Learning Irish, the best book for learners of real live Gaelic. South Connemara dialect.
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- Опубліковано 28 сер 2024
- An excellent book, well laid out with the actual same Gaelic that's spoken by the people in Spiddal and surrounding areas, a stone's throw from Galway city.
Cois Fharraige.
Micheál Ó Siadhail.
I’ve got a copy of that book that I bought in Ireland in 1987. I’m using it along with Duolingo and screening episodes of Ros na Rún to learn Gealge at the moment. It’s a great book, very well put together.
Conas a d’imigh sin?
I only saw Scottish Gaelic on duolingo, do you notice it to be helpful in learning Irish Gaelic? Have you noticed much a large difference in the two?
@@garlandthompson5970 They say that ot takes a day for a speaker of one to be able to understand someone speaking the other, but to be able to speak it themselves takes a lot longer. To me, they're quite different.
@@garlandthompson5970 There are differences in spelling, idiom, and pronunciation between Irish and Scottish Gaelic. The Duolingo Irish course has digital voices that have very Anglicized pronunciation. It might make sense to do both of the Duolingo courses so you can get an ear for correct Gaelic (Irish or Scottish) pronunciation from the Scottish course and use the Irish course for grammar.
Hi Patchy, I've really been enjoying your videos on how to learn the Irish language. I've been learning it on and off for yonks with very slow progress over the years but have decided to take it back up and have come across your videos.
I find your emphasis on pronuncation especially interesting given its importance to the grammar of the language, as well as being one of the key differences between natively-spoken Gaeltacht Irish and the New Urban Irish spoken by L2 speakers outside the Gaeltacht.
I've a background in learning euskera and my experience was very frustrating to find language materials that used euskera batua (I see you live in Spain yourself but, in case you don't know, it's basically the An Caighdeán Oifigiúil of Basque) to be essentially useless when I tried to understand people in native-speaking areas of Gipuzkoa. The dialects are so wildly different and I essentially just wanted a book that taught the dialect of that area. Given that experience I'm quite excited to have a go at a book that teaches a native dialect of Irish.
Anyway, I've started the slow laborious process of adding all of the vocab from Learning Irish to memrise along with the audio. I'm sure someone else could do this with some code in minutes but I'm not blessed with such skills.
Anyway, link to it here should you find of it any use for your students.
app.memrise.com/course/6395853/micheal-o-siadhails-learning-irish/
Fantastic videos, keep it up!
You're very kind, James (or whatever your name is, as you don't say or sign off with it, so I'm probably wrongly deducing from the letters included in the thingy at the top of your message).
I know very little about Bask (except how to say and spell it correctly in the languages I DO speak), but I do have a friend here who speaks it natively, having been born and reared in Biscay.
Imho… best Irish Connemara book..
Go raibh maith agat 💚❤💛 Obrigada!
Nice one! Very interesting!
Patchy, what text or course would you recommend for Ulster Irish and are there texts that cover Antrim Irish, as that was the dialect I was taught as a teenager, over 50 years ago.
I just got the book. Both of my grandparents spoke Gaelic, one was from Carna, the other from Sneem. I'm assuming the book will teach me the dialect of my grandfather from Carna. The problem is these words look very difficult to pronounce without proper audio to back it up. I assume learning a language is like boxing, you don't want to start off learning the wrong way.
Thank you for this great recommendation! I got my hands on the book and I was wondering about whether the phonetic spelling was still accurate? Since it is older, there might have been some changes in IPA since then
@@mikkos4261
They use a form of International Phonetic Alphabet adapted for Gaelic, making it easier, more streamlined for use with the system of dual consonants, the broads and the slenders clearly differentiated at a glance, so I don't think any updates would affect the book's efficiency.
Just listening to the audio while reading the phonetic script will soon have you understanding it, to then know the sounds just upon reading it.
This skill can then be used with so many other books, for example the ones mentioned in my latest review on here.
Just ordered... 😩 hopefully the last Irish language text I need...
Hi Patchy, I've started using this book and like it very much. But as a foreign learner, would me speaking this "h-less" dialect sound funny to the ears of a native speaker, whether in other parts of Connemara outside of Cois Fharraige, or outside of Connacht in general? (I'm guessing that the h-less dialect in the book is not the majority dialect in Connemara, but please correct me if I'm wrong.) Thanks, and thanks for all your other videos. Tom
Hi Tom.
Thanks for your interest and kindness.
First of all, anybody learning a new language is a foreign learner, as the language is foreign to them at first.
Now, I don't see your ever speaking with a Spiddal pronunciation causing any problems to other speakers, as most people are familiar with that variety, very often heard on the media.
On the contrary, it would be a great triumph if you could one day manage to speak the Gaelic this book expounds.
It's not quite the majority dialect, but all Connemara Gaelic sounds quite similar, with the degree to which the H sounds are pronounced varying from region to region, but never as strong in Connemara as in, say, Joyce Country or neighbouring Mayo.
Again, not as conventional or comprehensible a pronunciation as most, but never a problem, and I commend your effort and wish you success in one day reaching your goal.
I have a couple of students who've decided to learn this dialect with me, using this book.
Nuair a bhí mé óg chaith mé tamall maith ar Ghaeltacht Chonamara sa Spidéal.
My great grandfather was a native speaker who migrated from Uachtard Ard Co Galway near Lough Corrib in the 1920s during the civil war. Would he have spoken this dialect?
Yes, unfortunately Gaelic is now no longer spoken in Oughterard (in Gaelic: "Uachtar Ard"), but it is almost in the same region, so I reckon it would have been like 95% the same, very like the way it's still spoken by some very few natives in Moycullen, for example that very experienced and highly acclaimed Gaelic writer from there, whose name now escapes me, but I'm pretty sure his surname is Walsh ("Breathnach", in Gaelic).
However, looking at it on the map now, his Gaelic would also probably have had just as many nuances of the version still spoken in Cornamona and Maam, which is much more like Mayo Gaelic, so probably 95% like them too, as South Connemara and Cornamona (Joyce Country) are probably only like 90% alike, so I guess your grandad would have spoken a halfway variety between them.
Are there any recordings of him speaking?
Have you visited these places?
@@patchy642 Thank you so much for responding! I never met him. He passed before I was born. His daughter (my grandmother) raised me in California but she could only say her prayers in Irish. And I think she just had them memorized phonetically. I don't think she actually knew each word.
She told me stories about him and his brother who was executed in a workhouse in Taum along with a others the year she was born. When she passed, I did our genealogy. Because my mother and her siblings had this funny idea that she made up the story about her uncle. But it turns out she absolutely did not make it up.
They named the Uachtard Ard GAA team after him. And the Oughterard heritage website has a page dedicated to him.
I also got in contact with my mother's cousin from New York who heard the same stories from her parents growing up, always knew they were true, and had been to Oughterard. But I haven't visited yet myself. I'm going this summer for the first time!
@@wrensandroses Great!
Yes, it's not unusual for such traumatic or dramatic ancestral stories when you're of Irish stock.
My predecessors had similar stories they've told, as have I, which we've often put into song and poetry (for example:
#SoundCloud
on.soundcloud.com/YPRii ).
Feel free to reach out to me on Italki if you want to get to grips with your ancestral language, and learning with me we could have you conversational for your visit, using all and only the correct sounds, so that whatever little you may say will sound like native Gaelic.
@@patchy642 go raibh maith agat! will do! That was my goal actually. I'm taking a zoom class through gaelchultur currently. And Im doing the buntús cainte lessons on memrise. I also just ordered this book from you recommendation. Although, as you said, I heard people don't speak it in Oughterard anymore. But I will be in Galway city too. And can visit Cois Fharraige.
@@wrensandroses Congrats for your effort, and I wish I could have the confidence to be happy for you, but unfortunately bitter experience shows that in my estimation over NINETY percent of teachers of Gaelic on line do not pronounce the sounds correctly, for several reasons, so my first reaction is: "UH-OH!"
Obviously I've not heard your teacher, and shouldn't assume, but I do know those statistics, so here's a suggestion which will do us both a favor: quietly and discretely book a full immersion session with me on Italki, and if the sounds you hear during our session are familiar to you, then you've nothing to worry about your current program, as your teacher therefore has exposed you to them, and you carry on there, sure in the knowledge that you're not being mistaught.
On the other hand, if what I pronounce and have you repeat sound and seem new and foreign to you, that means your Gaelic teacher is doing you the usual disservice of having the students pronounce and learn Gaelic with only English phonemes, ensuring that down the line when you eventually meet the natives, within seconds of speaking to one, they can never take you seriously.
It's just a suggestion to protect yourself against that 90+% of charlatan Gaelic teachers, I kid you not!
Either way, best of luck.
If the book is so good, couldn't you use it as a base for a book on your dialect? I mean, as long as the author is ok and you give proper credit, you could use the same or similar examples/format/strategies but fir your dialect.
thanks😊
Do you take online classes? Where can we find out further information?
Italki.
Sorry, is this the Connacht Irish dialect since it's from Connemara or is it something different?
It's a Connacht dialect... there are lots of different dialects there.
Has anybody put the audio for the text on the Internet? Nothing is more frustrating than learning pronunciation from writing.
Hi patchy would you know of any resources for the Munster dialect I have a newer copy of the book you shown but would like to learn the Munster dialect aswell 👍👍
Sure.
They're quite different.
Let me know what you think of the following, another book from back in my century.
archive.org/details/TeachYourselfIrish/TYI1961/
Hi Patchy would you discuss how to make the best use of this book?
Sure.
You've got thirty-odd chapters to work through, each with its exercises at the end.
There are, unfortunately, some misprints among these and their answers, but even so, you'll soon come to intuitively spot the errors.
So, these chapters and their exercises take you from zero to something very like fluent, if you digest them well, and use and reuse what you learn along the way, that is to say, ideally you find Gaelic-speakers to practice with, if only light conversation, and lots of listening to the excellent Gaelic radio station, Gaeldom Radio ("Raidió Na Gaeltachta", it's called in Gaelic), especially their programs with lots of Connemara speakers ("Iris Aniar").
You could set yourself the goal of processing one full chapter per week, which includes always revising previous chapters every time doubts arise, and always drilling the audios lots, what's known as 'shadowing'.
That's thirty-odd weeks.
Incredible to think, but this book can pretty much take you to fluency in less than a year!
@@patchy642 hi Patchy thank you so much for the detailed response, it will be very helpful, I’m currently working through the big book, it’s a long course book with lots to learn for sure! Do you still do online lessons? Thanks again!
@@patchy642hi Patchy again, further to your comment above, you mentioned radio na Gaeltachta, I have listened to this in the past, but is there a lot of benefit to listening to the Irish even though you don’t understand everything or would a student be better off, instead of listening to rng, listening to the audio from the learning Irish over and over?thanks again Patchy, I am curious as to your responses”.
@@EnglishCassettes
Of course.
I'm on Italki.
I’ve heard that the dialect of Clare Island in County Mayo is closer to Classical Irish. Would you teach that?
Unfortunately Clare Island Gaelic died out about a hundred years ago, and we have no audio and almost no written record of it, apart from some very brief lists of plant and animal words in the Clare Island Survey, published over a hundred years ago. That said, we know it was about 98% the same as the versions currently spoken on the Mayo mainland, still extant in several regions, all considered to be among the most conservative (or closer to the classical Gaelic spoken over all the country previously, before the more outlying areas started to diverge so much) in their pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.
@@patchy642 So does the dialect of Toormakeady, County Mayo still exist? And do you teach Mayo dialect online?
@@robinmackey4102 Yes indeed, that very one.
You can find me on Italki.
I shall look for it then. Go raibh maith agat!
The best irish is munster, its got all the old forms
Native Munster Irish is on the verge of collapse, sadly. There are only a few thousand speakers left in all of Munster who speak it at a native, natural level, and fewer still who are passing it on to children within the home. Connacht Irish has more than three times as many native speakers.
I wonder why the author called it Learning Irish, but you keep calling it Gaelic.
The separatist government that came into power a hundred years ago decided to discourage the use of the traditional name of the language, to create a feeling that its wellbeing is secured if they give it a name that makes it sound fully national and institutional, a trend which, maybe partly because it made them feel virtuously included ("If it's now called Irish, like us, then we've somehow contributed, so no need to bother using or learning it"), soon caught on in English-speaking urban regions, from Dublin steadily radiating westwards.
It didn't catch on so quickly in the most remote areas, where the people didn't bother so much with politics and new trends, especially if many of them rarely used English language, as; thinking nobody really actually spoke it; those Dublin policy-makers never thought to rename it within the language itself ["Éirinnis"].
So, in order to get any tax breaks or grants for anything published, the authorities will only cooperate if the author goes by their guidelines.
Calling it by its traditional old name is too much of a reminder that it's a minority language in imminent danger of extinction.
Amadach. Gaeilge a muineadh trí Béarla.
In English, please, the better to understand you.