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

[tomgosse]

Bonjour mes amis,
@galaxyrocker and @geoffw

Thank you for your kind words. Yes, the comment section on YouTube is a cesspool. I shouldn't have let the comments get to me, but they did.

Last night I gave some serious thought to starting up with Irish again. I decided that because of limited time and energy I can only concentrate on one language at a time, and for now that will be French. My own goal is to finish French In Action and pass an A1 test by next Spring. Irish will be on my short list for the next language to study.

I will continue to follow your progress in both Irish and French.

Please feel free to read and comment on my own log, and befriend me.
Wish you all the best,
Tom

[galaxyrocker]

I finished An Fear a Phléasc today, reading the last story. It was an interesting collection of stories. There were quite a few I really enjoyed, but there were also a few I found fairly mediocre. I did really enjoy the fact that the majority of the book was written in Connemara Irish. While it didn't do the spelling, such things as variant plurals and grammar structures were used, which was nice because I didn't know the difference in a lot of the plurals.

Not sure what book I'll pick next, but I do know I am likely to take at least a day break to just ponder this one and rest my mind.

I've also been steadily doing Assimil. I'm fixing to start having a 30 minutes commute to work, so it's likely I'll just replay it over and over in the car on the way to work, since I hate morning radio shows (I listen to the radio for music, dammit, not talk!). Just steadily going through the passive phase with it.

[geoffw]

So, I've finally told wanderlust off and chosen a third language: French. I bought Assimil's New French With Ease as well as Schaum's French Grammar outline, and can't wait for them to come in.
...
Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to get started consuming native materials as soon as possible, as well as interacting with natives. Should I start this during Assimil, or wait until I'm finished. Keep in mind I'd also like to be working on my Irish as well, though that'll be mostly reading, listening, and chatting with native speaker friends of mine.

Ah, I see now you're using NFWE. Great course! It was my first Assimil course, and it really helped me get off the ground in French (the first language I learned "properly" as an autodidact, depending how you count). Not to recommend this or not, but I found myself drifting away from NFWE about half way through (lessons in the 60s or so get a bit frustrating), and I spent all my time reading native-oriented materials (initially Harry Potter, because that's what I do, but lots of other stuff too). I eventually came back to Assimil after a month or three and found it much easier at that point, and I was able to finish it.

You could spin it as me being lazy and easily distracted...or having the genius to know intuitively how to succeed without really trying. <shrug> Just keep doing something, whatever it is.

[galaxyrocker]

So, just a quick update. I'm still slowly trudging along with Assimil. I went for a few days without using it last week, but I've picked it back up and plan to be consistent with it this week, including listening to it a few times in the car on the way to work. I've also just realized that I have a book that has short Irish interviews, as well as transcripts of them in all three dialects, so I put that on my phone and will use it during lunch and breaks.

I also found the program Blas available free online. It's all in Irish, but apparently contains plenty of exercises to train your ear and speaking to the minute differences between broad and slender consonants. I'll give it an in-depth look over the weekend and possibly write out a review. I do know it contains speakers of all three dialects.

Furthermore, I started reading Pádraic Ó Conaire's Deoraíocht. This is the first one I've started from that 'best Irish novels' list I mentioned way back on the first page. It's quite interesting, though I'm not very far in. It's also quite short, which I must admit is nice, as I can see my progress easier.

I do have French In Action, but I also haven't gotten a chance to use that. Sadly, I'm just not devoting enough time to the language as I think I should be. I really need to step up my game.

[galaxyrocker]

I've finished Deoraíocht and am taking my customary day off before I start my next Irish novel. I'm also going to start doubling down in hopes of retaking the B2 test next Spring to get a high enough score to let me enroll in a Masters program through Irish. To do so, I'm going to keep up with my reading habits, as well as start transcribing audio, instead of just listening to it. I'm also going to read through a website a former professor sent me about writing in Irish. This website is great, because it includes a section where you have to correct the mistake -- something which appears on the TEG itself.

As to French, I'm through lesson 38 on Assimil, and think I'm going to start paying a native to tutor me, once my next paycheck comes in Friday. I took the idea of starting soon from someone who posted it on Reddit, and do think it'd be more beneficial to work with a native speaker while doing Assimil and other stuff on my own.

Ádh mór oraib ar a (bhur) gcuid staidéir!

[galaxyrocker]

So, for lack of a better word, I've been absolutely shitty at keeping up these past few weeks. It's not that I haven't had time, but I haven't had the discipline. I keep reading other things when I know I should be reading in Irish, or working on French. Or, worse yet, I sit aimlessly and refresh ALLF and Reddit and Duolingo. But, I don't do Duolingo lessons! Instead, I aimlessly refresh to see if anyone needs help in the Irish forums. And it's not just language learning that's being affected, but other things such as personal programming projects and tutorials. I really, really need to get disciplined and stick it up.

That said, I haven't done absolutely nothing. I'm generally chatting in Irish with a native speaker friend daily, or every other day, and I have been working through Schaum's French Grammar in the verb section, since I believe starting with conjugations is one of the best ways to start learning and using grammar. I've also recently got back in touch with a Quebecois friend, and hope to speak French some with her in the future, as well as using it on HelloTalk. I might even start using Duolingo for it, though I tend to not be the biggest fan of Duolingo - though whether that's due to Duolingo itself or the "Cult of Duolingo", I really can't say.

I have gotten three new Irish books in the mail today, however. Only one is actually reading material, Seanchas Jimmí Chearra Chois fharraige - which is a collection of stories by a speaker of my chosen dialect. And, what's more, it was left written in the dialectal form, with an appendix explaining things! Now, he doesn't speak the particular subdialect I like (which, apparently, there's no resources for apart from natives!), but it's still about as close as I can get and will be good practice regardless. I've also picked up a huge verb book, which details dialectal forms, as well as the Dinneen dictionary, which helps since I'm reading older novels that often have words that can't be found in Ó Dónaill. I've also already got my next Irish purchase matched out, likely for December, which involves two books about idioms and native ways of saying thing - one written in the early 20th century (Which is likely to be less English-influenced) and a modern one, as well as a book about another subdialect in the area I speak. Granted, the last one is mostly for reference purposes.

Also, with all that said, and since I mentioned something about a resource dump, I'm going to dump a bunch of online resources for Irish I've found and have saved as bookmarks. I'll leave a little review if I've used them. I'll also try to keep it to legal stuff, but if something slips through, please tell me and I'll remove it.

• Basic Irish by Nancy Stenson -- Google Book's copy of it, so some pages won't be available, of course. I really liked this. Stenson does a good job at providing exercises (and answers!) to help solidify grammar points.
  
• Abair -- A good text-to-speech that tries to use native speakers and phonemes. Some words are really good (the ones natives recorded), others aren't (the ones where it just chooses phonemes to make the word). It's nice, however, because it can do full sentences and such. They also just added a new dialect to it.
  
• Gramadach na Gaeilge - I've mentioned this before. It really can't be beat for online grammars in English (or German!)
  
• Vifax Hosted by Maynooth University, this little tool is for listening comprehension. It takes a section of Nuacht TG4 (one of the few non-subtitled shows) and has you listen to it then answer questions. Also contains answers and a transcript of the audio.
  
• The prepositional pronouns - This little site contains the pronouns as said by native speakers. It's nice if you really want to learn Irish as she's used, and not as some fake 'standard'

[galaxyrocker]

So, I've come to a realization about myself: I do much better with language-learning in a class setting. That's how I initially started Irish, and my teachers were also great about encouraging me to practice with them and other people outside of class. It also gave me a reason to stay dedicated.

And, in case you couldn't tell from above, I'm still not having much luck staying disciplined in my language-related activities. Irish is the easiest, because I do it roughly every day, chatting with friends and reading news (an Irish-language news site is actually unblocked at my work, so when I get downtime, I flip over there to read). My listening still definitely needs some work, as does speaking, but that's whatever at this point.

As to French, I feel a lot of it just comes from the fact I don't use it or really have a foreseeable use for it. I currently live in a rural area, and I don't know any French-speaking people, and haven't really been able to find any. The local schools generally only offer Spanish, so that makes it even harder as well as I can't ask if there's any speakers around. I could do online classes, and I don't know why I'm not, but I'm just not feeling it. This does kinda make me sad, as French was the first foreign language I ever studied (way back in high school) and I do want to be able to speak it. I'm just not disciplined enough at the moment.


And, on top of all of that, I'm starting to experience wanderlust and interest in Japanese. There's multiple reasons for this, but in the end it boils down to the fact that if I haven't been disciplined enough to do French, I'm sure as hell not going to be able to do Japanese, even though I do have more immediate opportunities to use it. I do have some resources for it, so I could start, but I also feel bad about giving up on French.

I'd appreciate any advice on how y'all discipline yourselves, though I think, honestly, it all comes down to something Iguanamon said: You have to have a need for the language and be able to interact with it.

Also, I do have Pimsleur, and any advice on how to suffer through it would be appreciated. I just find it so slow, but think it might help get my speaking up which might encourage me to use French (or Japanese if I pursue it) more.

[sctroyenne]

Don't worry if you're just not feeling it. I had many false starts with Spanish and Irish before finally managing to complete courses: I think I finally got somewhere with Spanish about 2 years after I declared my intention to study and it took me about a year after I ordered Irish courses to complete one and start studying it more seriously. Not to mention delays in following through with specific plans concerning my French study.

In the case of Spanish I remember distinctly sitting in my apartment in France bored one night and pulling out my Easy Spanish Reader book. I felt so motivated by the fact that I could get through it and make out what was written (though it got progressively harder) that it spurred me to continue with courses.

The spark may just come later. Or maybe you can try a similar technique and start off with something more "fun" before launching into more serious study: easy readers/bilingual readers, French in Action, Téléfrançais, etc or whatever floats your boat.

[galaxyrocker]

Thanks sctroyenne,

I do think I'm just going to lay off and not worry about it. I might keep dabbling with the exercises in my grammar book, but I do think I'm also going to dabble some with Japanese. Maybe try Pimsleur for both, and just see what happens.

[tangleweeds]

I've had to learn this one the hard way, but negative feelings about not doing things as planned don't help me get stuff done. If you're interested in Japanese and have a use for it in your life, but no need for French any time soon, don't let French guilt drain the energy you have right now for Japanese. I studied Japanese at university (my brother has lived there for decades); it's fascinating but HUGE, and any momentum used building good foundations would be energy well spent.