Celtic Team - Study Group

An area with study groups for various languages. Group members help each other, share resources and experience. Study groups are permanent but the members rotate and change.
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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Celtic Team - Study Group

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Wed Apr 25, 2018 5:49 pm

monolingualmemories wrote:Wow! Thank you so much for your help, these all look great :D Excited to look into them all. I had heard of "Teach Yourself Gaelic" with mixed reviews. I picked up a copy of "Teach Yourself Spanish" at my local library. I suppose I'll see how it goes before looking into the Gaelic version. In the meantime, these other sites look like a great place to start :)


There can be differences between editions. In the mid 1990s, I used Teach Yourself Gaelic (plus Everyday Gaelic, Gaelic is Fun and Gaelic Made Easy). I also used TY for other languages. I don't know how they are nowadays, and expecially, what the latest edition of TY Gaelic is like. A friend of mine has mainly used Colloquial (including Gaelic) for her languages, and she likes the series a lot.

Colloquial Gaelic (including preview) (Free audio from the publisher HERE)

It seems that TY doesn't have Gaelic (anymore) as part of their Complete series. However, it's available through major online bookstores.

More resources!

Omniglot - Scottish Gaelic language

Again, Cainntear probably has more suggestions.
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Xenops
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Re: Celtic Team - Study Group

Postby Xenops » Thu Jul 05, 2018 9:10 pm

Cainntear wrote:...


Since my latest temptation has been Scottish Gaelic, I thought I would direct him the question of recent resources. :)
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Re: Celtic Team - Study Group

Postby Cainntear » Sat Jul 07, 2018 2:57 pm

Xenops wrote:
Cainntear wrote:...


Since my latest temptation has been Scottish Gaelic, I thought I would direct him the question of recent resources. :)

My preference would be toward Scottish Gaelic in Twelve Weeks. I used the previous edition, Hugo's Scottish Gaelic in Three Months, and I found it to be pretty clear and easy to learn from.

However, it's maybe not a very complete resource (it's organised grammatically, and while it builds in complexity, it never does much other than isolated exercises -- no dialogues or anything), and I didn't use it in isolation. I was going to conversation groups, taking residential courses etc and I was just dipping into the book every now and then to push myself forward.

There are some pretty good resources at the BBC website for listen-and-read type learning. Almost 700 slowly spoken, relatively simple Gaelic with accompanying transcript and translation. When you're ready to move on, there's nearly a thousand letters at a slightly higher level, with transcript and language notes (no more English translation!).

When you're at the transition between the two levels, you use both letters, as each "litir bheag" (little letter) is a simplified version of the same weeks "litir do luchd-ionnsachaidh" (letter to learners), so working through a litir bheag before a litir makes it easier.

My own online materials may be getting resurrected and expanded in the near future, as I move into a new phase of my career....
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Re: Celtic Team - Study Group

Postby galaxyrocker » Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:46 pm

Cainntear, do you have any experience with the Atlantic Gaelic Academy or SMO's online courses? They've been appealing to me some as an Irish speaker, especially as with SMO you can get a BA in Gaelic Language in Culture online. Any advice on those, or resources on Gaelic for Irish speakers, besides SMO's course?
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Re: Celtic Team - Study Group

Postby Cainntear » Sat Jul 07, 2018 6:01 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:Cainntear, do you have any experience with the Atlantic Gaelic Academy or SMO's online courses? They've been appealing to me some as an Irish speaker, especially as with SMO you can get a BA in Gaelic Language in Culture online. Any advice on those, or resources on Gaelic for Irish speakers, besides SMO's course?

Last I knew, the SMO weren't very modern in their beginners' course, posting out paper packets and using phones for their tutorials (!!) -- it sounds like AGA are a bit ahead of them on that front.

The beginners' course at SMO isn't credit-bearing anyway -- An Cursa Adhartais is the first year of the degree programme.

Although, that said, if you already know Irish, you might want to speak to the SMO directly and ask if there are any residential schools coming up for Irish speakers, as you'd probably get a bit bored going at the pace of a group with no background in a Celtic language.
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Re: Celtic Team - Study Group

Postby galaxyrocker » Sat Jul 07, 2018 6:21 pm

Cainntear wrote:
Although, that said, if you already know Irish, you might want to speak to the SMO directly and ask if there are any residential schools coming up for Irish speakers, as you'd probably get a bit bored going at the pace of a group with no background in a Celtic language.


There actually is one ongoing this coming week, but I was, unfortunately, not able to extend my stay in Europe to be able to attend it. I might have to see about doing one next year, or if they have some other material that can be accessed from a distance.
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Re: Celtic Team - Study Group

Postby Xenops » Sat Jul 07, 2018 6:47 pm

Thanks to Cainntear for the reply. :)

If I could pick someone's brain, I have impressions about the Celtic languages, and I don't know if they are correct.

Irish Gaelic:
--the most famous Celtic language
--has dialects that vary from region and region and sound very different
--is the endangered language that people are the most concerned about
--aside from the native speakers, the English-speaking Irish have a hard time grasping it
--the pronunciation is harder than other Celtic languages
--has the ancestral Old Irish language
--has more music outside of the traditional folk genre
--gaining more support from the Irish government
--Forvo.com has 15,000 words recorded
--paid language learning services offer it

Scottish Gaelic:
--the second official language of Scotland along with English
--lesser known Celtic language
--has more standardized language, rather than having dialects that vary
--is endangered
--Glossika has it for free
--Forvo has 1,300 words recorded
--is slightly easier to pronounce than Irish

Manx:
--From Isle of Man
--last native speaker died in the 1970's
--efforts of revival
--is endangered
--in the news because of the revival
--free course on Glossika
--Forvo has 745 words recorded

Welsh:
--only Celtic language not endangered.
--has healthy government and media support to keep it going
--free course on Glossika
--Forvo has 5,600 recorded words
--Only Celtic language with audio recording of the Bible in translation.
--Say Something in Welsh

Breton:
--endangered
--no support from France
--no well-known learning materials in English (maybe Assimil from French-base?)
--Forvo has 2,100 words recorded.
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Re: Celtic Team - Study Group

Postby Cainntear » Sun Jul 08, 2018 2:27 pm

Xenops wrote:[Irish]--the pronunciation is harder than other Celtic languages
[ScG]--is slightly easier to pronounce than Irish

I don't know where you got that from -- all the Celtic languages have their own quirks, and there's nothing particularly bad about Irish in that sense. It doesn't have anything like Welsh's LL, and while it has both CH and GH, there's far less of the GH than in ScG. Welsh has the thing of going down in pitch on stressed syllables, which is kind of disorientating when most languages go up in pitch.

--has the ancestral Old Irish language

That's the common ancestor of Irish, ScG and Manx. If comparing the Romance languages, you wouldn't say Italian has Latin as an ancestor and Spanish and French don't.

Scottish Gaelic:
--the second official language of Scotland along with English

It's got a more vague status than that -- and then there's also Scots to take into account.

--has more standardized language, rather than having dialects that vary

There is less dialectal variation than Irish, because the remaining dialects are geographically close, whereas the Irish-speaking areas of Ireland are distant and isolated from each other. The language is less standardised than Irish -- Irish has an official standard form that doesn't really match the dialects, whereas Gaelic only has a standard orthography; i.e. write in whatever dialect you want, but spell it this way.
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Re: Celtic Team - Study Group

Postby Josquin » Sun Jul 08, 2018 3:31 pm

Cainntear wrote:
Xenops wrote:[Irish]--the pronunciation is harder than other Celtic languages
[ScG]--is slightly easier to pronounce than Irish

I don't know where you got that from -- all the Celtic languages have their own quirks, and there's nothing particularly bad about Irish in that sense. It doesn't have anything like Welsh's LL, and while it has both CH and GH, there's far less of the GH than in ScG.

I don't know what exactly the original quote refers to, but I might have two explanations:

1) "Irish pronunciation is difficult because of the sounds of Irish": This is partly true, because Irish distinguishes between two sets of consonants, "broad" (velarized) and "slender" (palatalized). This is not true for Welsh and Breton and only partly true for Scottish Gaelic and Manx. Scottish Gaelic "slender" sounds are much easier to pronounce correctly than Irish slender sounds IMHO. On the other hand, ScG has some unusual vowels Irish got rid of long ago, so this might keep the balance between the two languages.

2) "Irish is harder to pronounce from its written form than other Celtic languages": This is certainly true. Welsh and Breton orthography is much more regular and phonemic than the one of Irish. However, Irish got rid of a lot of silent consonants in a spelling reform in the 50s. These consonants are mostly still to be found in Scottish Gaelic (cf. Irish "croí" vs. Scottish "croidhe"), so I don't know if that's necessarily easier. However, because of dialectal differences, words might be pronounced differently in spoken Irish from what you'd expect from their written appearance, so this is definitely difficult. Manx orthography, however, is a thing of its own. It mostly looks like Irish written in English phonetic script with some extra quirks.
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Re: Celtic Team - Study Group

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Jul 08, 2018 4:57 pm

Josquin wrote: However, Irish got rid of a lot of silent consonants in a spelling reform in the 50s. These consonants are mostly still to be found in Scottish Gaelic (cf. Irish "croí" vs. Scottish "croidhe"), so I don't know if that's necessarily easier. However, because of dialectal differences, words might be pronounced differently in spoken Irish from what you'd expect from their written appearance, so this is definitely difficult.


This is an issue with the current orthography. It's highly favoured towards Munster Irish. Before they got rid of the 'silent' letters, it was actually a lot easier to come up with consistent rules for each dialect based on the spellings. Now you've got teachers telling kids from Donegal, Mayo and Connemara that their native words are wrong because it doesn't match the Munster spelling. Ó Siadhail has an interesting article on this I'll see if I can dig up again.
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