language ambassador whose lyrics often involve the preservation of irish culture and deep rage against colonization. níl mé marbh ("i'm not dead") makes me cry like a baby and sin do lamh ("reach out") makes me want to burn all of colonialism down. she's also done several collabs with imlé, another EXCELLENT irish language band that does modern-feeling rock and dance music! my fave of their collabs right now is ÉAD ("jealous").

both artists have less than 1,700 monthly listeners on spotify simply because they sing in irish & they deserve more bc their music Really Is Excellent. translations of many songs are google-able & when there Aren't english translations, it's really good practice for people learning irish!

#music #hozier #irish #gaeilge #kitkat learns gaeilge #having been listening to music as gaeilge for two straight years. my time has come

[an-spideog]

Don't Use Duolingo if You Really Want to Learn Irish

That title is a bit dramatic, but I really don't think that duolingo is a useful tool for Irish, especially in its current state, so I want to talk a bit about why, and I'll also talk about some alternatives.

Pronunciation

The first and most egregious issue is that at some point recently-ish, duo decided to start using Text-To-Speech for their Irish course, rather than recordings of a native speaker. The problem here is that their TTS is not trained on native speakers of Irish and pronounces words incorrectly. It doesn't make consistent distinctions between broad and slender consonants for example.

Irish has no standard pronunciation, so I understand how it can feel weird to choose just one dialect for the purposes of pronunciation (the old recordings were from a speaker of Galway Irish), but having just one dialect is much better than TTS which sounds like a learner, imagine if they had TTS for the French course which sounded like an anglophone schoolkid trying to pronounce french, and claimed they were teaching you how to speak french!

Grammar

Duo tends to be correct on grammar at least, which is a start. But often people using it get very confused about the grammar because duo doesn't explain any of it. I think there's a place for immersion in language learning, and I don't think everything has to be explained like that, but within duo's system of sentence testing and exercises like that, not having any explanation for why it's "mo chóta" and not "mo cóta" can be really confusing. Duo used to have more grammar information, it's a shame that they removed it, I wonder why they did it.

Money and Motivation

Duolingo is a business, and their motivation is not to help you learn a language 'fully', but to keep you using their app and hopefully have a higher chance of sharing it with others, competing with others, buying or causing others to buy memberships or lingots or any other in-app purchases.

I don't want to make it out like duo is some big conspiracy and they're tricking people, I don't think that's the case, but it's good to remember that their primary motivation is to keep people using the app, rather than help people move to a level in a language where they don't need the app anymore.

Keep this in mind whenever you see people trying to sell you stuff for language learning.

Why do people use Duolingo

I do get it, and I don't want to make anyone feel bad for using duo, there's a ton of reasons people tend towards it at first 1. It's really well known, so especially if you're learning a language and haven't heard of other resources for it, you'll check duolingo 2. It's very motivating for a lot of people, checking in every day and forming that habit is a really good way of sticking with a language 3. It's fun, people enjoy it

If you use it for reason 3. and you still like it, then don't worry about this post, I'm not trying to yuck anyone's yums, keep having fun!

If you use it for reasons 1. or 2. you can still keep using it if you like, but I want to suggest some other things which you might find helpful in trying to get to a higher level in Irish.

Other Resources

To address the pronunciation issue, I'd heavily recommend you disregard the pronunciation in duolingo, if you're looking for more reliable sources of pronunciation, I'd look towards recordings of native speakers, you can find that on:

Teanglann and Foclóir (they use the same recordings)

Fuaimeanna

and a really useful and underused one: https://davissandefur.github.io/minimal-pairs/ where you can hear the difference between similar sounds that English speakers often mix up in Irish.

A lot of people like duolingo because it's nice to have a clear path forward, a progression that you can get into without too much decision-making. For this I recommend getting a good textbook or course and working through it, the ones I'll recommend also have native speaker audio on them.

Learning Irish by Mícheál Ó Siadhail, this book teaches Galway Irish, not just in pronunciation but in grammar too. It's quite dense but it's well thought out and well explained.

Teach Yourself Irish (1961) this book is available for free online, and is a really good option if you're interested in Cork Irish (Munster), and have some experience with grammatical terminology. I used this book myself and really liked it, but it's very intense and not for everyone. (If you do end up using it, feel free to skip the appendices at the start, they're more of a reference and sometimes put people off from actually getting to the first chapter. Also if you have any questions about it or need any help just let me know.)

If you want a video course, there's a great course called "Now You're Talking" which is available for free online, along with audio files and worksheets here. It features Donegal Irish and leads into the more intermediate level course called Céim ar Aghaidh also available online.

There's other textbooks that I have less experience with (Buntús na Gaeilge, Gaeilge/Gramadach Gan Stró, etc.) but if they work for you, stick with them, there's nothing worse than not making progress because you keep switching resources trying to find the "perfect one"

Whether or not you continue to use Duolingo, I would really really encourage you to try engaging with media in Irish. People often shy away from this when they're learning because they don't feel like they're "ready" yet. But you basically never feel like you're ready, you just have to try and find something near your level and try to get comfortable with not understanding everything. This is where you learn a huge portion of the language, you hear how things are pronounced you see what words mean in what contexts, getting input in your target language is so important!

I know content can be kind of hard to find, so I'll make a few recommendations here: There's a wealth of content available for free online (more if you're in ireland but some internationally) on TG4 If you're still starting out, I'd recommend trying to watch some kids shows since they'll have simpler language and will be easier to follow. I wouldn't recommend using English subtitles when you watch them. Some good options include:

Dónall Dána: an Irish dub of Horrid Henry, silly and childish but the actors have good Irish and importantly the show has Irish language subtitles, they don't always match but if you're still beginning and can't necessarily get everything by ear, they're really useful. (Mostly Galway Irish)

Curious George: another dub, again with Irish language subtitles (I can't remember what dialects were in it off the top of my head but I'd assume mostly galway again)

Seó Luna: No subtitles, but a good option if you're aiming for Munster Irish, the lead character has Kerry Irish

Miraculous: No subtitles but a better show than most of the other kids' ones and more bearable to watch as an adult (Mostly Galway Irish)

Ros na Rún: Moving away from kids shows, a long running soap opera, this has Irish subtitles and a really good mix of dialects within the show. If you're finding the kids shows boring or too easy I'd really recommend it, but it can be complex because of the amount of characters, dialects, and plotlines. I'd recommend starting at the beginning of a newer season and just trying to catch on to what's happening as you go.

There are a lot of books, if you live in Ireland you can get nearly any Irish book for free from a library, so please check out your local library or request some of these from other libraries in the system:

There's a series of fairytales (Rápúnzell, Luaithríona etc.) by Máiréad Ní Ghráda which are illustrated and for children, which are a really good option for when you're just starting out reading

There's kids books about Fionn and the Fianna by Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin

There's a cute little kids' book in Kerry Irish about a cat named Mábúis

Leabhar Breac has a lot of graphic novels, some of them based on Irish mythology, some on other stuff. The fact that they're illustrated can make it a lot easier to follow even if you don't understand all the words at first.

Gliadar has just released their Scott Pilgrim translation

If you're looking for something a bit more advanced you can look at some of the books for adult learners by Comhar, they contain simplified language and glossaries but have full original adult stories.

And if you're wanting full, natural, native-level Irish there's a load of books by those same groups, and others like An Gúm, Cló Iar-Chonnacht, Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne, Éabhlóid, Coiscéim, and more.

And don't shy away from older books written in Seanchló either, they can be more challenging but it's a whole extra world of books

If you're trying to improve your listening comprehension, I definitely recommend listening to shows on Raidió na Gaeltachta, hearing native Irish speakers talk at full speed is really good practice. But I get that it can be overwhelming at first. Here are some things you can do as you build up to that:

Watching those same TV shows I mentioned without subtitles is a good way to build up listening skills.

Vifax is a website where you can practice listening to short news segments and answer questions on them, then getting to look at the transcript with notes afterwards.

Snas is kind of the evolution of vifax, now using clips from both the news and Ros na Rún.

I really hope that this post can help people move away from duolingo if they're looking to take their Irish learning to the next level, if you've got any questions, just let me know!

#gaeilge #irish language #irish #irish langblr #gaelainn #learning irish #as gaeilge #duolingo #resources

[ajarofpickledtears]

it do be like that I guess

#cylas speaks #language #irish #irish language #gaeilge #language learning #learning irish #irish langblr

[ceilidhtransing]

Gàidhlig vs Gaeilge

The languages Scots Gaelic* (Gàidhlig) and Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge, also known in English as simply “Irish”) are two separate languages, yet in English they are often both called Gaelic.

However, they are pronounced completely differently.

Gaelic (Scottish) rhymes with Alec

Gaelic (Irish) sounds like Gay-lick

As a fun fact, it's easy to tell apart Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic visually because in Gàidhlig 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 all the accents are grave - “welcome to Scotland”, which you'll see driving over the border, is “fàilte gu Alba” - while in Gaeilge 🇮🇪 all the accents are acute - “welcome to Ireland” is “fáilte go hÉirinn”.

This has been a very friendly PSA from a Scot who has heard Scots Gaelic mispronounced as “Gaylick” too many times - and now you can go on your merry linguistic way confident in your pronunciation of these two words which look identical but sound totally different and mean refer to two separate things.

*not to be at all confused with the Scots language, which is its own separate thing and very much not included under “Gaelic”

#langblr #languages #learning languages #language learning #linguistics #gaelic #scots gaelic #gàidhlig #irish language #irish gaelic #gaeilge #my posts

[trans-cuchulainn]

favourite Irish phrase I've learned from reading books is "beidh ár bport seinnte" (or tá, depending on how hypothetical the situation is). our tune is played, lads. it's over.

#english also has 'the jig is up ' #but the irish phrase seems to have stronger connotations of We're Fucked And It's Done #also idk if the idiom means just 'tune' or 'jig' #i would think of port as jig specifically but that's bc i learned dancer vocab before normal vocab #irish #gaeilge #in this specific instance in the book I'm currently reading it's conditional i think #but I've seen it in present tense in a different book

[bumblesandhoney]

#irish #irish language #irish+language #langblr #language learning #anghaeilge #gaeilge #irish poetry #language #ireland

[dansnotavampire]

man it's so easy to not make fun of the name of an endangered language. how the fuck are so many of you getting it wrong

#yes this is about people calling Gaelige garlic. yes i am about to get murderous. there are only 8 hozier fans i trust #Hozier #as gaeilge #in other news the album has deeply tempted me to try and learn Gaelige again but I'm already doing horribly at the russian part of my degree

[hanaflorbloom]

being a polyglot is so funny to me because instead of having a song stuck in my head like a normal person i have the irish word for sandwich stuck in my head

#dont ask me why #it just sounds so good #ceapaire #langblr #language #language learning #irish langblr #gaeilge

[tricksterstudies]

Bee vocabulary as Gaeilge

Was watching a documentary about bees on TG4 so I decided look up some words to help me better understand Gaeilge - English Ál beacha - Bee brood Beach - Bee Beachaire - Beekeeper Beach bheala - Honeybee Beachlann - Apiary Beachnaireacht - Apiculture Beach oibre - Worker bee Bláth fiáin - Wildflower Bumbóg - Bumblebee Céir bheach - Beeswax Cíor mheala - Honeycomb Coilíneacht - Colony Coirceog - Beehive Cráinbheach - Queen bee Glóthach ríoga - Royal jelly Ladrann - Drone Larbha - Larva Mil - Honey Neachtar - Nectar Pailin - Pollen Pailneoir - Pollinator Pailnigh - To pollinate Saithe - Swarm

#feel free to correct me if i got any of them wrong #also bumbóg is probably my new favorite word alongside bolb #bug tw #insect tw #gaeilge #as gaeilge #vocabulary #irish vocab #langblr #irish langblr #language learning #learning irish #polyglot #irish language

[patron-saint-of-lesbeans]

I know most people don’t say ‘goodbye’ to mean ‘God be with you’ these days but there’s something so touching about that phrase being used in parting. May the immortal creator of the universe in His infinite kindness and mercy be with you, my friend.

#tower of babble #language #religion #I’ve been learning Arabic lately #and it just hit me like. huh. the greeting is Gaeilge is literally God be with you. the greeting in Arabic is Peace be upon you. #idk I think it’s neat how even if people aren’t religious our language still imparts blessings and goodwill

[an-spideog]

Do you perhaps happen to know good online sources for learning Irish?

Yeah I've made a few posts about them and I try to tag them with #resources so you can see them all together here. Most of what I've posted about so far has been more self-guided resources, so here's some stuff you can do with other people:

Something else that can be helpful is joining some of the Irish discord servers like Celtic Languages (deals with all of the celtic languages but has a large number of Irish speakers, tends to lean a bit more technical and linguistic) and Craic le Gaeilge (focuses more on immersion, all the channels are in Irish except for one). You can get real time help, feedback, and practice in those kinds of spaces.

The subreddit r/Gaeilge is pretty good if you're into reddit, there's discussion in Irish of general topics, and discussion of the language itself.

There's also some online courses, I haven't taken any of them myself so I can't really speak to their quality but I've heard about Gaelchultúr's online courses being good.

#gaeilge #irish language #gaelainn #learning irish #resources

[ly0nstea]

AHHH I LOVE SECOND PERSON PLURAL PRONOUNS LIKE YES IM ACKNOWLEDGING IM SPEAKING DiRECTLY TO MULTIPLE PEOPLE

#sibh is also so pretty #language #linguistics #irish #gaeilge #langblr #language learning #languages #langblog #irish langblr

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

Me: I am excited about season 3 exploring the concept of fairies in the Hilda universe, and expanding the world’s lore using influences that go beyond Icelandic folklore. But like, just a normal amount-

[There’s a feral growl somewhere in the room. Turning your eyes, in fear, you see It: 13-16 yo me, who was completely fixated on all things “Celtic” especially the fae]

Me: It’s behind me isn’t it

#this season better not awaken anything in me #(‘anything’ being a dormant special interest) #did I ever tell you guys I started learning Irish Gaeilge on Duolingo back in the day? shjshdjdhd #unfortunately the only thing I remember is how to say ‘spider’ 😔 very Meiricore of me tbh #wife speaks #Hilda s3 #Hilda season 3 #Hilda s3 spoilers

[uritur-infelix]

I was once looking up some stuff to do with the Irish language on my work computer and I clicked on a link to an Irish language forum, but when i did, my work's IT system denied me access to the website. When I investigated the reason, it inexplicitly said "pornography".

Folks, I knew the Irish language was sexy but I had no idea it was that sexy 🤣

#irish language #Gaeilge #ireland #language learning #polyglot

[bumblesandhoney]

#irish #irish language #irish+language #langblr #language learning #anghaeilge #gaeilge #irish poetry #language #ireland #lgbtqia #lgbtq

[arcadeyes]

anyone else trying to learn their families language?

hi! my names axel and my dad is irish and my mum is romani. I want to learn these languages (esp gaeilge) but it’s so difficult to find the motivation to do so. id rlly like to make some friends who are also trying to learn their families languages :D

i’ve always been into languages and have tried to learn a few but never fully committed because i didn’t have a reason to commit and didnt have a passion for the language.

maybe if i meet enough ppl in the same boat i might make a disc server.

what language does your family speak, and can you speak it?

#language #language learning #heritage #mother tongue #irish #gaeilge #native language #languages #country