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

[iguanamon]

So, with Japanese, I'm running into a very interesting issue: too many resources. ... yet I rarely hear about being complaining about too many resources. It makes me second guess whether I'm using the correct ones or not, and makes me lose my focus and want to move away. Which makes it harder to actually learn, since I want to just do the basics them move on to a new textbook. ...

This is one of the most common problems I see with self learners here on the forum for big languages. It's easy to be overwhelmed, lose focus and get stuck in an endless "flitting about like a hummingbird from course to course" feedback loop, which isn't good for progress. The thing is, no course is perfect. They all have issues and holes. Doing what you're doing with an audio only course (Pimsleur), a conversational, "grammar-lite", course like Assimil and a more thorough course like Genki seem to be a really good mix to me that will fill in the holes of each course.

...despite already being an advocate for classes, I now appreciate them all the more; not only does it keep you on track and give you instant feedback from a (hopefully) native/fluent speaker (and usually give you someone who you can practice with) it forces you to use one set of materials and that's it, so you don't have to worry about if you're using what's considered the 'best'.

In my experience and observation on the forum over the years, learners who seek perfection in courses are always disappointed. Spanish is a language for which I feel qualified to give advice to those who ask, as are many others. Assimil, FSI, Teach Yourself, Colloquial, Duolinguo, Memrise, Pimsleur, Learning Spanish Like Crazy, Michel Thomas, Destinos, Language Transfer- every single one of these courses has issues. Some are better than others and some work better with others. Still, a learner can learn something from each one of them. I've seen learners be pointed to good courses abandon them and try to find the next best thing, perhaps because of impatience, boredom or in thinking that the grass is greener on the other side because there are so many plausible alternatives available. "Ah, another course, that will do the trick!". Patience, consistency, persistence and faith are highly underrated qualities that I believe are essential to being a successful learner. Frist time, monolingual adult learners may not have these qualities and expect the course to keep them entertained and engaged. Experienced learners don't need a course to do that so much as their motivation comes internally from a desire to learn the language. They know and have faith that they will learn despite "boredom" and tediousness.

Are you presently armed with the right [audio] course? Unless your [audio] course was mislabeled and carries lessons in a language other than the one you’d like to learn, it’s a good learning aid. It may not be the best. It may be far behind the best, but so what? It will offer you words and phrases in your target language with native accuracy in pronunciation.

Farber is talking about audio courses. This quote can be expanded and adapted, I believe, to any course- not just audio, even non-perfect ones. I can learn, I have found, even from a non-perfect course. The key, in my experience, for me, is to "get stuck in there" (as the British say) and do it- consistently and persistently and try to fill in the holes. Consistency and persistence will get you through the drudgery if you believe that by doing so it will put you closer to learning how this language works and being able to speak it to some degree. That's what I mean by "faith". Your experience learning a less commonly studied, minority, language will be invaluable to you. You know how to get the most out of what you have already and how to fill in holes. Just try not to fall into "the grass is greener on the other side of the fence" trap. It usually isn't greener, just more grass.

Japanese learners can tell you more about specific resources and I'm sure you've done your research. This is, I think the first language you will have learned solely on your own (without a teacher). You can always use a skype tutor to work on pronunciation and basic grammar once or twice a month to give you some of that feedback you'd get from classes. It could be money well spent.

Good luck!

[Josquin]

Genki is an excellent resource for Japanese. I used it, too. I also thought I could use graded readers after finishing Genki II, but your level of Japanese probably won't be high enough yet. It might be better to use advanced courses like Minna no Nihongo or Tobira, or at least do one of them simultaneously with graded readers.

The problem with Japanese is the exotic grammar and kanji. There are some very easy readers that are already accessible to low intermediate students of Japanese (which you will be after completing Genki II), but you won't know more advanced constructions nor enough kanji to read more advanced stuff. I didn't really follow through with studying Japanese after completing Genki II, so more advanced people might have better advice.

[galaxyrocker]

So it's been a busy couple o' days for me. I've completed the first chapter of Genki, book and workbook, and generally feel confident with my passive ability. I can understand the words if I hear them, though the greetings and a few other structures are still difficult for me to produce on my own. I'll probably spend a day reviewing those before moving on to chapter two. I am pretty sure I have the hiragana down, which is awesome for me, as I hate pure memorization of things, so the dedication to learning to write them was great. But, again, another day to cement them and review will do me wonders. But, I have to say, I'm really liking Genki, especially the workbook. It has good listening exercises, and even some writing exercises and such.

As for Irish, I read a story about the killing of pigs. The storyteller went into detail about how the pig was fed, then how it was tricked into being killed, then how they got rid of all the hair, how long they let it hang for the blood to dry, and how they pickled it. He also talked about the celebrations that would follow, and how he hoped to never see a pig killed again. It was interesting, and is definitely a good story from a time gone by for most people. He also talked about some phrases from the process that have come into daily use for other things. I'm going to quote a provide a translation below:

Bhaintí níos mó usáid as an bhfocal grátáil ná grátáil na muicfheola. Dhá mbeadh duine ann a bheadh th'réis druimeáil nó breicneáil bhuailte fháil, déarfaí 'fuair sé a grhátáil' nó sin déarfadh daoine eile 'cuireadh an salann garbh sa gcaiceann aige'

'More use was gotten out of the word grátáil (grate, as in grating a potato, or the hair off a pig) than the grating of pork (literally 'pig meat'). If a person was there who had just gotten a drumming (my guess; I asked a native speaker about this) or a "struck drumming" (i.e. a trouncing), it is said "He got his grating" or others would say "The rough salt was put in his skin."' (Talking about the salt that was used to pickle the pig)

[galaxyrocker]

I like to vent, and that's what this post will mostly be. I do also hope it sparks some discussion about the future of minority languages and language evolution and such.

/rant

So, I hate trying to find online material for practicing my Irish. So many people learn it and post stuff online that generally the quality is piss-poor. This wasn't so bad when I was a beginner, but now that I'm on the B2/C1 cusp (depending on which metric you use, I'm one or the other; B2 by the TEG, C1 by the 'diploma' courses, which are easier) I can pick out this bad Irish, and at times it seems that's all there is. Even on TG4 do you get the non-native speakers who make simple pronunciation errors, yet never get called out on it. And it's compounded even worse on the Irish radio stations that are generally ran by non-native speakers (I'm not going to call it any of the generally-used names because, to me, that seems to justify them classifying it as a different "dialect" when really it's just crappy Irish), when they clearly don't make distinctions that native speakers do. I recommend this forum thread, started by Josquin, to any who are interested in what's involved with that. But, it frustrates the shit outta me when they claim theirs is just as good and flood the internet with it. It makes it really hard to get access to good resources, though thankfully I know where to look for most of the dialects. Sadly, beginners don't, and so are likely to use Duolingo or other shoddy methods and use crappy listening videos and such. It creates, as my teacher said a fáinne fian (vicious circle) where the mistakes keep getting propagated.

And, to top it off, you have a certain user on Duolingo who is quoted as saying that he wishes native speakers would just "F off" and let the majority of "speakers" change the language. This is also the same user who said I'm unsympathetic to shitty Irish because I didn't undergo the "trials and tribulations" of learning it in school in Ireland -- as if that's a valid excuse! (It might also come as no surprise that this guy is also vehemently anti-descriptivist, and even complains that I think native speakers are the perfect model in English as well as Irish!) But, sadly, this attitude is common; the attitude that the Irish of learner's is just as good as that of native speakers because they're "trying" and are "fluent" and such. Like the one lady that Josquin mentions that refuses to listen to Raidio na Gaeltachta (native speakers) because she can't understand them, listening instead to the non-native radio stations. Yet this lady wants to claim her Irish is on par with a native speaker!

One other I'd like to add is the seeming contradictory beliefs of most non-native "fluent" speakers. They decry te use of English words, making up words that no native speaker would use in their place (and oftentimes not obeying Irish word formation rules or syntactical meanings!). Yet the irony is that a lot of their grammar and pronunciation is directly imported from English. Yet they don't see that. I had a discussion about this the other day and why I think it is -- basically because of how they're taught. The teachers don't have a high enough level of Irish to know when they're using English grammar instead of Irish, and so it gets passed on to the pupils. Same with pronunciation. Yet English words are easy to tell, so the teachers can easily decry those as being "inauthentic". Again, it's a vicious circle.

There's also the people who claim they speak a native 'dialect' because they grew up in an area, even when their highly anglicized Irish doesn't have any resemblance to the dialect of the area. I had a guy tell me a couple days ago that he spoke "Munster" Irish, but when I asked him for a sentence that easily demonstrates some of the most salient features of the dialect, he replied in the standard. I wish these people would realize that doesn't constitute a "dialect". The sentence was "They forgot." He responded with Rinne siad dearmad, which is perfectly correct int he Standard (and, ironically enough, one of the other dialects), but the true Munster form would have been (Do) dheineadar dearmhad, even down to the spelling. Needless to say he had never even heard of deineas (or rinneadar which is used in some sub-dialects instead), though he did say he pronounced it as dearmhad.

And these people often vastly overestimate their ability. I had one guy tell me he was B1/B2 and yet he couldn't even say "I am a teenager" correctly!

And, lastly, I hate, hate, hate the stupid phrase Is fearr Gaeilge bhriste ná Béarla cliste (Broken Irish is better than clever English) which is often, ironically, written as ... Gaeilge briste (i.e. in "broken Irish"). It's gone from being encouragement to practice Irish to being an excuse to speak crappy Irish because, hey, "at least it's not English." and people often use it as a copout of actually getting better at Irish, even when they are interested in the language.

It just is really frustrating, and I really don't have much hope for the future of Irish.

/rant

well, that's my rant, and hopefully that's all I'll rant about it in this thread. I'd love to hear other people's experiences on learning minority languages, and I expect the situation with Irish is quite unique, shared by only the other Celtic languages (I know Breton is in a similar, though worse, situation, and Scottish Gaelic is about the same as Irish). But I'm sure there's always issues of learning minority languages, and I'd like to hear about it.

I also know I sound like an old crudmudgen, but I really do like to see people learning Irish. I just want to see then learning proper Irish, and not the crap they do speak. I encourage people to speak, but I also encourage people to be open to corrections from native speakers and such. sadly, they're often not.

[galaxyrocker]

So I haven't done much in the past two weeks, at least on the Genki side of things. I've kinda been distracted with other things, such as job hunting, the holidays, new video games, etc, though I do try to at least read the grammar and vocab sections every day. Now that Thanksgiving is past, I'll likely be getting back into it soon and might finish Chapter 2 and get the katakana memorized by the end of the weekend. That's my plan, anyway.

However, I have been reading in Irish some, and am slowly working my way towards the end of the book. I really just need to sit down and read, instead of only doing a few pages at a time. I wish it was on my Kindle, as then I could take it with me while I walked! I also came across a sale on Litríocht.com where, if you buy 100€ worth of books, you get free world wide shipping. Since the shipping generally costs more than the books, and I had some disposable income to spare, I went ahead and bought 10 of them. 8 were for rounding out my collection of "Must Read Irish Novels", though I still lack a few, and the other two were seanchas (kinda similar to old stories) that I've heard are written in the dialect and haven't been transferred to the standard; both focus on the dialect area I'm working on learning. Overall, a great haul.

Also, for anyone who is learning Irish, I recommend THe Irish Language Book Club group on Facebook. It's a great place to work on reading (well, translating) Irish, and can be useful for beginners, which is what they target. They're starting two new books in December, so feel free to hop in before then!

[moo]

Well done, keep up the good work, I'm impressed, makes me wanna pick up Irish again, have forgotten soooo much

[moo]

Sorry to hear things were tough, did you get to do your masters in the end?

[moo]

Sorry to hear things were tough, did you get to do your masters in the end?

[galaxyrocker]

Well done, keep up the good work, I'm impressed, makes me wanna pick up Irish again, have forgotten soooo much

Go for it! I actually wrote a long post on /r/gaeilge about why to avoid Duolingo. However, I gave plenty of other good (free and paid) resources to allow the person to get started. Maybe you'll find it interesting.

Sorry to hear things were tough, did you get to do your masters in the end?

Unfortunately I wasn't. It just didn't work out where I was able to get to back to Ireland after everything happened. Such is life, I guess. Now I'm just doing whatever I can to find a job over there.

[moo]

Unfortunately I wasn't. It just didn't work out where I was able to get to back to Ireland after everything happened. Such is life, I guess. Now I'm just doing whatever I can to find a job over there.

Cool, best of look, do you want a job where you would use Irish or is it English jobs you're looking at?

Thanks for the link, i'll definitely have a look, may make it a new year's resolution to brush up though I was thinking Chinese could be my new year's resolution