Irish Translation Forum

I don't know if anyone has suggested this, but puting post-it note labels on things around your house (e.g. a bainne tag for your milk jug, a doras tag for your front door).

mhwombat wrote:

wdsci wrote:This is obviously not for everyone, but . . . writing a computer program in Irish or, as it turns out, partly in Irish. For the fun of it I've been trying to write part of my latest program as Gaeilge and it's coming out looking pretty wacky, with the Irish identifiers mixed up with the English keywords and external API calls On the bright side, I'm sure it won't take long before I learn all the words I'm using - just out of necessity - and it's great practice in making up words as well

David

And it's good for job security! They'll need to keep you on because no one else will be able to maintain the software.

LOL! I hadn't thought of that at all! Should be a good trick for some day when I'm working at a giant computer company

Actually, this particular library will be released under the GPL - free - so there's not quite such a great benefit to having it as Gaeilge.

David

páidín wrote:I don't know if anyone has suggested this, but puting post-it note labels on things around your house (e.g. a bainne tag for your milk jug, a doras tag for your front door).

I think that was one of the first ones mhwombat suggested. I had post-its everywhere for a while, but Johanna wouldn't let me put one on her because she thought "m'iníon" looked a little too much like "minion"!

Redwolf

Redwolf wrote:

páidín wrote:I don't know if anyone has suggested this, but puting post-it note labels on things around your house (e.g. a bainne tag for your milk jug, a doras tag for your front door).

I think that was one of the first ones mhwombat suggested. I had post-its everywhere for a while, but Johanna wouldn't let me put one on her because she thought "m'iníon" looked a little too much like "minion"!

Redwolf

That's great!! Tá inín chliste agat ann.

páidín wrote:I don't know if anyone has suggested this, but puting post-it note labels on things around your house (e.g. a bainne tag for your milk jug, a doras tag for your front door).

I do this too (I'm learning French too), but the contents of my post-its have nothing to do with the thing to which they are attached. This lets me vary the contents as I learn words. I find lightswitches are good places to put them, as are door handles, cupboard doors and inside drawers.

mhwombat wrote:Download a copy of Lámhleabhar Bia agus Dí from here. This booklet contains the vocabulary you'd expect to use in a restaurant.

I have this at home
My Irish teacher *gave* it to me woohoo! (from back in the day when I was taking a weekly Irish class) :)

I'm trying the post-it method right now, but my room-mate keeps throwing them away. Maybe if I label the trash bin "truflais araid" he'll decide he's fighting a losing battle.

You should try labeling with "mo chuid stuife" (means "my stuff")

David

If you're looking up a word, and you can't find it in the dictionary (i.e. it's not in root form and you can't figure out what the root form is), use the online version of An Foclóir Beag:

http://www.csis.ul.ie/focloir/

This comes in handy even if you're fairly advanced and know the changes that words undergo in Irish, because it's easy to overlook one of the possibilities.

Here's a tip for those who are a bit past the beginner stage. I was so accustomed to using An Foclóir Beag to conjugate verbs and decline nouns, that I barely noticed that it also has definitions. (Doh!) And the definitions are written in fairly simple Irish. You may be surprised to find that you understand the definitions without much difficulty. So next time you need to look up the meaning of an Irish word, give An Foclóir Beag a go!

Here's an idea I came up with the other day for getting comfortable with speaking Irish...use it on those darned telemarketers! For example:

TM: "Hello, may I speak with Mr. or Mrs. Nickel?"

Me: "Cé hé tusa? Níl bean Uí Nickel abhaile anois. Is mise an madra. Cedar is aimn dom."

TM: "Does anyone there speak English?"

Me: "Tá brón orm. Níl Béarla agam. An bhfuil Gaeilge agat?"

And so on and so forth until the telemarketer gets frustrated and hangs up. The nice thing is, you don't have to get too hung up on your pronunciation or grammar, because chances are good that the telemarketer has no idea what you're saying anyway (Note: this may not work in Ireland).

Redwolf