#gaeilge

[nibmoss]

did you hear there’s a new short film that is GAY?? LESBIAN, even???

AND it’s filmed in a minority language?? a CELTIC language, one might say??

AND that it’s available for FREE, with SUBTITLES in both irish AND english??

“FAN” (2024) dir. by cúnla ní bhraonáin morris

watch here 🫶

[shetheyshenanigans]

Every time I look at a specific set of Irish maps that show the decline of Irish speakers between 1800 and 2000 I want to SCREAM

In 1800, almost three quarters of our island is depicted as Irish speakers, with the British dominated Pale region (Dublin and surrounding areas) not speaking Irish.

In 1850, shortly after the famine, the graphic recedes right back to just the west coast of Ireland, showing the population of Irish speakers.

And the reason is the Famine. An Górta Mór, the Great Hunger, our genocide. So many people died, and even more emigrated and they never taught Irish to their descendants because we were so hated that to acknowledge yourself as Irish, as an Irish-speaker meant you would have far less opportunities in life, so we lost our language.

And almost two hundred YEARS after the Famine, we've regained our population but not our language.

I love Irish so incredibly much, it is the language of my heart and soul, mo teanga féin álainn, and I will never, not in a thousand lifetimes, forgive those who enforced a Famine on my country, who exported corn and grain to other lands when my people were starving.

Ireland had food, it had crops, the Irish people laboured in our fields to grow crops and the British put it all on ships to feed the rest of their Empire and not us.

I will never, ever, stop being angry about the Famine and until the day I die, I will speak Irish for all of mo shinsirigh, mo chlann a fuair bás gan a dteanga dúchasach, and I will speak it for myself because is linn na Gaeil, agus is í Gaeilge ár dteanga aoibhinn álainn féin.

[kiwibirb1]

Yo I need someone who's fluent in Gaeilge what would be a word that's close to clairvoyance? Like with this meaning:

I'm tryna do a thing here but Google translate won't give me shit and I'm not that good at my Gaeilge.

[saint-vagrant]

my sign for a protest a couple days ago. grateful to be there— and won't stop for nothin!

palestine will be free.

[phantom-of-the-memes]

Saying this as an Irish person since the new Hozier album just came out and there are lyrics in Irish; it’s Irish or Gaeilge (pronounced “gwhale-ga” or “gale-ga” depending on region), not Gaelic or Celtic or any other name people come up with.

It’s just a normal language that people speak in their everyday life. We learn it in school in the republic. People like myself are bilingual in Irish and English. It’s not a “fairy aesthetic cottage core leprechaun” language.

Please respect it. Our language is a touchy subject seen as how England tried to erase it by forcing English on us and severely punishing those who spoke Irish.

At the same time that does NOT mean it is a dead language. Our (in the republic) road and safety signs are in both Irish and English, same with legal documents. Our politicians speak it, and we are trying to preserve the language!

Anyways enjoy the album!

[reginageourge]

she's a hero. she should dump her west brit "friends" and become friends with me instead

[irishthings]

It is never too late to learn to speak Irish.

You do not have to be Irish to speak Irish.

Once you're out of school, there is no grammar police and most people are just excited to have someone to speak Irish with.

Incorporating Irish words into your day when you're not fluent (I have to go to the leithreas, throw it in the bruscar, that's a gorgeous gúna) is an act of decolonisation.

Helping people to understand the language is an act of love.

Gaeilge go deo ❤️

[ly0nstea]

Also btw every single complaint about irish pronounciation and spelling in schools would be solved if we hammered in the slender/broad distinctions early because it would become abundantly clear why this 't' has to be surrounded by 'i's and it isn't just a thing they decided to do one day and more people would be able to spell words from just hewring them and pronounciation from just reading them send tweet

[theaologies]

This sent me into hysterics this morning

[crimeronan]

since a ton of people are getting into music as gaeilge because of hozier, can i recommend my fave artist, róisín seoighe? she's a native irish speaker and language ambassador whose lyrics often involve the preservation of irish culture and deep rage against colonization. níl mé marbh ("i'm not dead") makes me cry like a baby and sin do lamh ("reach out") makes me want to burn all of colonialism down. she's also done several collabs with imlé, another EXCELLENT irish language band that does modern-feeling rock and dance music! my fave of their collabs right now is ÉAD ("jealous").

both artists have less than 1,700 monthly listeners on spotify simply because they sing in irish & they deserve more bc their music Really Is Excellent. translations of many songs are google-able & when there Aren't english translations, it's really good practice for people learning irish!

[a-study-in-bullshit]

is it not a shame my native tongue is not mine?

[an-spideog]

Don't Use Duolingo if You Really Want to Learn Irish

That title is a bit dramatic, but I really don't think that duolingo is a useful tool for Irish, especially in its current state, so I want to talk a bit about why, and I'll also talk about some alternatives.

Pronunciation

The first and most egregious issue is that at some point recently-ish, duo decided to start using Text-To-Speech for their Irish course, rather than recordings of a native speaker. The problem here is that their TTS is not trained on native speakers of Irish and pronounces words incorrectly. It doesn't make consistent distinctions between broad and slender consonants for example.

Irish has no standard pronunciation, so I understand how it can feel weird to choose just one dialect for the purposes of pronunciation (the old recordings were from a speaker of Galway Irish), but having just one dialect is much better than TTS which sounds like a learner, imagine if they had TTS for the French course which sounded like an anglophone schoolkid trying to pronounce french, and claimed they were teaching you how to speak french!

Grammar

Duo tends to be correct on grammar at least, which is a start. But often people using it get very confused about the grammar because duo doesn't explain any of it. I think there's a place for immersion in language learning, and I don't think everything has to be explained like that, but within duo's system of sentence testing and exercises like that, not having any explanation for why it's "mo chóta" and not "mo cóta" can be really confusing. Duo used to have more grammar information, it's a shame that they removed it, I wonder why they did it.

Money and Motivation

Duolingo is a business, and their motivation is not to help you learn a language 'fully', but to keep you using their app and hopefully have a higher chance of sharing it with others, competing with others, buying or causing others to buy memberships or lingots or any other in-app purchases.

I don't want to make it out like duo is some big conspiracy and they're tricking people, I don't think that's the case, but it's good to remember that their primary motivation is to keep people using the app, rather than help people move to a level in a language where they don't need the app anymore.

Keep this in mind whenever you see people trying to sell you stuff for language learning.

Why do people use Duolingo

I do get it, and I don't want to make anyone feel bad for using duo, there's a ton of reasons people tend towards it at first 1. It's really well known, so especially if you're learning a language and haven't heard of other resources for it, you'll check duolingo 2. It's very motivating for a lot of people, checking in every day and forming that habit is a really good way of sticking with a language 3. It's fun, people enjoy it

If you use it for reason 3. and you still like it, then don't worry about this post, I'm not trying to yuck anyone's yums, keep having fun!

If you use it for reasons 1. or 2. you can still keep using it if you like, but I want to suggest some other things which you might find helpful in trying to get to a higher level in Irish.

Other Resources

To address the pronunciation issue, I'd heavily recommend you disregard the pronunciation in duolingo, if you're looking for more reliable sources of pronunciation, I'd look towards recordings of native speakers, you can find that on:

Teanglann and Foclóir (they use the same recordings)

Fuaimeanna

and a really useful and underused one: https://davissandefur.github.io/minimal-pairs/ where you can hear the difference between similar sounds that English speakers often mix up in Irish.

A lot of people like duolingo because it's nice to have a clear path forward, a progression that you can get into without too much decision-making. For this I recommend getting a good textbook or course and working through it, the ones I'll recommend also have native speaker audio on them.

Learning Irish by Mícheál Ó Siadhail, this book teaches Galway Irish, not just in pronunciation but in grammar too. It's quite dense but it's well thought out and well explained.

Teach Yourself Irish (1961) this book is available for free online, and is a really good option if you're interested in Cork Irish (Munster), and have some experience with grammatical terminology. I used this book myself and really liked it, but it's very intense and not for everyone. (If you do end up using it, feel free to skip the appendices at the start, they're more of a reference and sometimes put people off from actually getting to the first chapter. Also if you have any questions about it or need any help just let me know.)

If you want a video course, there's a great course called "Now You're Talking" which is available for free online, along with audio files and worksheets here. It features Donegal Irish and leads into the more intermediate level course called Céim ar Aghaidh also available online.

There's other textbooks that I have less experience with (Buntús na Gaeilge, Gaeilge/Gramadach Gan Stró, etc.) but if they work for you, stick with them, there's nothing worse than not making progress because you keep switching resources trying to find the "perfect one"

Whether or not you continue to use Duolingo, I would really really encourage you to try engaging with media in Irish. People often shy away from this when they're learning because they don't feel like they're "ready" yet. But you basically never feel like you're ready, you just have to try and find something near your level and try to get comfortable with not understanding everything. This is where you learn a huge portion of the language, you hear how things are pronounced you see what words mean in what contexts, getting input in your target language is so important!

I know content can be kind of hard to find, so I'll make a few recommendations here: There's a wealth of content available for free online (more if you're in ireland but some internationally) on TG4 If you're still starting out, I'd recommend trying to watch some kids shows since they'll have simpler language and will be easier to follow. I wouldn't recommend using English subtitles when you watch them. Some good options include:

Dónall Dána: an Irish dub of Horrid Henry, silly and childish but the actors have good Irish and importantly the show has Irish language subtitles, they don't always match but if you're still beginning and can't necessarily get everything by ear, they're really useful. (Mostly Galway Irish)

Curious George: another dub, again with Irish language subtitles (I can't remember what dialects were in it off the top of my head but I'd assume mostly galway again)

Seó Luna: No subtitles, but a good option if you're aiming for Munster Irish, the lead character has Kerry Irish

Miraculous: No subtitles but a better show than most of the other kids' ones and more bearable to watch as an adult (Mostly Galway Irish)

Ros na Rún: Moving away from kids shows, a long running soap opera, this has Irish subtitles and a really good mix of dialects within the show. If you're finding the kids shows boring or too easy I'd really recommend it, but it can be complex because of the amount of characters, dialects, and plotlines. I'd recommend starting at the beginning of a newer season and just trying to catch on to what's happening as you go.

There are a lot of books, if you live in Ireland you can get nearly any Irish book for free from a library, so please check out your local library or request some of these from other libraries in the system:

There's a series of fairytales (Rápúnzell, Luaithríona etc.) by Máiréad Ní Ghráda which are illustrated and for children, which are a really good option for when you're just starting out reading

There's kids books about Fionn and the Fianna by Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin

There's a cute little kids' book in Kerry Irish about a cat named Mábúis

Leabhar Breac has a lot of graphic novels, some of them based on Irish mythology, some on other stuff. The fact that they're illustrated can make it a lot easier to follow even if you don't understand all the words at first.

Gliadar has just released their Scott Pilgrim translation

If you're looking for something a bit more advanced you can look at some of the books for adult learners by Comhar, they contain simplified language and glossaries but have full original adult stories.

And if you're wanting full, natural, native-level Irish there's a load of books by those same groups, and others like An Gúm, Cló Iar-Chonnacht, Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne, Éabhlóid, Coiscéim, and more.

And don't shy away from older books written in Seanchló either, they can be more challenging but it's a whole extra world of books

If you're trying to improve your listening comprehension, I definitely recommend listening to shows on Raidió na Gaeltachta, hearing native Irish speakers talk at full speed is really good practice. But I get that it can be overwhelming at first. Here are some things you can do as you build up to that:

Watching those same TV shows I mentioned without subtitles is a good way to build up listening skills.

Vifax is a website where you can practice listening to short news segments and answer questions on them, then getting to look at the transcript with notes afterwards.

Snas is kind of the evolution of vifax, now using clips from both the news and Ros na Rún.

I really hope that this post can help people move away from duolingo if they're looking to take their Irish learning to the next level, if you've got any questions, just let me know!

[anragaire]

if anyone wants another layer to Butchered Tongue, consider Hozier's choice mention of Hushpuckena (Choctaw) and look up what the Choctaw nation did for the Irish during an Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger).

https://www.choctawnation.com/about/history/irish-connection/

[kaizey]

Sometimes when you clean your wip folder you find something you made years ago in a way to deal with and at the same time educate others on something very dear to you that's been stolen by people who see stealing it as "doing you a service"

Made this last year during Seachtain na Gaeilge

Anyway. Seeing this again made me think maybe it was alright, actually

Ní dhéanfaidh mé dearmad choíche. Ná bás an tseanteanga go deo

[trans-cuchulainn]

having a chat with an author friend about unexamined tropes and power structures in fantasy novels and also about the misuse of celtic languages and it got me thinking about how fucking funny it is when a book wants you to believe that a few sentences of modern irish are inherently mysterious and otherworldly when you literally see people making memes and instagram reels in the language every day. like really. embarrassing for them tbh

[strabane-asda0]

when no one’s got my back, I know focloir.ie has got my back <3