Not all those who wander are lost

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sfuqua
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Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
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Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sun Oct 21, 2018 6:43 pm

I study languages for fun, and I recently figured out that I am very bored with the approach and the languages I have been studying. I don't look forward to my "language time" and if I don't enjoy it, why am I doing it? I can't even be bothered to update my old log. I'm going to take a break from anki, extensive reading, watching and half understanding TV shows and movies. I'm going to take a break from Spanish and French.

I've decided to spend a few weeks, or a few months, or a few years, or a few lifetimes, studying Irish.

Right now I am exactly one hour into Irish, and I feel great. I'll write more about my background and my current approach in my next post later today.

I absolutely welcome suggestions and advice.
Last edited by sfuqua on Thu May 30, 2019 9:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
19 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

Xmmm
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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby Xmmm » Mon Oct 22, 2018 6:14 am

About Irish I know nothing, but am the proud owner of all three books of Buntús Cainte. I have read on the Daltai board that using Buntús Cainte, in conjunction with Progress in Irish, is one of the most tried and true paths through the Irish language quagmire. It's certainly what I'm betting on.

With regard to Spanish -- you put in a lot of time and you might be bored at present, but I suggest you stick with it. Cut back, slack off, mix things up, but don't quit. Schedule a couple of 30 minute Italki sessions every week, start listening to Cafe Tacvba, watch documentaries in Spanish instead of teledramas, etc.

With regard to French --- I don't think you were ever that interested, and doing two Romantic languages at the same time has got to be boring, particularly if one of them isn't Italian, so yes by all means drop it. Burn your French textbooks.
4 x

Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел

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sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Wed Oct 24, 2018 3:52 am

I've got Buntús Cainte, all three volumes on order from Ireland. It may take a month to get here. There doesn't seem to be copy of it with the CDs anywhere here in the US. I'll try it when it gets here. I have a copy of Progress in Irish arriving tomorrow.
Right now I've got:
Living Language Irish, sort of a workbook with recordings.
Teach Yourself Irish: Conversations and grammar exercises.
Colloquial Irish: A new book which emphasizes the dialect of Irish from around Galway.
Teach Yourself Irish (1961 edition) with incomplete recordings.
Linguaphone Irish Gaelic (1985) with what appear to be complete recordings.
I also downloaded the online courses from the Irish Independent that Fluent in Three Months Benny reccommends

I haven't even opened Irish Gaelic yet, but I bet it has that dialogs and translations format similar to Assimil, that many Linguaphone products have.
I bought this stuff, mostly used, over the last few years, where I have been spending my summers in Ireland.

I think I have figured out a few things about Irish. Please feel free to correct me if I'm confued.

Irish orthography is alien, but logical and regular, at least compared to English or French. It is much more unfamiliar to an English speaker than are Spanish, French, or Tagalog.
I don't really have a grasp of Irish grammar at all, so I can't comment on this. I have heard that there are only 11 irregular verbs in Irish; I hope this is true. French and Spanish are tiring in this regard.

More later.
4 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6299

Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Mon Oct 29, 2018 4:57 pm

I have a couple of things coming from Ireland, but while they're in transit, I'm going to start on something, and maybe use it as a complete first course. I have decided to concentrate on the _colloquial irish_ course. I am unqualified to comment on the content and completeness, but I think it had the best layout and the relationships between the audio and the book are clear.
It also has a realistic goal -- to prepare the learner for the A1 exam. If you learned it thoroghly, I think it might get one to A2. One of the courses I have coming from Ireland aims at the A2 level, so I'll have that after this one.

What have I accomplished so far...?

I have spent a lot of time imitating Irish sounds, and I'm getting much better. I need to be checked out by a native speaker soon, to make sure I don't screw up and learn something the wrong way.

I can say hello and I can answer;I can ask how someone is and answer, and I can ask what someone's age is and answer. I've done some listening to the radio in Irish, and I can understand a few words. Yahoo!

I've done a ton of reading about Irish, and I'm even more psyched about this project. It is so refreshing to be a complete beginner, to have everything to learn, to have the whole world of a new language to discover. Improvement is so fast!

I'm a happy camper.
Last edited by sfuqua on Mon Oct 29, 2018 8:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
7 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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Iversen
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Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby Iversen » Mon Oct 29, 2018 6:14 pm

Welcome aboard
1 x

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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Oct 29, 2018 10:49 pm

sfuqua wrote:It also has a realistic goal -- to prepare the learner for the A1 exam. If you learned it thoroghly, I think it might get one to A2. One of the courses I have coming from Ireland aims at the A2 level, so I'll have that after this one.


Have you seen these?
http://www.teg.ie/_fileupload/syllabi/A1_syll_en.pdf
http://www.teg.ie/_fileupload/syllabi/A2_syll_en.pdf

(There are more here - http://www.teg.ie/teg-levels.8.html )
1 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
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sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Tue Oct 30, 2018 3:07 am

Cool; I hadn't seen those specifications yet.

Maybe I should take a test in Ireland for A1 or A2 next summer. That way I could join the cool kids with actual CEFR results. You know, when the conversations come up about "How do I move from C1 to C2 in only 3 weeks?" I could answer questions with "Well I have an A1 in Irish, so from my experience..."

I got a little frustrated with _Colloquial Irish_ tonight, so after an hour I did some of _Living Language Irish_. LLI is similar to a workbook with audio, which isn't really a bad thing. I did a bunch of repeating of a series of about 10 sentences, and I think I was getting them all right by the end. According to the online discussions I've seen, this book is based on Ulster Irish, which isn't to some people's taste, and some of the speakers may be Irish speakers who are nonnative speakers of Irish. Since this describes most of the people of Ireland, I don't worry too much about sounding like them whatever their status on the "native speaker scale". LLI has a clear relationship between the audio and the print in the book, so that is a plus. I doubt that it makes much difference at this stage what accent I study, I bet whatever I speak would be best described as "American Irish". These beginner books are only a first chapter of a long story of learning a language, and there isn't really that much of a problem learning a diferent accent later

I love some of the unfamiliar sounds and sound combinations in Irish; I'm sort of shocked when my mouth can get some of them out, you know "OK, I'm doing a fricative there and then a stop there, and then I'm sliding into that vowel, and... What the heck? That sounded pretty good!" I really need to read up on Irish phonology somewhere; I can see some of what is going on, but it might make the orthography clearer.

I'm still having fun.
7 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6299

Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Fri Nov 02, 2018 4:01 am

OK, Buntús Cainte got here, and while it isn't and Assimil course, it has that delightful quality of "no English in the audio", which is very nice. The lessons seem to be organized into Pimsleur small steps in the beginning, although the later parts of the course look like they seem to pick up, although that may just be my beginner status. It looks like they may be a great path to A2. or something. Anyway, even at just a glance, this course moves ahead of all of the other courses I have "wasted" money on. I put wasted in quotes because Irish is hard, and I may need a few beginner courses to bump up into Intermediate.
The format is very simple, but I think you need a lot or review for mastery of the material. If I learn it thoroughly, I may be in a position to actually order a beer and talk about the weather in Connemara next summer. That would be cool.

One thing I am not going to do is to push Irish on folks in Dublin. Most people in Ireland I have talked to have studied Irish in school, but don't really speak it. Many of them have a deep emotional attachment to Irish, but they haven't really gotten anywhere with it. I talked to a guy in a pub (surprise, surprise), who got emotional about his own lack of Irish. He was also very proud of his teenaged daughter, who was on an immersion course in Irish. It would be rude of me to try to use A2 Irish (if I ever get there) with his A1 Irish. Learning Irish will in no way make me Irish or give me any right to make anyone in this wonderful country feel uncomfortable. I love Ireland, and I will always strive to be a polite guest in a wonderful country. In Dublin, well, maybe I'll be able to read more signs.

I have walked into a pub out in Connemara where everybody was speaking Irish, all old men. Everybody switched to English when I walked in. I would love to be able to stay in Irish, at least for a few sentences, and I bet that crew would find me hysterical.

I have some DNA from Ireland and some entries on the geneological tree, but I'm always the least Irish guy in the room, at least in Ireland.

Now, back to Irish!
7 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4759
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby Iversen » Sat Nov 03, 2018 11:27 am

Sfuqua is actually ahead of me when it comes to listening to Irish people. The point is that I know exactly how much living Irish from natives I have heard: less than five minutes once, eavesdropping on a couple in bus in Galway (or Gaillimh, as we ought to call it). Apart from that my main source for spoken Irish has been the language synthesizer Abair.ie, which has at least four different kinds ways of pronouncing the words. The best I can say about my oral Irish is that I only try to think the Irish words, I haven't tried to say anything yet - and I would definitely not do so in the company of people who actually spoke the language. But my guesses are slowly becoming less erratic.
1 x

galaxyrocker
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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby galaxyrocker » Sat Nov 03, 2018 5:17 pm

As Iversen has said, welcome to the long, wonderful, arduous, wonder journey that is Irish. With the materials you've gotten, I'd say you can definitely take the A2 test by next summer. The hardest part will likely be speaking, simply because it's difficult to get practice doing that in America.

As to your intuitions about Irish, you are right. The orthography is fairly regular (and was actually more regular before the 1940s spelling change which removed "silent" (to English speakers!) letters, and introduced ambiguity in several locations) and easy to read. Once you get the hang of it, you can easily write/read any word you hear/see. And, yes, there are only 11 irregular verbs. However, there are a few more irregular ones, or ones that are regular but don't follow the pattern you'd expect to see from them.

I'm glad you're enjoying learning the language, even if it does sometimes come across as frustrating. As regards to your last post, I will say it probably is easier to learn a dialect of Irish, simply because the best resources I'm aware of really focus on one of the dialects - Learning Irish for Connemara; the old TY that Iversen uses for Munster; and Now You're Talking, a completely audio course (with written exercises made by an outside group) for Ulster (Linguaphone too, from the sounds of it).

Part of the issue with Irish is that the number of non-natives weighs out the number of natives, and that couldn't be more true than on the internet. I'd say just be wary of what you might see there. But, I'm always around so feel free to ask questions! I love helping people learn Irish, and, while my own log doesn't get updated much, I do still lurk here quite often. I've also taken the B2 twice (passed both times) and can offer you advice on what the format is like. I hope to take C1 next summer myself, if I can swing it with my work schedule.

One resource you, and Iversen, might like is Teanglann. You can hear most words spoken by native speakers there. And, if you want me to send the Now You're Talking links, just let me know and I'll send those to you.

Furthermore, I know a few other sites that can help with minimal pair recognition (in all three dialects, no less) as well as verb recognition (something perhaps more important for Iversen, using the old TY) across dialects. I'll link those later if there's interest.
7 x


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