Oh to love Irish! Gaelic, Gaeilge, no matter what it's called wonderful people are to be found learning it everywhere. This has been a busy year and tumultuous Summer so not much was posted. But looking forward to posting more of my favorite Irish language things here.

For now, I've been quickly cataloging my Irish learning websites in Pinterest. It wasn't a site I readily adapted to, however I'm finding it's a wonderful application and site to keep things organized.

http://pinterest.com/alarik23/irish-gaeilge-language/

I hope it links you to all the wonderful websites I'm using and bookmarking too.

A love of music so rare ... so here ...

Our own Nikki!

Cuid ... demystified

A teacher answered that cuid literally means "a portion of".

Well upon showing the above Rosetta Slide to a friend, she asked me, well how come on the top middle slide the object is plural but the bottom right and left slide, the object is not plural.

This later, and quickly became summed up by another friend who said:

"Cuid" is generally used when you're talking about something that many people may have some of: Money, cows, friends, children, T-shirts, etc. It's even used for certain things about your body, such as blood or hair. When you're not speaking of money or cows or whatever in the general sense, but specifically of that which belongs to you. "Cuid" literally means "share/part/portion."

Cuid is always followed by the genitive singular. So:

Mo chuid airgid: My money (literally "my share of money")

Mo chuid úill: My apples (literally "my share/portion of apple")

Mo chuid gruaige: My hair (literally "my portion of hair")

Mo chuid fola: My blood (literally "my portion of blood")

I was so happy to realize it really is that simple! So when you move on to sentences bigger than the basic to be, or "X is" ... this is good early rule to tackle.

yu ming is ainm dom. full version

New Developments

The group has been moving along nicely. Many developments have been made and resources become available.

Here is what we have moved on to so far ...

Days of the Week

Wiki explains the days of the week in Irish ...
Historical texts suggest that, during Ireland's Gaelic era, the day began and ended at sunset.Through contact with the Romans, the seven-day week was borrowed by continental Celts, and then spread to the Celts of Britain and Ireland. In Irish, four days of the week (Monday, Tuesday, Saturday, Sunday) have names derived from Latin. The other three relate to the fasting done by Catholic clergy.

• Sunday: An Domhnach or Dé Domhnaigh — Latin Dominica, "of the Lord"
• Monday: An Luain or Dé Luain — Latin Lunae, "of the Moon"
• Tuesday: An Mháirt or Dé Máirt — Latin Martis, "of Mars"
• Wednesday: An Chéadaoin or Dé Céadaoin — Old Irish, "first fasting"
• Thursday: An Déardaoin or Déardaoin — Old Irish, "day between fastings"
• Friday: An Aoine or Dé hAoine — Old Irish, "fasting"
• Saturday: An Satharn or Dé Sathairn — Latin Saturni, "of Saturn"

Feel free to contact me for the sound files for the days of the week. Forvo provides nearly all in native speaker's tongue.

Some resources for learning we have found quite useful for slightly advanced beginners:

BBC Listening, Reading, Speaking, and Writing for Exams

The BBC resource is amazingly helpful as it is structured for real exams one may encounter at a school. And doubly helpful as the units are about real situations everyone should know. For example, the first section of the listening unit is testing on listening skills about a car accident. Then has multiple choice and open ended question about the car accident situation you just listened to.

Galway School Resource, Grading, and Scoring

I've kept the name of this school purposefully generic because most of the site is in Irish. The logging in easy enough to decipher however navigation is guessable, but not quite as obvious for beginners.

I love the fact that this site allows you to listen and then record yourself saying the phrase. It teaches useful phrases and also keeps your score, increasing your score as you get better speaking and listening.

We've also all decided to work with Erin's Web as a starting point for a common lesson plan. We wish we had a native speaker to iron certain terms out but it is fun for all of us to derive how to say things and then later find it's actual presentation online.

I could never imagine trying to learn all this without the internet!

Another development we are constantly striving to help with is trying to make things easy on our blind member. He's smart as a whip and picks things up quickly, even balancing how we say things as he has a sharper ear for repetition. However his reader software for the computer, JAWS, was having difficulty with the Irish words. JAWS may produce an Irish version at some point but we all wanted a solution now.

A member suggested Easy Reader, made specially for reading of the Irish language. The company even allowed our blind member to test out the software with a free full version!

WfUV.org

A delightful show was found that produced once a week Irish language lessons. It is supposed to have archives of previous episodes as well.

All in all, I believe our little group is growing interest and has weekly local meetings in Sonoma County, California. We also attend events at the San Francisco UICC chapter.

Sharing Resources/Irish Keyboard

Kathleen has emailed me for all of us to share our links and information. I want this information to be privy to anyone learning Irish so I will put it in this blog.

Kathleen wrote:

Seo na seoltaí gach duine sa ghrúpa. Here (are) the addresses (of) every person in the group.

I love how Kathleen writes both in Irish and English to get us used to how it looks.

My email response:

Thank you Kathleen!

Firstly everyone, it's been such a great opportunity to set up this group! I know Kathleen and I are delighted this has come to fruition as I'm sure you are as well!

Seán won't be joining us unless he is in town. He lives in Sacramento and will keep in touch via email. I will be sending him sound files of both my own voice (once I get my speakers fixed) and the files I get from Forvo. I welcome everyone to make sound files for him so he can get to know all of our accents as well as our progressive sound of how we say words.

Does everyone know you can add the Irish keyboard for faster typing of fadas? It takes a little while to get used to, however if we're going to be writing each other authentic Irish emails it would be good for us to use fadas as neccessary for Irish.

If you go to Control Panel/Reginal and Language Options then click the Languages tab, there will be an option to add the Irish keyboard under the details of text services and input languages box. You can then add Irish from there.

The alternative, and easier method is to choose Irish under the default Languages tab and click apply (You can see if you did this correctly by looking at the time and date, it will say it in Irish). It will then add ink corrections as well as the Irish keyboard by default. Then just change it back to English and the ink correction and keyboard for Irish will appear in your options under theLanguages/details.

All you have to do is click the left-Alt and Shift keys (if you kept the defaults) to change between the Irish keyboard and the English one.

Layout of Irish Keyboard

Please note this is for the Windows keyboard and not the Mac.

When the Irish keyboard is selected you can test it by Shift-2. Holding Shift and the 2 key will produce the symbol " or parenthesis symbol.

To then produce the fada, or acute letters, hold the Right-Alt and then press the vowel acute you are looking for: á é í ó ú.

If anyone needs further help with this feature I'll be glad to walk you through it. Just give me a call!

Happy Irish everyone!

Marlene