So, anybody else out there (besides, you, Kevin) trying to learn Irish? Any tips? A friend of mine who's semi-fluent has suggested taking post-it notes and stick them to things in the house with their names "as Gaeilge." I thought that was a great idea.
I'm doing this for sevaral reasons:
1) My friend living in town is close to fluency and I figure he can help me a lot - if not now, then when.
2) So I can pronounce all those tune names
3) So I can talk about people in the session with my other friends who are also learning
4) So I can speak in tongues when I'm drunk
5) So I can visit the Gaeltacht and order a "piontae beoir" or ten and sound like a real w4nker and again return to point number four
6) To be able to read some of the great literature out there in Irish.
I have a question for any of you out there who are learning or who already speak the language. Which dialect makes the most sense to focus on? My friend is from Munster and that's the dialect he's most familiar with. But most of the educational materials I've found and the study group I'm a part of focus on the Ulster dialect. I'm not in a huge hurry to learn the language so I'm planning on just learning as much of either dialect as I can over time. It's just something to pass the time as I'm not drinking for the next five months. Ouch.
I took classes in Austin for a summer from an ex-monk who was from Armah.. now which dialect would that be? He made us sing, but I'm almost completely recovered from that.
From my years in school in Ireland I know Gaeilge can't be learned properly without the aid of a leather strap. The ideal model is one that has been customized by na Bráithre Críostaí by inserting pennies ("old pence") to give it a bit more weight and authority.
It's best to go for the universal dialect - Donnybrook RTE (same idea as BBC English.)
You know, my education was lacking ... or perhaps very sheltered. I never heard the word "Bitseach" before, so I had to search with Google. As a result, I came across this, which should prove invaluable to you (though it might curl some of the post-its; particularly the "deoghail am fallus..." reference)
Oh, yes Lynn. Which is why I was visibly vibrating from excessive caffeine consumption last night at the sesh. I'm trying to lose my big, fat a$$. That, and prove to myself that I can have a social life without drink.
This is an email I sent to some friends back in November when I was taking a crack at Irish in preparation for a trip to the Gaeltacht of Gweedore. In fact, I did learn a handful of phrases while there, I had the car radio tuned to Irish-speaking at all times, plus 95% of the concerts included Irish intros, etc. Fabulous immersion, but when I left the Gaeltacht, hardly anyone even responded to my lame attempts at 'how's it going' & 'thanks.' Let me know how you get on. I actually have come to really adore Irish, as it presents a hell of a challenge!
OK for any of you who are already fluent in Irish, please disregard this email. Anyone not interested in me complaining about learning Irish, also disregard. Now that it's just me, I'm going to try to summarize what I've read last night about learning Irish.
Note: I have 4 formal years of French, 2 formal years of Latin, conversational Flemish, Thai & Navajo, & a cursory understanding of Spanish under my belt. I can count (or could at one time) to 20 & say hello, goodbye & thank you in several other languages, including Vietnamese, Italian, Nepalese & Ukrainian. But this goddamn Celtic language family just beats all.
- Only 18 letters are normally used in writing Irish. a b c d e f g h i l m n o p r s t u. V is used in anglicized words such as vota, but j q w x & z are restricted to scientific terms.
- The 2 most bizarre (my word) features are the occurrence of h after a wide range of consonants ie ch th sh bh mh dh etc. Also large vowel combinations as if feoil, buioch, feiceail. Nice.
- You've got long vowels with the fada, then short vowels. Fine. It is worth noting that Irish has more sounds than can be represented by the Roman alphabet so that the letters have to be combined in various ways to make up for the shortfall. No problem, lay it on me.
- Slender & broad consonants. This is the part that starts to suck. Every Irish consonant has 2 values, called slender & broad. Like 'l' in the word 'little' the first l is slender, the last is broad. OK. "However, as the alphabet only provides us with one letter l, the practice was adopted of writing extra vowels to indicate whether a consonant is slender or broad." Slender if preceded or followed by i or e (the slender vowels) & broad if preceded or followed by a o or u, the broad vowels. Er, Ok. This is only page 2.
- Now he talks about vowel combinations a'i, o'i etc, how it's actually a 'glide' not two syllables & actually notated in exponent form. "There is also a rule that a consonant in the middle of a word must be flanked only by slender vowels or by broad vowels." What?
- Here is included a lengthy breakdown of every possible vowel combination & flanking of by broad or slender consonants. "Note that iontas (wonder) & iontach (wonderful) are exceptionally pronounced i'ntus & i'ntuch." Oh right. Some examples: ch when broad, as in German Bach, when slender or at the beginning, like huge. bh mh, pronounce v when broad. -amh at the end of a word is uv. In the middle of a word, broad mh/bh are also pronounced v after a long vowel. But naturally there is a tendency to weaken this v sound to a w, especially in the northern half of the country. Ah. Yielding more of an ow sound. Thank goodness slender bh/mh are v in all positions!!
It goes on like this for pages. "All dhs in the middle of a word are treated as slender, even when there is no i before them." "Recall that slender gh & dh are both pronounced y at the beginning of a word." "Most instances of -adh in verbs are pronounced (u)ch, the exception is the past passive -adh for which the pronunciation uv is recommended." "In the middle of a word, gh & dh never have the value of a consonant, & this is often true of bh & mh also." "You will come across the southern pronunciation of -igh -idh as ig instead of i'."
Nearing brain capacity. On page 6.
Moving on to word stress, most nouns stress the first syllable, while adverbs of 2-3 syllables which begin with a (& some with i) are stressed on the second syllable. However this goes all to hell in Munster.
Then short vowels before double consonants ll, nn, rr, m, ng & rd in words of one syllable, in which West Galway has their own opinions about dipthongs.
Hello, Unwritten vowels? Yep. Tons. Like gan (without) ainm (name) ainm is pronounced anim.
Ready for mutations? "A feature of Irish & other Celtic languages is that words are liable to change not only their ending, but their beginning - eg co'ta (coat) gives co'tai' (coats) - but also at the beginning eg mo cho'ta (my coat).... Mutations are usually caused by the preceding word. Mo (my) causes a change called lenition, so mo + cota' becomes mo chota' (my coat). Lenition means softening, referring to the replacement of hard & abrupt c by the more hissing or continuous ch. In contrast, 'ar causes a different mutation called eclipsis...." Hence follows a chart of basic consonants in their lenited & eclipsed forms.
But do Irish nouns have gender, you may ask? Of course! Is is systematic or randomly assigned? Random of course!
& that's as far as I've got. It's brutal. I've skimmed ahead & it just gets worse, esp the ludicrous grammatical structure. OK yeah they used Navajo to help defeat the Germans in WW2, but jesus christ. It's like seeing the word blue written in green & being asked what color are you seeing. Disconnect in corpus collosum... & what's even MORE bizarre, is that A. humans invented this language orally, so you know the brain is capable of it, but B. a bunch of folks actually sat down in the 1940's & AGREED TO THIS NOTATION. Bizarre.
Ok thank you. I'll stumble through, thanks for listening to me vent. Go raibh maith agat. (I can type it, but not say it. YET.)
PS that's not true, I can say it now, in both Donegal & Belfast dialects.
For people in Ireland a great way to improve their abilities "as Gaeilge" is to tune in to Raidio na Gaeltachta or the television station TG4. The added bonus is that you'll get lots of trad music into the bargain as these are the only stations that really cater for the trad enthusiast. I'm working on my "cupla focal" but have still a long way to go.
In fact, you can also listen to Raidio na Gaeltachta outside of Ireland - see www.rnag.ie and go to the 'listen' page. It's just like being back home!
D
Jeremy, Turlach says that what you say is largely beside the point (in re: to not drinking for 5 months, I think is what he means) and he wants to know what JULIA says about it.
Fad saol chugat, a Jerball!
You've come to the right site for help. I'm not sure about the necessity for the strap/pennies for learning gaeilge, but it was certainly a common practice in Eirinn fado. I had the De La Salle boys and their methods did not differ appreciably from lucht leanuna Edmund Rice.
Anyway as a long-time educator, cuid de mar priomh oide ar Oilean Alainn Acla (Check out nice pictures of Achill Island in my ait dhuchais, Co. Mayo), my advice is learn the way you learned your first language ag ucht do mhathar, by listening and imitating. R na G was a good suggestion (also a great station for ceol traidisiunta/ITM and amhranaiocht ar an sean nos/SN singing. Best of all would be to save your pennies and head for the Gaeltacht (Gaeilgeoiri, note that last word is an exception to the 'caol le caol agus leathan le leathan" spelling rule). Go n-eirigh an bothar leat!
mairtin iseal
Go raibh mile maith agaibh! Or, as we say here, thanks ya'll!
Zina, Julia thinks that anything that increases the pocketbook and decreases the waistline is just grandy grand. Tell Turlach that everyone looks forward to his surly ways and that he probably won't have to hang out with a bunch of drunk f3ckers this time around.
Grego, when I was educated by the Christian Brothers the rumour going round the school was that the leather strap at the end was weighted with a gold sovereign (an old gold coin equivalent to £1 then), a lot heavier than a penny.
Trevor
The problem with most languages is that there are more significantly different sounds in the language than there are letters in the alphabet to represent them.
Now, Welsh is a celtic language with the same problem of sounds v letters, but the spelling of Welsh is relatively straightforward compared with Irish; once you've learnt the fairly simple rules, you speak what you see on the page, no messing about, and few exceptions. Why couldn't Irish, another celtic language, have gone down this road?
If it comes to that, the spelling and pronunciation of English is by no means simple, either.
Trevor
fidicen, you must have gone to one of those rich private schools. The Brothers at mine could only afford pennies. - In fact, now that I remember it, on of my classmates' parents sued them for breaking his hand and won. They were awarded a shilling. (Then again, that might just have been a rumour.)
God, it's great to see people wating to learn a bit of the teanga. Reminds me of that saying "Is fearr liom Gaeilge briste na Béarla cliste" which translates as "I prefer broken Irish to clever English". Has anyone read any Miles Na Gopaleen? Which book was it where the schoolmaster used to thrash Irish-speaking youths and tell them that, henceforth, "Yer name is Jams (sic) O'Donnell"?
I believe that was "At Swim Two Birds" I remember someone at school with a sign on their schoolbag saying "Jams O'Donnell wants fair play!" God know why.
Re: N�l m� ach ag tos� ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Emily_oz was clearly learning from the wrong book, and Trevor, Irish IS pronounced as written - once you know how certain letter combinations are pronounced it's actually very straight forward. In relation to the leather strap, I never experienced it and I managed ok...
Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
So, anybody else out there (besides, you, Kevin) trying to learn Irish? Any tips? A friend of mine who's semi-fluent has suggested taking post-it notes and stick them to things in the house with their names "as Gaeilge." I thought that was a great idea.
I'm doing this for sevaral reasons:
1) My friend living in town is close to fluency and I figure he can help me a lot - if not now, then when.
2) So I can pronounce all those tune names
3) So I can talk about people in the session with my other friends who are also learning
4) So I can speak in tongues when I'm drunk
5) So I can visit the Gaeltacht and order a "piontae beoir" or ten and sound like a real w4nker and again return to point number four
6) To be able to read some of the great literature out there in Irish.
I have a question for any of you out there who are learning or who already speak the language. Which dialect makes the most sense to focus on? My friend is from Munster and that's the dialect he's most familiar with. But most of the educational materials I've found and the study group I'm a part of focus on the Ulster dialect. I'm not in a huge hurry to learn the language so I'm planning on just learning as much of either dialect as I can over time. It's just something to pass the time as I'm not drinking for the next five months. Ouch.
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by jerball
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
I took classes in Austin for a summer from an ex-monk who was from Armah.. now which dialect would that be? He made us sing, but I'm almost completely recovered from that.
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by glenn
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Glenn. I'm splitting my gut thinking of you singing with a monk.
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by jerball
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
From my years in school in Ireland I know Gaeilge can't be learned properly without the aid of a leather strap. The ideal model is one that has been customized by na Bráithre Críostaí by inserting pennies ("old pence") to give it a bit more weight and authority.
It's best to go for the universal dialect - Donnybrook RTE (same idea as BBC English.)
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by grego
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
By the way, prepare for some problems if you attach post-its to "an madra" agus "na páistí."
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by grego
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Yes, and I'd better not post "Bitseach" on the wife. But I will post "Cailleach" on Kevin.
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by jerball
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
You know, my education was lacking ... or perhaps very sheltered. I never heard the word "Bitseach" before, so I had to search with Google. As a result, I came across this, which should prove invaluable to you (though it might curl some of the post-its; particularly the "deoghail am fallus..." reference)
http://lobd.org/si/viewtopic.php?p=7926
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by grego
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Five months? Five WHOLE months????
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by lcox
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Oh, yes Lynn. Which is why I was visibly vibrating from excessive caffeine consumption last night at the sesh. I'm trying to lose my big, fat a$$. That, and prove to myself that I can have a social life without drink.
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by jerball
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Whoa, I only just saw this...Jeremy, YOU are going without drink for five months? You?! Was the world ending and I just didn't get the e-mail? LOL
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
I pause and consider the implications of my reputation... Yes, abstaining for a while is good...
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by jerball
Holy phonetic mutations, batman!
Jeremy,
This is an email I sent to some friends back in November when I was taking a crack at Irish in preparation for a trip to the Gaeltacht of Gweedore. In fact, I did learn a handful of phrases while there, I had the car radio tuned to Irish-speaking at all times, plus 95% of the concerts included Irish intros, etc. Fabulous immersion, but when I left the Gaeltacht, hardly anyone even responded to my lame attempts at 'how's it going' & 'thanks.' Let me know how you get on. I actually have come to really adore Irish, as it presents a hell of a challenge!
OK for any of you who are already fluent in Irish, please disregard this email. Anyone not interested in me complaining about learning Irish, also disregard. Now that it's just me, I'm going to try to summarize what I've read last night about learning Irish.
Note: I have 4 formal years of French, 2 formal years of Latin, conversational Flemish, Thai & Navajo, & a cursory understanding of Spanish under my belt. I can count (or could at one time) to 20 & say hello, goodbye & thank you in several other languages, including Vietnamese, Italian, Nepalese & Ukrainian. But this goddamn Celtic language family just beats all.
- Only 18 letters are normally used in writing Irish. a b c d e f g h i l m n o p r s t u. V is used in anglicized words such as vota, but j q w x & z are restricted to scientific terms.
- The 2 most bizarre (my word) features are the occurrence of h after a wide range of consonants ie ch th sh bh mh dh etc. Also large vowel combinations as if feoil, buioch, feiceail. Nice.
- You've got long vowels with the fada, then short vowels. Fine. It is worth noting that Irish has more sounds than can be represented by the Roman alphabet so that the letters have to be combined in various ways to make up for the shortfall. No problem, lay it on me.
- Slender & broad consonants. This is the part that starts to suck. Every Irish consonant has 2 values, called slender & broad. Like 'l' in the word 'little' the first l is slender, the last is broad. OK. "However, as the alphabet only provides us with one letter l, the practice was adopted of writing extra vowels to indicate whether a consonant is slender or broad." Slender if preceded or followed by i or e (the slender vowels) & broad if preceded or followed by a o or u, the broad vowels. Er, Ok. This is only page 2.
- Now he talks about vowel combinations a'i, o'i etc, how it's actually a 'glide' not two syllables & actually notated in exponent form. "There is also a rule that a consonant in the middle of a word must be flanked only by slender vowels or by broad vowels." What?
- Here is included a lengthy breakdown of every possible vowel combination & flanking of by broad or slender consonants. "Note that iontas (wonder) & iontach (wonderful) are exceptionally pronounced i'ntus & i'ntuch." Oh right. Some examples: ch when broad, as in German Bach, when slender or at the beginning, like huge. bh mh, pronounce v when broad. -amh at the end of a word is uv. In the middle of a word, broad mh/bh are also pronounced v after a long vowel. But naturally there is a tendency to weaken this v sound to a w, especially in the northern half of the country. Ah. Yielding more of an ow sound. Thank goodness slender bh/mh are v in all positions!!
It goes on like this for pages. "All dhs in the middle of a word are treated as slender, even when there is no i before them." "Recall that slender gh & dh are both pronounced y at the beginning of a word." "Most instances of -adh in verbs are pronounced (u)ch, the exception is the past passive -adh for which the pronunciation uv is recommended." "In the middle of a word, gh & dh never have the value of a consonant, & this is often true of bh & mh also." "You will come across the southern pronunciation of -igh -idh as ig instead of i'."
Nearing brain capacity. On page 6.
Moving on to word stress, most nouns stress the first syllable, while adverbs of 2-3 syllables which begin with a (& some with i) are stressed on the second syllable. However this goes all to hell in Munster.
Then short vowels before double consonants ll, nn, rr, m, ng & rd in words of one syllable, in which West Galway has their own opinions about dipthongs.
Hello, Unwritten vowels? Yep. Tons. Like gan (without) ainm (name) ainm is pronounced anim.
Ready for mutations? "A feature of Irish & other Celtic languages is that words are liable to change not only their ending, but their beginning - eg co'ta (coat) gives co'tai' (coats) - but also at the beginning eg mo cho'ta (my coat).... Mutations are usually caused by the preceding word. Mo (my) causes a change called lenition, so mo + cota' becomes mo chota' (my coat). Lenition means softening, referring to the replacement of hard & abrupt c by the more hissing or continuous ch. In contrast, 'ar causes a different mutation called eclipsis...." Hence follows a chart of basic consonants in their lenited & eclipsed forms.
But do Irish nouns have gender, you may ask? Of course! Is is systematic or randomly assigned? Random of course!
& that's as far as I've got. It's brutal. I've skimmed ahead & it just gets worse, esp the ludicrous grammatical structure. OK yeah they used Navajo to help defeat the Germans in WW2, but jesus christ. It's like seeing the word blue written in green & being asked what color are you seeing. Disconnect in corpus collosum... & what's even MORE bizarre, is that A. humans invented this language orally, so you know the brain is capable of it, but B. a bunch of folks actually sat down in the 1940's & AGREED TO THIS NOTATION. Bizarre.
Ok thank you. I'll stumble through, thanks for listening to me vent. Go raibh maith agat. (I can type it, but not say it. YET.)
PS that's not true, I can say it now, in both Donegal & Belfast dialects.
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by emily_bmore
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
As I said, this stuff has to be dispensed at the end of a leather strap...
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by grego
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
... it had a name as Gaeilge, but I seem to have blocked it out. Anyone remember?
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by grego
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
For people in Ireland a great way to improve their abilities "as Gaeilge" is to tune in to Raidio na Gaeltachta or the television station TG4. The added bonus is that you'll get lots of trad music into the bargain as these are the only stations that really cater for the trad enthusiast. I'm working on my "cupla focal" but have still a long way to go.
Slán go fóill.
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by Bannerman
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
In fact, you can also listen to Raidio na Gaeltachta outside of Ireland - see www.rnag.ie and go to the 'listen' page. It's just like being back home!
D
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by fluter_d
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Jeremy, Turlach says that what you say is largely beside the point (in re: to not drinking for 5 months, I think is what he means) and he wants to know what JULIA says about it.
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Fad saol chugat, a Jerball!
You've come to the right site for help. I'm not sure about the necessity for the strap/pennies for learning gaeilge, but it was certainly a common practice in Eirinn fado. I had the De La Salle boys and their methods did not differ appreciably from lucht leanuna Edmund Rice.
Anyway as a long-time educator, cuid de mar priomh oide ar Oilean Alainn Acla (Check out nice pictures of Achill Island in my ait dhuchais, Co. Mayo), my advice is learn the way you learned your first language ag ucht do mhathar, by listening and imitating. R na G was a good suggestion (also a great station for ceol traidisiunta/ITM and amhranaiocht ar an sean nos/SN singing. Best of all would be to save your pennies and head for the Gaeltacht (Gaeilgeoiri, note that last word is an exception to the 'caol le caol agus leathan le leathan" spelling rule). Go n-eirigh an bothar leat!
mairtin iseal
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by frozenstiff
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Go raibh mile maith agaibh! Or, as we say here, thanks ya'll!
Zina, Julia thinks that anything that increases the pocketbook and decreases the waistline is just grandy grand. Tell Turlach that everyone looks forward to his surly ways and that he probably won't have to hang out with a bunch of drunk f3ckers this time around.
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by jerball
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Grego, when I was educated by the Christian Brothers the rumour going round the school was that the leather strap at the end was weighted with a gold sovereign (an old gold coin equivalent to £1 then), a lot heavier than a penny.
Trevor
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by lazyhound
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Ah, Turlach claims to be an old grump, but I've never seen it. So far he's only chastised me when I've deserved it...so how's the new album? Like it?
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
The problem with most languages is that there are more significantly different sounds in the language than there are letters in the alphabet to represent them.
Now, Welsh is a celtic language with the same problem of sounds v letters, but the spelling of Welsh is relatively straightforward compared with Irish; once you've learnt the fairly simple rules, you speak what you see on the page, no messing about, and few exceptions. Why couldn't Irish, another celtic language, have gone down this road?
If it comes to that, the spelling and pronunciation of English is by no means simple, either.
Trevor
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by lazyhound
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
fidicen, you must have gone to one of those rich private schools. The Brothers at mine could only afford pennies. - In fact, now that I remember it, on of my classmates' parents sued them for breaking his hand and won. They were awarded a shilling. (Then again, that might just have been a rumour.)
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by grego
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
God, it's great to see people wating to learn a bit of the teanga. Reminds me of that saying "Is fearr liom Gaeilge briste na Béarla cliste" which translates as "I prefer broken Irish to clever English". Has anyone read any Miles Na Gopaleen? Which book was it where the schoolmaster used to thrash Irish-speaking youths and tell them that, henceforth, "Yer name is Jams (sic) O'Donnell"?
# Posted on January 15th 2004 by Conán McDonnell
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
I believe that was "At Swim Two Birds" I remember someone at school with a sign on their schoolbag saying "Jams O'Donnell wants fair play!" God know why.
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by grego
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Also, didn't Fairport Convention have a tune entitled "Jams O'Donnel's Jig?"
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by grego
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
"Which book was it where the schoolmaster used to thrash Irish-speaking youths and tell them that, henceforth, "Yer name is Jams (sic) O'Donnell'?"
The Poor Mouth
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by coyotebanjo
Re: Níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga a fhoglaim
An Béal Bocht - "And their likes will not be there again." Great book. Everyone should read it, but watch out for the Sea-Cat.
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by jerball
Re: N�l m� ach ag tos� ar an teanga a fhoglaim
Emily_oz was clearly learning from the wrong book, and Trevor, Irish IS pronounced as written - once you know how certain letter combinations are pronounced it's actually very straight forward. In relation to the leather strap, I never experienced it and I managed ok...
# Posted on July 6th 2005 by tumeltyni