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The back wheel of my bike’s been wobbly for a while now. It was functioning; but it was also incredibly annoying. So I took it upon myself to fix it. I grabbed my tools—which were not exactly the best suited to the task—and proceeded to dismantle the back wheel. I discovered that the spindle was loose. D’oh! I tightened up and re-attached it to the frame and there were no more wobbles. I decided to cyle to the store to buy some milk, but before I had even gone a few yards the back wheel siezed up on me and wouldn’t rotate. I carried my bike back with a sigh to the house and dismantled it again. I decided to investigate further and this time I removed the spindle as well, and this proved quite the challenge. It was then that I discovered the the ball bearing were shot. The inside was a mess and there would be no hope that I could fix it. It’ll be a while until I can take it to the repair shop and have it seen to. I won’t be doing much cyling any time soon.
But I never knew that bikes used ball bearings to make the bike, well, bike. It suddenly made perfect sense and I could understand it all. This system is ingenius! And this led me on to an epiphany. If I could come to understanding the machinations of a bike and how it works by taking it a part and unerstanding the individual pieces and the roles that they play then I can do the same with the Irish language.
I’ve had some brief forays into Irish before now. But it has always seemed a daunting task to me. Coupled with my natural tendency to procrastinate, this has resulted in my woeful knowledge of the language after these few years. But I have rekindled the flame again. I am getting married soon and my fiancée and I are emigrating to the Republic. More than ever I feel the need to know the language of my history that I may pass it on to the future. And quite honestly it’d just be cool to be able to speak the language even if only for my own sake! I also foresee ample opportunities to truly immerse myself in the language in the future. So I want to lay a firm foundation on which to build.
I am provisionally working with Mícheál Ó Siadhail’s Learning Irish and Routledge’s Colloquial Irish 1. If I find myself in a position closer to Munster or Ulster at a later date then I’ll consider pursuing the respectiive dialect. In the mean time Galway is central enough, and it has long been a dream of mine to visit Connemara and the Aran Islands. And there is always the great advantage to Mícheál Ó Siadhail’s Learning Irish being a course that unabashedly teaches a single dialect.
As I said above I have always found Irish to be a daunting language. And although that fear is still there, there is also the hope inspired by my horrible wheel. And so I have started this thread. I invite all of you to participate in seeing if we can turn this mere novice into a scholar of the Irish language and I would greatly appreciate your advice and contributions. I will restrict any questions I have on the language to this thread. Almost a blog. My mother would be so proud.
It seems then that that is enough of an introduction and that it’s time to get down to the questions and requests.
1. I am aware that Learning Irish is a serious and intense course of study. But I have read so much of the fruits it has brought in many a learner’s life—and its responsibility in causing pre-mature balding in many of those same learners—that I still wiish to tackle it. I am already stumbling at the first hurdle. Much of the grammatical terminology is going right over my head. Does anyone have a link to an explanation of common grammatical terminology all explained on the same page, to save me jumping about Google and interrupting my study every three minutes? And does anyone have a particular proposal on how to best make use of Ó Siadhail?
2. Bearing in mind that I also have Routledge’s Colloquial Irish 1, does anyone have a suggestion on how to best harmonise these two resources?
I think that’ll do for tonight.
Is mise Eóin. Cén chaoi a bhfuil sibh? 🙂
maybe what you need is an English Grammar – to explain the many terms common to lots of languages.
My daughter (in her 30s) got one recently to help her explain stuff to her kids.
or maybe there’s an online English Grammar.
(I’m assuming you’re a good bit younger than I am, and may not have done English Grammar in School. It’s a lot easier to grapple with Módh Coinniollach if you know what the Conditional is in your own language!)
eadaoin
eadaoin’s suggestion is a good one. Grammar terminology tends to carry over a lot between languages.
You might just be being funny, but the Irish language (and any other language for that matter) is staggeringly more complex than a bicycle wheel. I wouldn’t get your hopes up of this thread, or even this entire board, making you into a scholar or even a fluent speaker for that matter. Not trying to discourage you from your studies, but even if you read every thread ever posted on this board and understood it, you’d still have only taken a small bite out of the language.
I recommend to all learners to get good at using breis.focloir.ie, not only for its word definitions, but for the wealth of example phrases which draw from Irish literature and other sources and represents a treasure trove of authentic Irish richness. If one actually understood and internalized even half of the material contained in those dictionaries, they would have a more scholarly knowledge than most.
But then one would still have to learn to physically speak and understand the spoken language, which is a challenge for which there are no short cuts. All programs purporting to teach someone to speak a language fluently in X number of days are misleading: you can learn to have some ability in a language in a relatively short amount of time if you put in a lot of effort, but to really understand any significant percentage of what native speakers say takes a lot more time. For most “difficult” languages (i.e. languages that are significantly different from your mother tongue), one needs at least an estimated 700-900 hours of serious (i.e. productive, effective) training to actually become fluent. These numbers are based on research done on the subject.
Again, I say this not to discourage you, but so you have a realistic idea of how much work is involved. Expect that if you put in an hour a day, you probably won’t be even close to a “scholar” after 2 years.
That said, the site http://nualeargais.ie/gnag/gram.htm is one of the best comprehensive grammars available on the internet. It’s also very practical – it contains enough example sentences and structures that one could do a whole lot worse than learning that material by heart.
Dia dhuit, a Eoin! 🙂 (By the way, is it “Eoin” or “Eóin”? Usually, I’ve seen it spelt with a short “o”)
It depends on what your aim is when learning Irish. If you just want to be able to read it (you could draw an analogy with Latin and other dead languages here), then O’Siadail’s book will be perfect for you, because it really is structured like an old-fashioned Latin primer. But if your primary interest is in speaking the language, then I would definitely opt for a more communicative method like “Colloquial Irish” which encourages you to start making basic phrases from day one. What’s more, it doesn’t make excessive use of complicated grammatical terminology. In that case, you can use O’Siadhail as a reference book for getting more information on the nuts and bolts of Irish grammar. The web site mentioned by Héilics is also great.
Bail ó Dhia ar an obair! Tá mé ag tnúth le tuilleadh teachaireactaí uait.
Eoin, a chara,
I totally understood your bike analogy, simplified though it is, and I commend you for using that momentum to jump into learning Irish. I had a similar epiphany a few years ago which encouraged me in language learning. I had said to my 6yr.old daughter, ‘Oscail an doras,le do thoill,’ and she immediately got up and opened the door. I suddenly realised that no one had ever told her what this phrase meant, yet she had understood it. I also realised that, when I used the half dozen Irish phrases that I had, I didn’t have to translate them to and from English to understand them. They were just in there, part of my being. And this was what learning a language was all about. It was simply building on the cúpla focal that I had, and getting to the stage where they were so familiar to me that I didn’t need to think about what they meant.
From gaining that knowledge, to actually putting it into practice has taken me many years but I’ve recently got around to improving my Irish. A great inspiration to me has been Benny Lewis, aka Benny the Irish Polyglot. The fact that he’s Irish is purely coincidental. I stumbled across his website when I was searching out online Irish learning resources.
Benny doesn’t teach Irish, or any language for that matter. He simply writes about his language learning experiences and motivates people to grasp the nettle of their own particular target language. He travels the world, spending three months in a country, (because that is usually the amount of time his visa is valid for), and aims to become fluent in the language in that time. However, he maintains that in this, the age of international communication, it is not necessary to live in a country to immerse oneself in its language. He, himself, to prove this point, learned to speak Egyptian through the medium of French, while living in Brazil.
All that said, I am well aware that learning Irish is not the same as learning any other language, because resources are limited, and the opportunites for practice and immersion are slim. Nonetheless, I find Benny’s tips and methods very useful and they have certainly helped me accelerate my language learning. So, if you’re interested in checking Benny out – and I think you would find his methods very helpful – here are a few links:
Benny’s talk at TED, San Antonio, 2013 –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZqUeWshwMsAgain, TED, Warsaw, 2014 –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x2_kWRB8-ABenny’s website –
http://www.fluentin3months.com/– full of language learning tips, motivational videos and articles by various polyglots, forums where you can meet up with other language learners to practice your target language, and links to other useful websites.
So, sin é. Just go for it and you’ll be surprised at how much you can learn in a relatively short space of time.
Ádh mór ort,
Rua
Thank you for your advice and encouragement!
Never fear, I don’t for a moment think that this is going to be easy, but I am dedicated to learning the language. I’ve been keeping up with my studies though I’ve had to alternate to another resource. I’ve found a house in Donegal so I’ve moved to Tús Maith instead. If only Donegal had won the Sam…
A Eoin,
What part of Donegal will you be living in? I live in Donegal myself and it’s good to know that someone else is interested in learning Ulster Irish.
Incidentally, the aforementioned Benny Lewis recommends speaking from Day One. Even if you only have cúpla focal, he says you should use them whenever possible. He believes that beginning with intensive grammar grinds is counterproductive to actually speaking the language. I can definitely testify to that because all the studying just seems to leave me when I try to open my mouth. Cleachtadh, cleachtadh, cleachtadh.
If you haven’t already come across it, I recommend Fearghal Mag Uiginn’s ‘Giota Beag’ series. He teaches basic phrases and sentences which can be built on later, and help make the grammar easier to understand. Here’s the link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/irish/blas/learners/index.shtml
Each episode is only about fifteen minutes long so it’s easy to find the time to fit it into even a very busy day. Of course, you might be way beyond this series and if you are, then maith thú!
And, yes, it is a big pity that Donegal didn’t bring Sam home. Next year:)
Ádh mór,
Rua
Thank you for your advice and encouragement!
Never fear, I don’t for a moment think that this is going to be easy, but I am dedicated to learning the language. I’ve been keeping up with my studies though I’ve had to alternate to another resource. I’ve found a house in Donegal so I’ve moved to Tús Maith instead. If only Donegal had won the Sam…
So dedicated, in fact, that I did up and move to Ireland. I’m living in Galway now, right on the doorstep to the Gaeltacht (my original plan to emigrate to Donegal fell through).
I now spend much of my time trying to pronounce the pub names in this lovely little town… that’s an experience that makes Ó Siadhail look easy.
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