Basic Resources

As part of the new-and-improved plan for learning Irish, I’m really going back to square one and trying to add some sort of structure to what I’ve been doing. My approach has really been scattershot, using a number of different resources. While this has given me a good beginner-level understanding of things (at least so far!) it’s been unsatisfactory – I don’t feel like I’ve really got a good grasp on things – only that I’ve learned X or Y, but not necessarily how it all fits together.

I think this is pretty common learning a new language as an adult. We approach it differently, I think. More...analytical, more information…but with less control, perhaps.

There are a number of resources available to a beginner:

I had been using the audio lessons of Irish On Your Own to get a working knowledge of things. This course comes with five cassette tapes with lessons and conversations to repeat, as well as a colorful textbook that manages to insert some grammar and cultural references. But this course only touches on grammar and relies heavily on rote repetition of phrases in simple conversation. I like the course a lot, it’s very energetic and certainly gets me speaking (at least to my car!) out loud. I strongly recommend this book-and-tape set.

The primary course book for Irish – or at least the most popular one – is a densely foot-noted textbook by Michael O’Siadhail, titled Learning Irish. While this is designed as a self-taught course, it is definitely not an easy one and focuses on grammar more than conversation. I’ve had to rely on a lot of outside support to make sense of the rules. Each chapter has exercises which are mostly translation work, which is not a very successful learning method for many people. I'm currently hosting an online set of additional lessons by Nancy Stenson -- these are very useful as more ‘conversational’ level work that follows along with each lesson. There are tapes (an a newly released version with CDs) along with the book, which have some rather flat recitations of vocabulary words and short readings. (I say flat, but what I usually tell people is "scary" -- the woman who reads the pronunciations and initial chapter's vocabulary is a fierce sounding woman, indeed).

Rosetta Stone language learning software has recently released three levels of Irish instruction. Using pictures and a variety of interactive activities, Rosetta Stone teaches language in a natural and easy-to-use method. My adorable husband purchased all three levels for me, for my birthday this year, and I am using those lessons as the basis for returning to my study of Irish. So far, it has been a very easy and low-stress way to learn. Being able to "talk back" to the computer and compare my pronunciation with theirs has been a really interesting process. I can pinpoint where the problems are and as I get better with pronunciation, the software can be set to be more and more picky about matching exactly. I feel a bit ridiculous wearing a headset and solemnly replying to my computer, but any time I speak out loud, I'm making better progress.

The venerable Teach Yourself series has a book on Irish which has recently been updated and released with CDs. While I have a copy (books! more books!) I haven’t really used this much. Quite a few people like these courses very much, and a grammar reference has been released in the last few months. There is also a quick-and-dirty Teach Yourself Irish Conversation that is primarily an audio-only course and is a quick introduction to the basics.

Progress in Irish is a teeny little book that relies almost entirely on translations exercises to introduce vocabulary and grammar concepts, so in my opinion, it can’t really be called a “course”, especially since correct answers aren’t actually provided in the book. It can be a bit hard to work with alone, but online resources do help a bit here.

Perhaps the most common first-time Irish texts that are mentioned are the Buntus Cainte series, which are entirely conversation based, no grammar rule, and split up into short, easy to repeat lessons. They introduce Irish as it would be learned as a child: short, simple sentences that build on one another and can be learned by heart and then extrapolated into more difficult sentences. This is a fairly old course, but it has recently been rerecorded with CDs. The illustrations are still cute, though.

Pimsleur also produces a short course in Irish, but other than an interesting example of the Munster dialect, it really doesn’t offer much (a grand total of 55 words). I snagged it off Audible.com, but it really hasn’t been very useful except to get me more comfortable with speaking out loud. I suppose if my goal was to chat up someone of the opposite sex while traveling, this would be good: half the course is a single conversation with someone asking if they understand you and where they're from.

Most of these books can be found at Litriocht or from Amazon.

Dictionaries

We once counted, and there are 37 dictionaries in the Phouka house -- a dozen or so in English (from a lovely 1894 dictionary to medical speciality books to the latest Oxford English Dictionary on CD), and the remaining in other languages. Why, yes, every household does need a Latin-English dictionary, just in case. And Spanish, German, Greek, Swedish and others....you know, you might need to look up some strange reference. It happens!

I love dictionaries and have been known to just sit down and read them. So, when I embarked on learning Irish, I immmediately compiled a goodly list of Irish dictionaries, based on recommendations from a number of of the Gaelic sites. The links are to Amazon, although these books are often found on eBay, and can be ordered from Irish Books and Media or Litriocht.com

At the very least, the primary recommendation for learners is Foclóir Scoile English-Irish/Irish English Dictionary published by An Gum, which is one of the few with complete phonetic pronunciation hints for about 30,000 words. It has the basics for everything in the classes that I've looked through.

The "Master" Irish dictionary is the Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla (Irish-English) originally compiled by Ó Dónaill (and currently edited by de Bhaldraithe). This couple-pound tome has Irish headwords only and definitions and idiom in English. This is has been updated several times and the current version (also published by An Gum) no longer has the archaic spellings or Irish fonts. I have an older version that I picked up on eBay that is the "old" typography, and while it is quite lovely, I appreciate the modern typeset version. It's still a bit difficult to use, if you're not familiar with Irish word-forms, and the Gaeltacht Minnesota folks have put together a nice document offering some help on how to look things up that I've found invaluable. A few more hints are here.

A reference dictionary of English-Irish only, edited by de Bhaldraithe is also published by An Gum. The headwords are English only, with definitions and idioms in Irish. This won't tell you what a particular Gaelic word means, but if you are stuck with trying to translate your English sentence, this is the most complete dictionary I've found. It is the companion volume to the Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla.

There are a few little pocket dictionaries, useful to carry around a decipher newspapers and signs, but not really useful for doing classwork, in my opinion. Of course, I still have two -- The Oxford Irish Minidictionary, which is quite nice, and the Foclóir-Póca, a miniaturized version of the Foclóir-Scoile listed above, which includes pronunciation help. There is also a Collins pocket dictionary.

There are a few good online dictionaries:

• English-Irish Dictionary online
• Foclóir-Beag Online (irish only)
• the Gramadach Lexicon, which includes a nifty little program to print out the declensions of words.
• Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla
• Freelang offline Dictionary
• Irish Identify online wordlist

For the word-philes among us, there is a great CD set of the Corpas na Gaeilge, which is a reference collection of Gaelic language from 1600-1882, listing all instances of words in historic books. I picked mine up in Ireland, on a whim, and haven't really had a chance to look at it much. It's definitely not a learner's tool -- it's more academic/historic in nature.

Dotted-consonants

One of the things I did with my spare time (yes, I'm compulsive) is to transcribe a series of books called Simple Lessons in Irish by Rev. Eugene O'Growney, which were published in 1904. These pamphlets use an archaic font for the Irish, that I attempted to reproduce with modern fonts so the online versions are as similar to the books as possible.

In these older fonts, you'll often see consonants with dots over them. This is used to show pronunciation changes in the word (a change that denotes aspiration, called lenition). In modern script, this is shown by adding an H (remember the conversation about that fact that 'h' is not a letter?) after the consonant instead of the dot-notation.

While it's easy to swap over your keyboard so that you can easily produce the fada over long vowels, the "old" forms for the consonants are a bit harder, since they are not usually a part of the normal character set for a font.

However, if you want to write in an Irish script with the "fancy" S and R and use the dots over the letters, it is possible, but a bit more cpmplicated. As far as I know, there is no easy way of writing them using a standard keyboard, even if it's mapped to Irish Gaelic. You have to use the alt-key combinations that are supported in Word (and some other applications). I'm on WinXP and using MS Word, so that is what follows. I have no idea how to get this all to work on Linux or Mac, for example. (If you have any hints, drop me a note).

The alt-key combinations are a bit different for the consonants, but these work for Bunchlo Arsa, the Gaelic font I have been using:

bh	Ḃ	1E01	ḃ	1E03
ch	Ċ	010A	ċ	010B
dh	Ḋ	1E0A	ḋ	1E0B
fh	Ḟ	1E1E	ḟ	1E1F
mh	Ṁ	1E40	ṁ	1E41
ph	Ṗ	1E56	ṗ	1E57
sh	Ṡ	1E60	ṡ	1E61
th	Ṫ	1E6A	ṫ	1E6B

In this case, you simply type the 4-character code, then press alt-x to print the letters. What I've done in documents is write the version with the h and then write quick macro to replace the letters one by one -- tedious, but unless someone know how to edit keyboard files to produce these 'combination" letters, that's what I'm stuck with.

Not that I suggest you write much in these old forms, mind you. It might look nice, but the majority of people will not be familiar with them, and will be looking for the standard spellings.

Gaelic Interfaces

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.

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.

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.

-	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.

abh, obh, ogh --> ow as in 'cow'; at the beginning of a word, like German 'au'
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

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:

In Munster --> ig'
In Connacht --> ə (just 'uh')
In Ulster--> i or ə
In Standard Irish --> í

Another common ending is -óidh:

In Munster --> óig
In Connacht --> ó
In Ulster --> the old suffix -ochaidh is used
In Standard Irish --> oí

I'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.

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.

a	bother	á	ban, bar
e	ben	é	bay
i	bin	í	bee
o	booger	ó	blow
u	bun	ú	blue

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)

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.

ái → aⁱ
ói → óⁱ
éi → éⁱ
eo → ə
íu → í^y
aoi → uí → oí → í
eoi → ^yoⁱ
iúi → ^yúⁱ
uío → ee^o
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

There are also a few combinations that are pronounced differently when they occur at the beginning of a word:

eo at beginning → ó
iú at beginning → ú
ui at beginning → i
oi at beginning → i or e

I'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.

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:

á ALT-0225 é ALT-0233 í ALT-0237 ó ALT-0243 ú ALT-0250

Á ALT-0193 É ALT-0201 Í ALT-0205 Ó ALT-0211 Ú ALT-0218

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.

1. In windows XP, go to start > control panel > regional and Language Options.
2. On the languages tab, select details.
3. Click add, and select the language you want to add the keyboard layout you want to use.
4. The layout will be available via the language bar.

Here are instructions on adding and Irish keyboard in Windows from the language bar itself. For Macintosh, there is info here. OS 10.2 support an extended Irish keyboard.

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.