Nótaí galaxyrocker - Ancient Celtic Languages, (Old) French, Latin, Old English

[sfuqua]

Irish is so beautiful. It is sad what is happening to it.
The last time I was in Dublin, my daughter and I had a long talk with the 15-year-old beauty who gave us our Whoppers at the Burger King over on Parnell street. She hated Irish. One can't always expect the best judgement out of kids, but if many people feel this way about Irish, well, it is doomed.
Her points were:
1. Irish leads no where. It will never get you any money or jobs.
2. Irish is old-fashioned and uncool. The cool kids will laugh at you if you speak Irish.
3. Irish literature sucks. There is nothing worth reading.
4. Irish is not a world language. It will not connect you to the bigger world.
This young lady did not care a bit about Irish and would have rather spent the same time in school learning German, or French, or Spanish, or even Chinese.
She was ready to get on a plane the first chance she could get to go to California. I assured her that California sucks in its own way.

That young lady is around 20 to 21 now. I wonder if she is still in Dublin. I wonder if she ever developed even the slightest appreciation of the language of her ancestors.
I wonder if she is somewhere else in the world.
I wonder if she made it here to California.

[galaxyrocker]

Irish is so beautiful. It is sad what is happening to it.
The last time I was in Dublin, my daughter and I had a long talk with the 15-year-old beauty who gave us our Whoppers at the Burger King over on Parnell street. She hated Irish. One can't always expect the best judgement out of kids, but if many people feel this way about Irish, well, it is doomed.
Her points were:
1. Irish leads no where. It will never get you any money or jobs.
2. Irish is old-fashioned and uncool. The cool kids will laugh at you if you speak Irish.
3. Irish literature sucks. There is nothing worth reading.
4. Irish is not a world language. It will not connect you to the bigger world.
This young lady did not care a bit about Irish and would have rather spent the same time in school learning German, or French, or Spanish, or even Chinese.
She was ready to get on a plane the first chance she could get to go to California. I assured her that California sucks in its own way.

Sadly it is a common attitude. And a lot of those who care about Irish don't give two damns about traditional Irish. To them it's simply a marker to say "We're not British" and, well, as long as the words aren't obviously English who cares about the rest? It's actually something really on my mind recently as one of the ambassadors for this year's Seachtain na Gaeilge is someone who loudly and proudly proclaimed how happy she was with her "Dublin Irish" and how it's elitist to say Irish has sounds that English doesn't and people should learn them. That's the attitude that gets promoted by Conradh na Gaeilge (granted, they were built around catering towards upper middle class Dubliners and other urbanites, and I have several other issues with them).

Sadly that sentiment is common, though I can pick apart most of the points myself.

1. I literally work with Irish. Granted, it's not high paying, but it did get me a job at least. Which is great, especially with the tech slowdown currently.

2. It's starting to shift, as lots of upper middle class and upper class people send their kids to Gaelscoils. Sadly, it's not good Irish.

3. Cré na Cille is awesome. There's lots of wonderful stuff written in Irish. Mostly short stories, but even a few novels. That said, I don't read much modern stuff because I'm extremely picky (I want to verify the author either has really good Irish or was born and raised in a Gaeltacht, preferably Conamara), but it's there.

4. Sadly, this one is kinda right.

That young lady is around 20 to 21 now. I wonder if she is still in Dublin. I wonder if she ever developed even the slightest appreciation of the language of her ancestors.
I wonder if she is somewhere else in the world.
I wonder if she made it here to California.

What if she's serving you at your local Burger King in CA?

[galaxyrocker]

I'm here, I'm still doing stuff with language. I've come out of my funk, but just haven't really felt like I've had anything to log about. Just doing the usual reading and listening stuff, as well as work. Nothing special other than that, haven't finished any series or books so nothing to discuss there. While I liked the format I was using for my logs, I also think it put unnecessary pressure on myself at times. Reading, especially, though has slowed down as I'm trying to limit the number of things I read a day. I've too many books started and not enough finished so I'm focusing on one or two at a time now to narrow down my list of stuff going on. Hopefully that'll also clear up time for language study. I've been hosting a regular monthly trivia night in Irish though, and it's been going great. Gotta try to find some sponsors for the next few however, to hopefully have good prizes for everyone, otherwise we might ask for donations from the participants to go to the prizes (We're refusing to charge admission; we want it to be accessible to everyone).

Otherwise, can't say much. I do need to get some French speaking practice in still, haven't done much on working on pronunciation or active skills, which I'll really need to do if I do move to Brest. It's just a little difficult to be motivated when I'm unsure if I'll be moving yet. Have been looking at immersion courses in Brest though. They're reasonably affordable, so might see about doing that somehow, though I'm loathe to take my vacation days since I'd rather save them for Christmas and visiting America.

[DaveAgain]

Otherwise, can't say much. I do need to get some French speaking practice in still, haven't done much on working on pronunciation or active skills, which I'll really need to do if I do move to Brest. It's just a little difficult to be motivated when I'm unsure if I'll be moving yet. Have been looking at immersion courses in Brest though. They're reasonably affordable, so might see about doing that somehow, though I'm loathe to take my vacation days since I'd rather save them for Christmas and visiting America.

I tried some French biscuit immersion the other day, I can recommend Lu's le petit chocolat.

[księżycowy]

While I liked the format I was using for my logs, I also think it put unnecessary pressure on myself at times. Reading, especially, though has slowed down as I'm trying to limit the number of things I read a day. I've too many books started and not enough finished so I'm focusing on one or two at a time now to narrow down my list of stuff going on.

As much as I hate to admit it, that's me as well. I usually get to many things going at once. Wish I could say something other than, "solidarity."

[galaxyrocker]

It's been a while, though without much language learning stuff to report sadly.

1) I finished the 5,000 most common French word Anki. Working on reviewing them now, and have moved on to recall as opposed to recognition.

2) Kept working with Irish. Still working in Irish daily. I feel like my Irish (and my English) are getting worse because of it, but we'll see how it goes. I've my current job as a research assistant until the end of August, then I'll actually be working as a teaching assistant for a year, teaching Irish. I initially thought about applying to the position in Brest, but my current university offered me a spot so I'll stay here for another year. After that, we'll have to see what the deal is revolving around visa. There's a good chance I'll go to Brest as a student if a visa isn't available -- I keep regularly thinking about doing it as it's something personal (and, ideally, a PhD afterwards), but I don't necessarily intend to pursue a career in academia, so it mostly stays as that.

3) Kept doing Frenhc listening regularly, as well as reading. Not much, but I did keep up with it. I've found some youtube channels dealing with languages and more ancient history, etc. as well as the books written by Ludovic Richer, who does the Arcana series that I like.

I'm looking now at really getting back into improving my Irish and French. Moving to a teaching role, I'll have much more time during the week that I'll need to fill with hobbies and research, so language learning should hopefully be getting easier. Doubly so if I move closer to work, which I really hope to do even if I have to pay a bit more. An hour+ commute every afternoon on the most crowded bus in the city (airport bus!) is just awful and I'm completely dead by the time I reach home.

I also have to take two weeks vacation with the job switch, and have been highly tempted by another immersion course in France, probably in Brest. Though it's also tempting to go home to America. I've gotta tally the cost and see. I'm also considering looking at iTalki for French (and Irish, not that Patchy is back, since he likes to focus on pronunciation), as I'm decent enough at reading/listening and understanding grammar rules... but I never do any output. It's a real issue; I don't read or write, which makes recalling the rules all the more difficult despite the fact I theoretically "know" them from the reading/writing. Another reason to be skeptical of immersion-only helping you actually become well-balanced in the language (.i. improving your output skills). I'd prefer to do iTalki and private classes over courses with the local AF simply because I think it'd be more beneficial than going into a group of people, at least without full immersion in the target country.

Otherwise, with Irish, I did visit the Gaeltacht during the June bank holiday and barely spoke any English, so that was nice. Every time I start to get bored of Dublin, I need to make my way out there; it reminds me why I do love this country, even if I'll possibly be moving to France eventually for a masters/PhD (possibly after citizenship, who knows?). It's really a shame there's not anywhere good in Ireland (apart from UCC) that's good for the research I truly want to do (not that I've stuck with my overly ambitious goals of Latin, Old Irish and Middle Welsh...).

With reading, I'm still working on narrowing down the number of books I have started but haven't finished. Just for sanity's sake. Right now I've mostly got my French reading one, and one academic one (An Introduction to Metaphor), though I do sometimes read parts of a few others. Trying to sit down and finish them so I can move on to new ones. This again might all change once I start the new job, however.

That said, I do hope to give a talk at UCC on the research this autumn. Gotta work on getting that abstract written.

[tastyonions]

...but I never do any output. It's a real issue; I don't read or write, which makes recalling the rules all the more difficult despite the fact I theoretically "know" them from the reading/writing. Another reason to be skeptical of immersion-only helping you actually become well-balanced in the language (.i. improving your output skills).

I think input and increased comprehension do improve output eventually. It's a quite slow and uneven process, though. The more obvious and efficient way to make progress in output is to simply (big light bulb moment) practice output.

That's what I've started doing with my Greek in the last few days.

Good luck with tuning up your French and Irish.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Like your ever inspiring juggling act with money and languages. Best of luck in everything and every goal.

[galaxyrocker]

Like your ever inspiring juggling act with money and languages. Best of luck in everything and every goal.

Thanks!

In general, I have to say it's a very delicate act, especially as I'm starting to suspect I have chrometophobia, or a fear of spending money. It takes convincing for me to spend money on non-necessary stuff (barring old Irish language books), even if I can afford it and have the budget for it. Like flying home this summer... Food generally isn't a worry, nor are bills, but they cause more worry, which is annoying. I think part of it is that I'm worried about my visa here, if I don't get the hosting agreement next year I'll have to leave Ireland or go back on a student visa of some type (likely doctorate), which I really don't want to do because it doesn't count towards citizenship and unless i do a doctorate I can't get the graduate stamp again - but if I do the PhD, the two years I'll have put in already won't count towards citizenship because the PhD will take so long. At least, if I did my math correctly.

So I'm trying to save so that I can go to France as a backup if need be, since I really don't want to return to America at this point in time. It's all a big mess, as I want to travel more and do the lessons and other stuff, but it takes a lot to convince myself it's worth doing. All in all it's really not that fun lol.

[galaxyrocker]

Since we're quickly approaching two-thirds of the way through the year, I figured I'd stop and take some time to do a sort of review on (1) what my goals were at the beginning of the year and (2) what I'm actually doing now, and what issues I'm finding.


Looking back at my beginning of the year goals - oh how ambitious I was! How I thought I'd make good use of my spare time with regards to language learning, and how it didn't happen. Not only Irish and French, but adding Middle Welsh, Old Irish, Latin and possibly Breton! While I knew it probably wouldn't pan out, despite my scheduling, I never realised just how badly I'd fail at it. Which is to say, quite badly.

With regards to Irish, I use it daily, simply because I work with Irish. Though I feel my Irish is weakening at the same time. I can't get over my usual hurdles with pronunciation, though it's mostly because I don't work on it. I'm just lazy and want to improve without doing the work. But even other stuff, I just don't feel like reading/trying to learn more vocab or structures in Irish, or improving the accuracy of my Irish. Perhaps i really should pay for a course; I get so much more motivation through them than trying to work on my own. I'll go through periods of listening to the radio in Irish at work and not, so I am getting listening practice. I do go to Conamara as often as I can (though not as often as I'd like) and use it in real-life regularly. So Irish is generally pretty stable at a B2/C1 with English pronunciation. Not ideally what I'd like, but I'm comfortable with it.

French is in an even more difficult place. I read in French reasonably regularly, between slowly chipping away at a book I'm working on (Arcana, still) and news articles, Wikipedia or Discord servers. But I never get any practice speaking it, nor do I really ever get any listening practice. I just don't particularly want to sit and watch youtube videos, and don't really know people who speak it in real life (well, I know two native French speakers, but one wants to use Irish and the other English). I'm seriously debating getting a teacher on iTalki to help me work on pronunciation, and maybe that'll give me more motivation to watch shows/movies/youtube videos in the language. I'm not going to Brest this year, but will be teaching Irish at the university next school year, but Brest is definitely on the menu otherwise; Dublin just keeps getting more and more expensive and I don't know if it's worth staying here anymore, really.

I keep going on/off with both Middle Welsh and Old Irish. I've got the textbooks here with me, and have worked through a decent few lessons in each. Then I'll drop them for a while, then return, then drop. There's the issue that the phonology puts me off from learning, as I want to connect phonology to the orthography, but I struggle with making the sounds to begin with. This isn't as big an issue with Old Irish, since I can always substitute in Modern Irish pronunciation, even if it's not correct, but Welsh orthography is just so foreign to me. I really need to focus on these, since Brest is definitely still an option next year (granted, I've been saying this for two years now!), along with international school teaching, and I still want to do the ancient languages stream as opposed to the modern one, though I have been tempted by Modern Welsh recently. Mainly because the literary form is still very similar to Middle Welsh, though the colloquial forms are quite different. It's just tempting because it's so widely-spoken, comparatively, and natives still dominate. Plus, it'd be a short step to MW afterwards. The issue I have is there's a very specific type of textbook I'd like, and, well, most don't like this kind. Learning Irish is the perfect example. It's vocab lists, with IPA, then grammar points, then translation exercises and readings. All with audio. Sadly, most the beginning Welsh textbooks don't have really any of that (IPA is especially lacking). And the most-used textbooks are solely designed to be used with a class, not self-study, which makes them even worse.

Otherwise, I've dabbled some in other languages, all but one related to the possible PhD/research programme I'd love to do on comparative phraseology/metaphors in language use across Celtic languages and the languages they were in contact with, which led me to dabble in Old English for a bit. I've also considered taking up Malayalam. I've a lot of Malayali friends here in Dublin and, while they all speak English, even together, it'd be neat to learn and I probably won't have the chance again.

So, after reflection, I think I've realised my ideal way to learn languages. It's not comprehensible input, especially aural, as I'm not a fan of sitting down and watching/listening to stuff on Youtube. I have an ideal type of course I like, suiting my enjoyment of grammar and usage of the IPA. Ideally, I'd do that, then branch out to native content. Otherwise, classes, ideally in-country, would be ideal for me. After I get to a decent level, it's just a matter of using it, and that level can be gotten to in a matter of a few weeks with immersion-based courses. I might try iTalki and/or courses here in Dublin and see if they can mimic that, but, given the target audience, I feel they generally won't, and will be much slower. But even having a course on that I'm paying for motivates me to study more; I went well above and beyond when I was in France last year simply because I was motivated to do it more. It helped my motivation and discipline. I've got to find some way to overcome this, as it really feels like simply a lack of discipline. Probably involves completely turning off computer and phone and going entirely analog. Limit the distractions.

Otherwise, things are good. I'll be moving from research into teaching for the upcoming year and am excited to get back to teaching. It'll be interesting to see how university teaching compares to secondary school. With regards to the future, I'm still between three minds: staying in Dublin, going to Brest and international school teaching. The latter has a lot of draw as it'll give me good pay in low CoL places, let me explore the world and immerse myself in very different cultures and languages. It's really tempting, since I don't want to return to the States quite yet, though I feel that gets closer and closer. Dublin just gets more and more expensive and it's difficult to justify staying here, even if I'll be about 40% of the way towards Irish citizenship, which I think I'm willing to pass up. As for Brest, it's what I'd ideally do, but I'm also under no illusions about career prospects in Celtic studies in the academic lifestyle, which means I have to figure out what I'll do afterwards. Likely teaching, but then I worry my years off will harm my prospects, especially international school teaching. I'm not too worried if I move back home in America, cause I know how difficult they're struggling to find science/math teachers. Otherwise, I really need to get more hobbies here in Dublin. I've got to start/find some classes to attend, cause life just gets boring when all there is to do is drink after 18.00, especially when you're trying not to drink (as much). But that's neither here nor there, and hopefully it'll come now that I'm settled in a new house and will hopefully be getting a bike soon.


Anyway, that's my rant. Who knows when I'll post again, but it was interesting looking back on things overall and doing a full review on how I think I prefer to learn languages and how different that is from at least the generally marketed courses. Makes me think back to how I could've continued better after my Spanish immersion trips as well in order to progress at a faster pace, though pronunciation difficulties always demotivated me. But, you live and learn and we'll try to adapt that for the next time I attack Spanish (it'll likely happen, especially with international school teaching or if I move back to America) or whatever language(s) come(s) next.