As well as a new blog script I have also been planning some new content for Ráiméis.
When it comes to learning languages (in this care Irish) motivation (or rather lack of-) is a big problem. I have all the books/tapes etc but never use them. So a couple of week ago I decided that I might start again with “Progress in Irish” and post each lesson here as I complete them. I’ve been doing the odd lesson here and there but not in any structured way and so i’ve gained little value from doing them. Perhaps if I take the time to post them here I might learn more, plus it might help with the motivation problem.
I will try to keep them discreet i.e. all you will see on the front page is a lesson except or perhaps just a title or description, for those of you who may want to avoid the language, and those of you who may be interested in checking out the lessons can open the full post.
Good idea, bad idea? Any of you use Progress in Irish?
New content for Ráiméis
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I think it’s a good idea. My Irish is very poor like most people’s.
Cool! I might do the first one tonight so, if I get time.
Btw YI, I tried to email you earlier but the mail bounced. I was wondering if you wanted a Gmail account, do you? Or do you have one?
Nah I don’t use email after some hassle in the past. What’s gmail all about?
It’s Google’s free email. almost 2.5Gb of storage space! As well it’s just a great free email service. It’s not open to the public yet, but I have lots of invitations to give away. If you need a free email this is probably the best available.
Hmm, I might consider it. I’m also thinking of getting that Google Adsense as well.
As well as that, I’m thinking of adding another new feature to my blog this week…
Well if you want a gmail account give me an email address I can send an invite to…
Adsense is good if you can get the visitors, my adsense account pays for my website as well as my monthly internet bill + i’ve cash left over for sweeties.
PII is a nicely structured coursebook. We wish that the author had provided answers, and it would certainly be nice if the publisher had made audio recordings available for PII. But as your resource links show, there are answers to be had online, and there are several different sets of audio recordings for PII being swapped by learners around the world. Goes to show that if the book is nicely structured, learners & teachers will fill in the gaps eventually.
Dia dhuit a Chionaodh!! And welcome to the site!
I like the PII book, even the size it self is just handy for travel etc. I have one problem with the book though, the dictionary, it takes up a quarter of the book yet it’s too small to be of any real value. Some more lessons instead might have been better. Still, it’s a good book for re-learners like myself
Btw, thanks for making the lessons available on your site!! It’s handy to double-check my efforts
Dia ‘s Muire dhuit, a Mhaca.
I agree about the little foclóirín; too bad Máiréad Ní Ghráda died in 1971, perhaps she could have been prevailed upon to expand the course and add the answers. And unfortunately, the audio options available back then were LP records, or possibly reel-to-reel tape, both of which were fairly expensive to produce in the small quantities which would have been bought by our language’s small cadre of learners 35 years ago.
Oh, regarding our answers, thanks for the nod; don’t necessarily take them as gospel — although we’ve “proofed” them in the classroom setting for about 13 years, there’s room for error still. And there are certainly other possible “correct” answers — ours have tried to stay true to whatever Ní Ghráda had been teaching up until that point in the book, but very often there is more than one way to say the same thing. If you come across one of our answers which you absolutely disagree with, let us know and we’ll have another look.
I think the one place where we parted company from Ní Ghráda was in the very common Irish equivalent of hello — which she spells “Dia duit”. And although I’ve seen it spelt that way in some books, in my 20+ years learning Irish, I’ve only ever heard the lenited version, “Dia dhuit”, from native speakers. Though the reason to lenite there is grammatically questionable, it’s firmly entrenched. And the circa 1960 “Teach Yourself Irish” book by Dillon & Ó Cróinín *does* give it an explanation in their “Rules for Aspiration (sic)” on page 16:
“The d- of the prepositional pronouns dom, duit, etc., díom, díot, etc. is usually aspirated (sic) after vowels and silent consonants.”
So Ní Ghráda notwithstanding, our answer keys have chosen to put back the lenition that the author omitted. Otherwise, we’ve tried to keep our answers in harmony with whatever had been taught up until any given point in the book.
I’m glad they’re a help to folks; I sure wish I had a way to check my work when I first started using PII in 1983!
A Chionaodh
Well i’m sure your answers are more accurate than my own, especially after 13 years in the classroom, and as I said useful to correct my own mistakes.:)
Duit vs dhuit, the latter would be more natural for me but not being a native speaker i’m relying on the Irish I learned in school .. when I stayed awake I mean.
You mentioned audio … do you know if the answers sheets are available in audio format anywhere on the web?
No audio of the answers that I know of; I have some audio of the vocabulary/phrases in the first third of the book as read by two separate Harvard University professors, Ken Nilsen & William Mahon. (one is on CD, the other is cassette). I think one of them covered about 28 lessons, the other a bit less but included some songs & poems.
I understand the good folks at Scoil Ghaeilge (www.scoilgaeilge.org) had someone read the whole book, and one of their members is currently transferring the tapes to CD. Join their mailing list, as the progress on that project is mentioned there from time to time, and you might get a copy of the CD or CDs from somebody there once it’s done. I’m hoping to as well.
Thanks for the info Cionaodh, i’ll sign up immediatly!