Irish Translation Forum

Do you use any creative or unusual techniques to improve your Irish? If so, I'd like to hear them. Here are some of the techniques I use.

Get creative: Go beyond your books and tapes; make up "games" that are appropriate for your skill level. For example, you may not be able to follow a news broadcast in Irish, but you can listen for words you know. Your next challenge might be to guess the topic of the story: the economy, a murder, a tribunal, student test scores? Is it good news or bad news?

Spelling bee: When you hear a new word, try to guess how the word is spelled, then check your answer. This is an excellent way to develop your ability to distinguish between broad and slender consonants.

Oh that's where I left the cuisneoir! Choose a dozen objects around your house, and label them with the corresponding Irish word. Post-its are handy for this. Every time you see the object, the post-it will remind you to say (or at least think) the word. This helps you bypass the mental English-to-Irish translation step by making a direct association between the object and its Irish word. When you've learned those words, remove those post-its and label some more objects.

Two (or more) for the price of one: When you learn a new word, check the dictionary for other forms of the word that are likely to be useful. For example:

Once you know that: abair means "say"
...it's easy to remember that: abairt means "sentence" or "phrase"

Once you know that: cruinniú is a "meeting"
...it's easy to remember that: cruinnigh means "gather" or "assemble"

Once you know that: scrúdú is a "test" or "exam"
...it's easy to remember that: scrúdaigh means "examine"

Maybe you already know that word: If you encounter an unfamiliar word containing 'j', 'k', 'q', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', or 'z', you may not need to look it up. It's a loan word, so you can probably figure out the meaning by sounding it out. For example, try to figure out the meaning of the following words (answers below).

jab,
víreas
vóta
xileafón
zú

PS, The above tips are from my website, http://nualeargais.ie/foghlaim/beginner.php I would love to include your tips as well. If you don't mind me including your tip on my website, please let me know. (I won't add any tips to my website unless I know I have the author's permission.)

PPS, We have some practice threads that can help you start learning immediately. See viewtopic.26565.html

PPPS, the answers are: job, virus, vote, xylophone, zoo

One thing I do is listen to a lot of music in Irish. When I get a new song, I follow along with the words in the liner notes until the sounds and the spelling of the words gels in my brain. Then, when I'm quite solid on the words, I sing along! I also work at NOT mentally "translating," but at understanding the song in Irish (something I learned to do back when I was studying French...to get out of the habit of mentally supplying the English as soon as possible). I was quite pleased, the other day, when I was grocery shopping and caught myself singing "Cuach Mo Londubh Buí" in Irish (I always sing under my breath when I'm shopping...it's one of my weird habits!).

One thing you'll see recommended here a lot is regular listening to Raidió na Gaeltachta http://www.rte.ie/rnag/ . It can be slow going at first (I'm still at the point where, most of the time, the only words I can recognize are "agus" and "Is ea"!), but it really helps to hear the language spoken with a natural cadence.

I like the labels idea. My family will think I'm crazy, but what the heck...they've always known that!

Redwolf

Those are some good tips, mhwombat! Go raibh maith agat, a chara!

Redwolf wrote:One thing I do is listen to a lot of music in Irish.

Yes! I will never forget the first time I understood an entire verse of a song without even looking at the liner notes. It was years ago, but it was something like:

Shiúil mise soir
Agus shiúil mise siar
Shiúil mise Corcaigh
'gus sraide Bhaile Átha Cliath

I was so proud! :snake:

OK, the snake isn't exactly relevant, but I think he's cute.

I'm trying to read my first Irish short story atm

Redwolf wrote:I like the labels idea. My family will think I'm crazy, but what the heck...they've always known that

I have this mental image of Norman Rockwell-style home, a man with "m'fhear cheile" pinned to his shirt, children with "mo mhac" and "m'inion" stuck to their foreheads, and bewildered animals labelled "an cat" and "an madadh".

I would add a suggestion to hook up with other learners, either live or on-line, to play games such as the "Fiche Ceist" game you started here. Games can be a great way to get basic patterns in your brain. When I was taking high school French, we actually played games quite a lot. Bingo helped us learn numbers. "I See Something Red" helped us learn colors (and learn how to ask questions). We played "20 Questions" too...great fun, and we learned a lot that way.

Another good mental game...if you see a town name or a state name that doesn't have an Irish equivalent, make one up for it! "If the Irish had settled in this place, what might they have called it?"

One we did here a while back (Ailill's suggestion) that was quite fun was translate movie titles into Irish.

Redwolf

mhwombat wrote:

Redwolf wrote:I like the labels idea. My family will think I'm crazy, but what the heck...they've always known that

I have this mental image of Norman Rockwell-style home, a man with "m'fhear cheile" pinned to his shirt, children with "mo mhac" and "m'inion" stuck to their foreheads, and bewildered animals labelled "an cat" and "an madadh".

hahaha! just don't go overboard and write on each sheet of páipéar leithris

mhwombat wrote:

Redwolf wrote:I like the labels idea. My family will think I'm crazy, but what the heck...they've always known that

I have this mental image of Norman Rockwell-style home, a man with "m'fhear cheile" pinned to his shirt, children with "mo mhac" and "m'inion" stuck to their foreheads, and bewildered animals labelled "an cat" and "an madadh".

Oh, you've seen my place then?

Actually, it's more like "Roseanne"!

Redwolf

I don't seem to have many bright ideas lately - must be the heat....but anyway,

Try writing your shopping list in Irish, this is also a good way to practise how to write amounts / numbers and you're more often than not required to use things like the partitive genitive and other lovely difficult constructions

Here's one that I played in Ireland, pretty useless elsewhere - I would force myself to read every sign/gatename out loud in Irish. The people in Barna thought I was mad as a hatter walking along the street saying the names of all the shops, and then in the middle of a sentence as two cars drove by "carr gorm", "carr bán" and the wee lady walking the brown dog "bean bheag le madra donn" It was kind of amusing after a while. In Rossaveel, while reciting the signs, a fella actually grinned and nodded in approval as he walked past.