Well, I hate to suggest that Microsoft actually did something right, but they have worked hard to support "minority" languages, such as Irish Gaelic. They've provided some tools, and even updated the interface for local language use. You've always been able to change keyboards, and to type in the ASCII or Unicode codes to get non-standard letters, but being able to change the whole environment to support a foreign language has usually been limited to the "biggies".
Now, though, you can download a completely changed interface for dozens of languages. Using their Windows Language Packs.
I haven't installed any of these tools (they change the entire interface, menus, dialogs, etc, into Irish Gaelic and I'm quite certain that I don't have the vocabulary for that yet!) But, the instructions note you can turn the new interface on and off, so you should be able to go back if it's just too confusing. Maybe I'll try it on my laptop (not quite willing to trust MS messing with my interface on my primary home machine).
Pacáiste Comhéadan Gaeilge Office 2003
Windows XP in Gaeilge
Office XP Proofing tools (including spellchecker). Note that this works with Office XP only, not the latest version. I wasn't able to find anything more recent. Hm. Maybe Microsoft is letting me down.
Firefox also has a Gaeilge interface (although not for the most recent version 3).
There are also some non-MS tools out there for the aspiring Gaelic author, including a windows version of GaelSpell 3, and a Gaelic version of Google.
15 July 2008
01 July 2008
Fillum?
I find the fact that 'film' is pronounced 'fillum' in most of Ireland quite charming. Because there is really no way in Irish Gaelic to pronounce that weird letter combination, a quick 'uh' (schwa) is stuck between them so you can wrap your tongue around the letters. It's not written, but appears when the letters l, n, or r get bumped up against b, c, g, or m. Pronounce both sounds separately, with that auxiliary vowel sound stuck in there as you need to.
For example, banbh (piglet) is pronounced roughly 'ban-uhv' (don't pay any attention to that weird 'bh' combination yet! Just trust me that it's 'v'). And bolg (stomach) is roughly bullog. I don't think that I'd be misunderstood if I didn't insert the 'uh' sound and just said bol-g, but I imagine that it would be seen as a quaint mispronunciation that added to our "American" accent in Gaeilge.
American English (most dialects, anyway) don't have this pronunciation issue. We just run the sounds together in most cases, so 'film', 'berg', 'calm' don't need this auxiliary vowel sound inserted. I have heard some British English speakers with the extra syllable, however.
For example, banbh (piglet) is pronounced roughly 'ban-uhv' (don't pay any attention to that weird 'bh' combination yet! Just trust me that it's 'v'). And bolg (stomach) is roughly bullog. I don't think that I'd be misunderstood if I didn't insert the 'uh' sound and just said bol-g, but I imagine that it would be seen as a quaint mispronunciation that added to our "American" accent in Gaeilge.
American English (most dialects, anyway) don't have this pronunciation issue. We just run the sounds together in most cases, so 'film', 'berg', 'calm' don't need this auxiliary vowel sound inserted. I have heard some British English speakers with the extra syllable, however.
Pronunciation Woes IV: Consonants
All consonants have two different sounds: one for when they are flanked by broad vowels (AOU) and one for then they are flanked by slender vowels (IE). Much is made of this difference in the audio files for most Irish materials, and all the textbooks try to explain this difference in great detail early on in the process.
For the most part, I don't hear much difference between the broad and slender versions of most consonants. I think that this is common for English speakers (I've heard that the tonal languages like Chinese are even harder for us to 'hear'). For example, bó and beo (at least to my uneducated ear) seem to be pronounced the same unless I know which one is being said. There really is a subtle difference in the pronunciation of the 'b'. Slowed down, it finally sounds to me like 'bow' and 'byo', but even less noticeable than that in normal-speed speech. I had to slow down the pronunciation examples from Learning Irish to about half speed before I could consistently reproduce the sounds for the consonants.
You can hear the difference between broad b and slender b here, for example.
In some cases, the change from broad to slender is all that differentiates word that are in a different case, tense, or (and this is fun) singular vs plural. So it's important to get it right.
It's also important to remember that we have different sounds in English, too, it's just that we don't assign as much meaning to that change as Irish does. The 'p' in pot and pew are both recognized as a p-sound, and we don't separate out the sound as being different because it is handled automatically by the pronunciation of the vowels. We still recognize homonyms, of course (poo and pew are not the same), but I'll be darned if I can figure out what sort of rules control the sounds in English. So - we poor English speakers are perfectly capable of hearing and producing the different sounds--we just need good examples.
A slender consonant has a subtle glide-vowel inserted that adds a slight y-sound or i-sound to the vowel, which changes the way the consonant is pronounced. Think, 'boot' and 'beaut(iful)'. To be honest, if you learn the vowel combinations properly, you automatically pronounce the consonants acceptably. So, after all that harping, at the beginning, it's probably not going to be as hard as all that to figure things out. Other than a few consonants that really do change dramatically (s and t, for example) pronouncing most letters just like you would in English will be understandable and you can fine-tune things later.
There are some exceptions, of course -- but I'll cover those after I manage to get this all figured out!
For the most part, I don't hear much difference between the broad and slender versions of most consonants. I think that this is common for English speakers (I've heard that the tonal languages like Chinese are even harder for us to 'hear'). For example, bó and beo (at least to my uneducated ear) seem to be pronounced the same unless I know which one is being said. There really is a subtle difference in the pronunciation of the 'b'. Slowed down, it finally sounds to me like 'bow' and 'byo', but even less noticeable than that in normal-speed speech. I had to slow down the pronunciation examples from Learning Irish to about half speed before I could consistently reproduce the sounds for the consonants.
You can hear the difference between broad b and slender b here, for example.
In some cases, the change from broad to slender is all that differentiates word that are in a different case, tense, or (and this is fun) singular vs plural. So it's important to get it right.
It's also important to remember that we have different sounds in English, too, it's just that we don't assign as much meaning to that change as Irish does. The 'p' in pot and pew are both recognized as a p-sound, and we don't separate out the sound as being different because it is handled automatically by the pronunciation of the vowels. We still recognize homonyms, of course (poo and pew are not the same), but I'll be darned if I can figure out what sort of rules control the sounds in English. So - we poor English speakers are perfectly capable of hearing and producing the different sounds--we just need good examples.
A slender consonant has a subtle glide-vowel inserted that adds a slight y-sound or i-sound to the vowel, which changes the way the consonant is pronounced. Think, 'boot' and 'beaut(iful)'. To be honest, if you learn the vowel combinations properly, you automatically pronounce the consonants acceptably. So, after all that harping, at the beginning, it's probably not going to be as hard as all that to figure things out. Other than a few consonants that really do change dramatically (s and t, for example) pronouncing most letters just like you would in English will be understandable and you can fine-tune things later.
| - | Slender | Broad |
| b | beauty | but |
| c | cute | cut |
| d | dew | dull |
| f | few | fun |
| g | egg | gum |
| l | lewd | lull |
| m | music | much |
| n | new | not |
| p | pew | put |
| s | ship | suck |
| t | tune | 'tch' |
There are some exceptions, of course -- but I'll cover those after I manage to get this all figured out!
Pronunciation Woes III: Weird Endings
Just a quick update -- there are a few vowel combinations that crop up in the vocabulary of Learning Irish early on that are hard to pin down (listen to the tapes a lot at first, and repeat things over and over. If you can manage to tape yourself and listen to the source and then your recording, that would be good). Most of what I have here has been gleaned from the books I have and websites I've found. Remember that I am NOT a native speaker!
The big thing to remember is that Irish, despite the clusters of vowels that would please any Scrabble player, has very few true dipthongs. The o's and i's showing up all over are simply pronunciation marks for broad or slender consonants and are not specifically pronounced. So, a lot of the vowel-groups are pronounced the same way despite being spelled very differently.
The big thing to remember is that Irish, despite the clusters of vowels that would please any Scrabble player, has very few true dipthongs. The o's and i's showing up all over are simply pronunciation marks for broad or slender consonants and are not specifically pronounced. So, a lot of the vowel-groups are pronounced the same way despite being spelled very differently.
abh, obh, ogh --> ow as in 'cow'; at the beginning of a word, like German 'au'But it's the endings of words that cause some problems for me -- especially since they are pronounced quite a bit differently in the different dialects. The ending of a word may change to denote plurals or other grammatical meaning. For example, -(a)igh and -(a)idh occurs quite often and is pronounced quite differently:
amh --> at the end of words, 'av', otherwise 'au' (in connacht only)
adh, agh, eidh --> at the beginning of a word, like 'eye'
omh(a) --> ó
umh(a) --> ú
In Munster --> ig'Another common ending is -óidh:
In Connacht --> ə (just 'uh')
In Ulster--> i or ə
In Standard Irish --> í
In Munster --> óigI've just picked up a new book that has some very clear pronunciation rules - as soon as I get my head wrapped around them, I'll post again.
In Connacht --> ó
In Ulster --> the old suffix -ochaidh is used
In Standard Irish --> oí
Pronunciation Woes: Vowels I
I can only hope that my accent speaking Irish is as charming and sexy as we American English speakers find an Irish accent. (Really, several of the lovely barmen in Ireland could just read the phone book and I'd be enthralled). We have accents because we do not have the same sounds for vowels and our "native" pronuncation spills over into how we pronounce foreign words.
Americans have a hard time with the French nasal 'n', Spanish trilled 'r', and the rounded vowel sounds of some Scandinavian langauges (hell, we have problems with our own language, I shoudln't worry about examples!). Many speakers of western langauges have a very hard time even hearing the difference in many Asian languages, much less being able to reproduce the sounds accurately. Is that 'a' pronounced 'aw' or 'ah' or 'ay'? It is 'ee' or 'eye' for 'i'? The Irish speak English with that lovely accent because of the way letters are pronounced in Gaelic, and I will likely speak Gaelic with the flat vowels of American midwestern English unless I pay close attention and try to mimic native speakers and practice a LOT with recordings.
Which of course assumes I can find a native speaker. Not the easiest thing in the world, so I've been reduced to the CD sets that come along with my books, and online references (hopefully with sound files). In fact, one of the posters from Daltai has provided recordings of all the sounds in Ulster Irish, which I host on my website.
Vowels are actually easy. As I noted before, there are short forms and long forms of each vowel in Irish. And, unlike English, Irish Gaelic has the common decency to show when the vowel is long or short (instead of relying on incomprehensible spelling rules and rote memorization).
Short vowels are a, e, i, o, u. Long vowels are written with an acute symbol over them, like this: á, é, í, ó, ú. Because i and í look awfully alike, a font face that is Gaelic-friendly will not have a dot over a normal i, and you normally omit it when you write things out longhand.
Of course unstressed syllables disappear into a generic 'uh' sound. The English word 'above' is not pronounced as an exaggerated 'ah-bohv', the 'a' and 'o' are subsumed into the sound of the syllable and it becomes 'uh-buhv'. The same occurs in Irish. Vowels -- long or short -- in unstressed syllables are reduced to the generic schwa. Occassionally whole words disappear -- as, ag, agus often are reduced to an 'uh' sound in normal conversation.
Learning Irish has a rather cryptic fold-out pronunciation guide, which I must admit confused me more than it helped. Partly this is because the "example" words are supposed to be pronounced as an English person would say them, not American English, which got me set off on the wrong foot. Even with a standard phonetic spelling, it can be difficult. Each word introduced in the lessons is provided with pronunciation notes in the vocabulary list, as well.
I will make a strong suggestion that you learn to read and use the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is used in some form in nearly all pronouncing dictionaries (including the Foclóir Scoile.) It takes a bit to learn, but it really is the most accurate (and non-accented) way to understand the sounds that you're supposed to be using. Be careful on websites to determine whether their are using 'English' pronunciation (American English and British English pronounce many vowels quite differently) so you know how it should be used.
There are dozens of online sources for pronunciation, here are a few:
Phouka.com (with sound)
Daltai (with sound)
Beginners Guide
Fios Feasa
Musical Traditions (simplified)
Nagail Magazine (with sound)
Americans have a hard time with the French nasal 'n', Spanish trilled 'r', and the rounded vowel sounds of some Scandinavian langauges (hell, we have problems with our own language, I shoudln't worry about examples!). Many speakers of western langauges have a very hard time even hearing the difference in many Asian languages, much less being able to reproduce the sounds accurately. Is that 'a' pronounced 'aw' or 'ah' or 'ay'? It is 'ee' or 'eye' for 'i'? The Irish speak English with that lovely accent because of the way letters are pronounced in Gaelic, and I will likely speak Gaelic with the flat vowels of American midwestern English unless I pay close attention and try to mimic native speakers and practice a LOT with recordings.
Which of course assumes I can find a native speaker. Not the easiest thing in the world, so I've been reduced to the CD sets that come along with my books, and online references (hopefully with sound files). In fact, one of the posters from Daltai has provided recordings of all the sounds in Ulster Irish, which I host on my website.
Vowels are actually easy. As I noted before, there are short forms and long forms of each vowel in Irish. And, unlike English, Irish Gaelic has the common decency to show when the vowel is long or short (instead of relying on incomprehensible spelling rules and rote memorization).
Short vowels are a, e, i, o, u. Long vowels are written with an acute symbol over them, like this: á, é, í, ó, ú. Because i and í look awfully alike, a font face that is Gaelic-friendly will not have a dot over a normal i, and you normally omit it when you write things out longhand.
| a | bother | á | ban, bar |
| e | ben | é | bay |
| i | bin | í | bee |
| o | booger | ó | blow |
| u | bun | ú | blue |
Learning Irish has a rather cryptic fold-out pronunciation guide, which I must admit confused me more than it helped. Partly this is because the "example" words are supposed to be pronounced as an English person would say them, not American English, which got me set off on the wrong foot. Even with a standard phonetic spelling, it can be difficult. Each word introduced in the lessons is provided with pronunciation notes in the vocabulary list, as well.
I will make a strong suggestion that you learn to read and use the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is used in some form in nearly all pronouncing dictionaries (including the Foclóir Scoile.) It takes a bit to learn, but it really is the most accurate (and non-accented) way to understand the sounds that you're supposed to be using. Be careful on websites to determine whether their are using 'English' pronunciation (American English and British English pronounce many vowels quite differently) so you know how it should be used.
There are dozens of online sources for pronunciation, here are a few:
Phouka.com (with sound)
Daltai (with sound)
Beginners Guide
Fios Feasa
Musical Traditions (simplified)
Nagail Magazine (with sound)
Pronunciation Woes: Vowels II
I found it easy enough to figure out the "plain" vowels (a, e, i, o, u, á, é, í, ó, ú) and the whole idea that they tend to disappear in normal speech under certain circumstances. Even if I manage them as I would in English, I'm probably ok. 'Bat' vs 'ball' for the 'a' is pretty intuitive.
However, it's about this point that most books toss in the 'slender/broad' thing. This really relates to how consonants are pronounced, but it affects how vowels are combined, so let me explain:
In Irish, the vowels i and e, whether long or short, are considered slender vowels. A, o, u (and the combination ae) are considered broad vowels. This doesn't actually change the pronunciation of the vowels themselves, but it affects spelling in a predictable (but odd) way. The rule you'll hear quoted in every single Irish textbook is 'caol le caol agus leathan le leathan' -- slender with slender, broad with broad.
What this means in practice is that the 'type' of vowel on either side of a consonant must be the same. If there's an i before the consonant, then there must be an i or e after it (well, if there are any letters after it at all, of course). Because of the spelling rule, there are often vowels inserted into the word to ensure that the consontant is flanked by the same type. The tricky part is that these are not always pronounced, but they do change the pronunciation of the following consonant. I'll talk more about that later, but suffice it to say that sometimes the combinations of vowels that show up in words are a bit off: iúi, eoi, uai.
Most of the time, the i at the end of the vowel combination is not really spoken, it just adds a bit of a 'glide' to the pronunciation -- an i-sound or y-sound that is very subtle, like the difference between the vowel sounds in (American) English 'moot' and 'mute' or 'pave' and 'pail'. Actually, that's a fairly strong example, it's usually less obvious, at least to my ear.
It's the combinations of vowels that throw me (as they do in English, I guess.) Learning Irish doesn't really talk much about these, but the first time you venture into an Irish Dictionary, you'll be faced with some interesting spellings. Quite a few of these are pronounced almost the same as the basic vowel, just a tiny bit of that 'moot/mute' vowel changing.
However, it's about this point that most books toss in the 'slender/broad' thing. This really relates to how consonants are pronounced, but it affects how vowels are combined, so let me explain:
In Irish, the vowels i and e, whether long or short, are considered slender vowels. A, o, u (and the combination ae) are considered broad vowels. This doesn't actually change the pronunciation of the vowels themselves, but it affects spelling in a predictable (but odd) way. The rule you'll hear quoted in every single Irish textbook is 'caol le caol agus leathan le leathan' -- slender with slender, broad with broad.
What this means in practice is that the 'type' of vowel on either side of a consonant must be the same. If there's an i before the consonant, then there must be an i or e after it (well, if there are any letters after it at all, of course). Because of the spelling rule, there are often vowels inserted into the word to ensure that the consontant is flanked by the same type. The tricky part is that these are not always pronounced, but they do change the pronunciation of the following consonant. I'll talk more about that later, but suffice it to say that sometimes the combinations of vowels that show up in words are a bit off: iúi, eoi, uai.
Most of the time, the i at the end of the vowel combination is not really spoken, it just adds a bit of a 'glide' to the pronunciation -- an i-sound or y-sound that is very subtle, like the difference between the vowel sounds in (American) English 'moot' and 'mute' or 'pave' and 'pail'. Actually, that's a fairly strong example, it's usually less obvious, at least to my ear.
It's the combinations of vowels that throw me (as they do in English, I guess.) Learning Irish doesn't really talk much about these, but the first time you venture into an Irish Dictionary, you'll be faced with some interesting spellings. Quite a few of these are pronounced almost the same as the basic vowel, just a tiny bit of that 'moot/mute' vowel changing.
ái → aiThere are also a few combinations that are pronounced differently when they occur at the beginning of a word:
ói → ói
éi → éi
eo → ə
íu → íy
aoi → uí → oí → í
eoi → yoi
iúi → yúi
uío → eeo
ia → íə
uai → úe
ao → é (munster) → í (connacht/ulster/standard)
ae → é
ei → eh
ea → a (in connacht like ae)
ai → a or o
ui → i
oi → between e and o
io → í
eo at beginning → óI'm sure there are others that I haven't managed to track down yet. As you can see, in most cases, you actually do pronounce all the vowels that are printed, some just get squashed into the 'glide' (usually i or o). I've printed out a chart and taped it to the inside of Learning Irish, in the hopes that these will start to look familiar.
iú at beginning → ú
ui at beginning → i
oi at beginning → i or e
Writing Irish
Irish uses the same alphabet as English, more or less. Other than a few words adopted from other languages, Irish doesn't have any native words including j, q, v, w, x, or z. You'll find gaelic-ized versions of some words beginning with these letters, but they are all imported words that are force-fit into the Irish scheme. For example, jacaí (jockey). Pronounced roughly the same, just spelled according to the rules. It's rather amusing to page through a dictionary and see just a few entries for these letters.
In some older books, you'll see forms of the letters that are quite different from normal roman letters, for example: ſ for r, or ɼ for s. This old-style lettering has been replaced by modern letters for readability. The change does explain one of the wierd quirks of Irish, that is: even though the letter 'h' shows up all over the place in written Irish, it really isn't considered a letter. (well, like the letters listed above, it does occasionally get used in loan words, but I digress). Instead, it is a sign of aspiration, a change in the way the previous letter is pronounced. In the old typeface, these changes were noted by a dot over the letter. Getting rid of the dot meant having to add an h afterwards to show the change. So, the old typeface might show Ḃ which is now shown as Bh. Easy enough. [note, if you can't see these, you need the font from here]
English doesn't have acute symbols or any kind of accent marks in normal spelling. Except for some obviously foreign loan words which have managed to hold on to their native typography, we don't have dots or tails or lines floating around in written English (well, I suppose pre-teen girls tend to dot their i's with hearts, but that doesn't really count.) We tend to denote changes in pronunciation by using different letter combinations or other spelling peculiarities -- or we don't bother to differentiate at all and expect speakers to 'just know' the right pronuncation for a specific series -- is the 'ough' pronounced 'uff' (as in tough) or just 'oo' (as in though)? Not the best scheme.
Irish uses an acute symbol over vowels to show how they are to be pronounced (whether the vowel is long or short, bite vs bit, for example). So, you'll see á, é, í, ó, ú in words as well as a, e, i, o, u. Irish doesn't use any symbols over the consonants, only vowels are distinguished this way. When spelling out loud, the long accent is also 'spelled' -- á is spoken as 'a-fada', literally, 'a-long'.
Well, fabulous. How on earth do you get these letters to print out on your computer? There are two ways of doing this -- both of which are a bit complicated. The first method uses the ASCII equivalents that are typed using the ALT-key and the numeric keypad. These are as follows:
The second method involves installing a secondary keyboard mapping into your computer that lets you generate the characters more easily. Adding the English(Irish) keyboard is quite simple, and you can swap between keybaords on the fly in most versions of Windows. Once the keyboard is installed, you can type the accented letters by using the right ALT-key and the letter itself. A side effect is that some of the other keys are moved, and some change meaning, but nothing you can't get used to.
I tend to type out all my lessons, since I spend my days in front of the computer anyways, and my handwriting has degenerated into an illegible scrawl due to typing all day.
In some older books, you'll see forms of the letters that are quite different from normal roman letters, for example: ſ for r, or ɼ for s. This old-style lettering has been replaced by modern letters for readability. The change does explain one of the wierd quirks of Irish, that is: even though the letter 'h' shows up all over the place in written Irish, it really isn't considered a letter. (well, like the letters listed above, it does occasionally get used in loan words, but I digress). Instead, it is a sign of aspiration, a change in the way the previous letter is pronounced. In the old typeface, these changes were noted by a dot over the letter. Getting rid of the dot meant having to add an h afterwards to show the change. So, the old typeface might show Ḃ which is now shown as Bh. Easy enough. [note, if you can't see these, you need the font from here]
English doesn't have acute symbols or any kind of accent marks in normal spelling. Except for some obviously foreign loan words which have managed to hold on to their native typography, we don't have dots or tails or lines floating around in written English (well, I suppose pre-teen girls tend to dot their i's with hearts, but that doesn't really count.) We tend to denote changes in pronunciation by using different letter combinations or other spelling peculiarities -- or we don't bother to differentiate at all and expect speakers to 'just know' the right pronuncation for a specific series -- is the 'ough' pronounced 'uff' (as in tough) or just 'oo' (as in though)? Not the best scheme.
Irish uses an acute symbol over vowels to show how they are to be pronounced (whether the vowel is long or short, bite vs bit, for example). So, you'll see á, é, í, ó, ú in words as well as a, e, i, o, u. Irish doesn't use any symbols over the consonants, only vowels are distinguished this way. When spelling out loud, the long accent is also 'spelled' -- á is spoken as 'a-fada', literally, 'a-long'.
Well, fabulous. How on earth do you get these letters to print out on your computer? There are two ways of doing this -- both of which are a bit complicated. The first method uses the ASCII equivalents that are typed using the ALT-key and the numeric keypad. These are as follows:
|
|
- In windows XP, go to start > control panel > regional and Language Options.
- On the languages tab, select details.
- Click add, and select the language you want to add the keyboard layout you want to use.
- The layout will be available via the language bar.
I tend to type out all my lessons, since I spend my days in front of the computer anyways, and my handwriting has degenerated into an illegible scrawl due to typing all day.
13 February 2006
Mí: Month
Blogger doesn't support Gaelic of any sort as a language for dates, so I was going through to figure out the months, with the intent of doing the headers myself,etc.
mí -- Month
míonna -- Months
míosa -- of a month (genetive)
This is a feminine noun.
The actual months are:
mí -- Month
míonna -- Months
míosa -- of a month (genetive)
This is a feminine noun.
The actual months are:
- January → Eanáir (anner)
- February → Feabhra (fyowra)
- March → Márta
- April → Aibreán
- May → Bealtaine (bal-tinyeh). A recent audiobook I listened to had this pronounced as 'bell-tane'. No! No!
- June → Meitheamh (mehiv)
- July → Iúil
- August → Lúnasa (loonassa)
- September → Méan Fómhair (man fower)
- October → Deireadh Fómhair (djerra fower)
- November → Samhain (sowin). Not 'sam-hane', as I've also heard.
- December → Nollaig
mí Márta → the month of March
An chéad lá den mhí → the first day of the month
Uair sa mhí → once a month
De réir na míosa → by the month
I gceann míosa → in a months time
I gceann gach trí mhí → every three months
Mí fhéilire → calendar month
Bunchló Ársa font
Just a note -- I've referenced the Celtic font Bunchló Ársa GS on the blog page, and may use it in the posts, as well. Things should show up just fine without the font, but you can snag it for PC from here if you want to see the spiffy Irish letters.
12 February 2006
And off we go...
I've been puttering on and off trying to learn Irish Gaelic on my own -- bought the books, have CDs in the car, the whole shebang. I never learned a second language in school (well, beyond the one semester of German in high school that I have completely forgotten) and the oft-cited fact that it's harder to learn a language as an adult is absolutely true.
Why Irish? Well, I don't really have a good answer for that beyond: I want to. I have no Irish ancestors that I know of, I don't belong to any particular groups that speak Irish. I did pick up fiddle in the last few years (also on and off) and focused mostly on Irish music, with words in Gaelic, so I guess that is reason enough.
Irish is spoken by about 70,000 people as as first language, and by roughly a million people as a second language. Until 1974, proficiency in Irish was required for government work, and it had been a compulsory class for all Irish schoolchildren. The Irish are proud of their native language, though, and have succeeded in making sure that it will continue: it will be an official working language of the EU starting in 2007. Cool!
At any rate, I've been approaching this rather haphazardly and while I understand quite a bit of written Gaeilge, I was rather quickly disabused of the notion that I could actually speak it during our month-long trip to Ireland. I'm sure I sounded like a nursery-school child, but my attempts were at least greeted with smiles and polite corrections, not outright laughs.
So, I'm going to be a bit more organized (or, at least try to be) and post notes here as I go along. In the past year, I've collected a huge amount of reference material (as is my wont when starting a new project) and collated a lot of online references into documents for myself. As I went along, I thought I'd post the words, questions, comments, quibbles, and overall weirdness that I've found trying to comprehend the rules for a language that is startlingly different from English.
A website used to do a "word-a-day" listing for Irish -- Focal an lae -- which was an interesting source of daily Irish words. The site has not been active for quite a while. I will not even begin to attempt to replicate the work done on that site, but I may include words now and again as I try to work through some of the coursework that I have. Another source of daily words is the Travlang archive, which will happily mail you Irish words (or a ton of other languages) every single day, usually with a sound file for the correct pronunciation.
Remember that I'm a rank beginner, really. Nothing that I say here should be taken as gospel, least of all my actual sentences in Irish. If you're looking for expert advice or translation, try Daltai.com or Irishtranslators.org. Both have extensive forums for questions, in both English and Gaeilge. I have an extensive section of old Gaelic courses on my website, as well as more notes from a beginner there. This is more for the commentary, at least at first.
I'll post a biography of my sources in a following post, however my primary coursebook is Learning Irish by Michael O'Siadhail -- this is the book to work with, according to the fine folks at Daltai. I'm open to all suggestions, corrections, and other input. Please!
Why Irish? Well, I don't really have a good answer for that beyond: I want to. I have no Irish ancestors that I know of, I don't belong to any particular groups that speak Irish. I did pick up fiddle in the last few years (also on and off) and focused mostly on Irish music, with words in Gaelic, so I guess that is reason enough.
Irish is spoken by about 70,000 people as as first language, and by roughly a million people as a second language. Until 1974, proficiency in Irish was required for government work, and it had been a compulsory class for all Irish schoolchildren. The Irish are proud of their native language, though, and have succeeded in making sure that it will continue: it will be an official working language of the EU starting in 2007. Cool!
At any rate, I've been approaching this rather haphazardly and while I understand quite a bit of written Gaeilge, I was rather quickly disabused of the notion that I could actually speak it during our month-long trip to Ireland. I'm sure I sounded like a nursery-school child, but my attempts were at least greeted with smiles and polite corrections, not outright laughs.
So, I'm going to be a bit more organized (or, at least try to be) and post notes here as I go along. In the past year, I've collected a huge amount of reference material (as is my wont when starting a new project) and collated a lot of online references into documents for myself. As I went along, I thought I'd post the words, questions, comments, quibbles, and overall weirdness that I've found trying to comprehend the rules for a language that is startlingly different from English.
A website used to do a "word-a-day" listing for Irish -- Focal an lae -- which was an interesting source of daily Irish words. The site has not been active for quite a while. I will not even begin to attempt to replicate the work done on that site, but I may include words now and again as I try to work through some of the coursework that I have. Another source of daily words is the Travlang archive, which will happily mail you Irish words (or a ton of other languages) every single day, usually with a sound file for the correct pronunciation.
Remember that I'm a rank beginner, really. Nothing that I say here should be taken as gospel, least of all my actual sentences in Irish. If you're looking for expert advice or translation, try Daltai.com or Irishtranslators.org. Both have extensive forums for questions, in both English and Gaeilge. I have an extensive section of old Gaelic courses on my website, as well as more notes from a beginner there. This is more for the commentary, at least at first.
I'll post a biography of my sources in a following post, however my primary coursebook is Learning Irish by Michael O'Siadhail -- this is the book to work with, according to the fine folks at Daltai. I'm open to all suggestions, corrections, and other input. Please!
