Irish Proficiency Test

Posted by maca on August 18, 2005 Leave a comment (11) Go to comments

Via Something Interesting Happens Everyday I discovered this Irish Proficiency Test from Transparent Language. These sort of tests are excellent for showing you just how crap you are at a language. I got about a quarter of the way down when I got depressed and gave up. Give it a go though, it’s a good test.

Gaeilge
Leave a comment

11 Comments.

  1. Gerry O'Sullivan August 19, 2005 at 2:22 am

    I got 62%, and I can’t string three words together as gaeilge without a dictionary.

  2. maca August 19, 2005 at 8:41 am

    Maith an fear a Gerry! That’s an excellent score I reckon. I’ll have to try it again tonight, it was too late last night when I tried it (that’s my excuse anyway ;) )

  3. Gerry O'Sullivan August 19, 2005 at 10:58 am

    One of the difficulties I have is translating from English to Irish. I find that I can read passages in Irish, or listen to Nuacht, and at least have a good idea of what it’s about. But if I was to try to take a paragraph in English and translate it into Irish, it would take me hours to do, and I wouldn’t have a hope without having a foclóir to hand.

  4. maca August 19, 2005 at 11:34 am

    If you can manage to understand that much Irish i’d say it wouldn’t take too much work before you’d be able to write it again. My dad (ex-Irish teacher) reckons the key is in reading Irish i.e. read lots and you’ll learn it in no time.
    I wish I had retained that much Irish but I basically gave up after Inter Cert.

  5. Gerry O'Sullivan August 19, 2005 at 12:06 pm

    Incidentally, I have similar problems with French. I can read French, no probs and hold a conversation. But any time I have to write something in French to send to one of our suppliers, I run it by one of the French work-experience students we have here. They usually fall off the chair laughing.

  6. maca August 19, 2005 at 12:17 pm

    I hope you poked them in the eye and told them to shut the heck up? :)

  7. maca August 19, 2005 at 12:47 pm

    Just tried the test, got 95/150, 63%. Though, being honest, I had to guess quite a few. In the 4 sections I got 4, 6, 4, 2 questions wrong.

  8. United Irelander August 19, 2005 at 7:23 pm

    Uh-oh! I got 46%!

    My Irish has certainly deteriorated. Alot of those were guesses!

  9. ebby August 24, 2005 at 4:09 pm

    :) the trick with writing in Irish is not to think of what you want to say in English and then translate, but rather try and write in Irish first, and the translate back if you need to. I’ve been trying to do this to improve my Irish. Of course sometimes you just don’t know the Irish word for something, and think of it in English, and have to work the other way around. But it’s easier I suppose if you speak Irish with any sort of frequency.

    Thanks for the link back, by the way.

  10. maca August 24, 2005 at 4:30 pm

    I always get suspicious when people start with “the trick with…” because these tricks never work for me :)
    You’re right though Ebby, it’s a mistake to think in English what you need to write in Irish. Much better to just have a stab at it as Gaeilge.

  11. ebby August 28, 2005 at 4:48 pm

    yeha, I guess everybody has different ‘tricks’ that work for them – especially in relation to language.

    I’ve been actively working on my written Irish for the last few years, though, which helps a lot. But I didn’t thinik my grammar was so good at all. I was pleasantly surprised with my result