The GaelMinn Gazette: June, 2014 http://ezezine.com
THE GAELMINN GAZETTE (#109): June, 2014
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The GaelMinn Gazette, a monthly e-newsletter from Gaeltacht Minnesota,
carries helpful items for anyone studying the Irish language, anywhere,
as well as news of interest to local and regional students.
Please FORWARD this newsletter to any friends who may want to learn
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To read this newsletter as a web page, go to
www.gaelminn.org/lastgaz.htm .
Content (C) 2014 Gaeltacht Minnesota
CONTENTS
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SUMMER WORKSHOP!
Tips, Tools, & Tricks
What to Listen For
GaelMinn News & Announcements
Lessons Learned
Double Dictionary Work
About Gaeltacht Minnesota
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JOIN US JULY 19-20 IN CENTRAL MINNESOTA!
Our annual summer weekend workshop offers an opportunity for brand new
students to get started, or, for those already learning -- recent new
students, self-study students, more advanced students -- to learn more
and practice their Irish skills.
The workshop runs Saturday morning through early Sunday afternoon, July
19-20, on the campus of St. John's University in Collegeville, which is
about 1:20 drive northwest of the Twin Cities
The summer workshop has attracted participants from around the region,
from Wisconsin to Iowa to North Dakota to Illinois. Some students stay
over in the dorms while others commute both days. It is a fun event,
even including a "mini-drama festival" where short dialogues are
performed by students on Saturday evening.
And we're pleased to let you know the workshop fee will be the SAME as
last year, $130 (classes, materials, meals and refreshments, lodging
extra) IF you register by July 5 ($155 after that).
You can get complete details and download registration forms at
www.gaelminn.org/summer14.htm .
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TIPS, TOOLS, & TRICKS
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----------WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
Suppose you are in the office or commuting on transit or otherwise in a
position to eavesdrop on others' conversations. You hear someone say
this:
"Well, you know, I went over to their office, but, you know, they were
not very helpful. So, you know, I had to talk to the supervisor,
however, I didn't get, you know, any results. Well, I'm going back
there tomorrow, all the same, and try again."
Now, maybe you find all that "you know" stuff a little annoying (or a
lot). But used appropriately, "you know" is a perfectly good phrase we
all use, and it adds a bit of personality to what might otherwise be a
dry recitation of the facts.
Those facts, of course, are what you usually listen for when you
eavesdrop. If I asked you what that person said, you'd tell me those
details, "the plot" of the story, if you will.
And when you "eavesdrop" on Irish language audio, especially if you
listen to Raidió na Gaeltachta, you listen for the facts. You try to
figure out the plot of what they are saying.
That can be is difficult and frustrating, especially when you are new
at this. Beginners, especially, can quickly give up on listening to the
radio streams. (Visit http://www.rte.ie/rnag/ for lots of options,
including podcasts of various programs that you can download to your
mp3 player to listen to over and over again.)
What if there were a way to learn more from these listening activities,
even if you're a beginner? And what if that approach also gave you the
tools to make your own conversations more interesting, less dry?
The solution is to "flip" your focus when "eavesdropping". Instead of
listening for the facts, listen for those little filler phrases. After
all, they are repeated again and again, and once learned, you can use
them in your own speech.
For instance, I was recently listening to Connaught speaker Máirtín Tom
Sheáinín, host of Ardtráthnóna, in an interview with a guest. Between
them, they said "you know" (for them, "An bhfuil a fhios 'ad?") again
and again. Another phrase they used quite a bit, "le cúnamh Dé" ("with
God's help", used when talking about something that will happen in the
future), is a great one to master for your own speech. (The program
page is at http://www.rte.ie/rnag/ardtrathnona/ .)
In our fictional English conversation above, you want to ignore the
unique items, the facts, and listen for the repetitions. "You know" and
"Well" come up a couple of times. If the conversation ran longer, maybe
"so" and "all the same" and "however" would come up again.
So turn on your audio and make a commitment NOT to figure out what they
are talking about. Rather, figure out HOW they are talking, in
particular, how they are using those common filler phrases again and
again.
You'll gain useful fillers to add style to your own speech. Not only
that, mastering those phrases will help you with the sounds of Irish.
It will help you learn a little more about how the language works.
And, beyond all that, it takes some pressure off your listening
activities. Simply put, it's a fun way to listen to Irish speech.
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GAELTACHT MINNESOTA NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
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----------CLASS NOTES
June 2 was our last class in Central for the summer. We had an
"all-class" event (details at http://www.gaelminn.org/allclass.htm ),
and we were delighted to see all three of our classes interwoven and
working together.
For the rest of the summer, classes generally meet at two week
intervals, but there may be exceptions in individual classes. Watch our
events calendar at http://www.gaelminn.org/gaelevent.htm .
And each class meets at a different location, check with your
instructor if you are not sure about where or when.
----------FALL INTRO CLASS PLANNED
If you're in the TWin Cities and have been looking to join our Monday
classes, your first option is to attend our summer weekend workshop,
described above.
But if you can't make that, you can aim for our four-week Intro class
offered through St. Paul Community Education. The class will run four
Mondays, September 29 through October 20.
Registration is through Community Ed, and we'll have more details on
our web site at http://www.gaelminn.org toward the end of summer.
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LESSONS LEARNED
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Sharing ideas we learn from both instructors AND students.
----------DOUBLE DICTIONARY WORK
Dictionaries are essential to any language study. There are, of course,
some special challenges in Irish. Beginners struggle to look up Irish
words until they learn to "unpack" the mutations they see and hear in
the Irish language material.
After all, if you studied the most popular languages, like French and
Spanish, you rarely had to re-spell a word just to look it up! Yet in
Irish, you might not know to remove the first "h" from "cheannaigh", or
that the "bh" in "bhfeiceann" is not really part of the word.
All of that comes with time. Right now, I'm more interested in
promoting a practice that EVERY student of a second language should
adopt.
When you look up the Irish word for an English word, you might get
several choices. Before you snatch the first option and run with it,
LOOK IT UP in the Irish-English dictionary, please!
This is something that I consistently see the best students doing,
taking the extra time to double check what they found in the
English-Irish dictionary. Sometimes beginners don't take that extra
step, with embarrassing or comical results. But it is well worth it,
and it is easier to do than ever before.
Indeed, it isn't a problem just for beginners. There was quite a bit of
mocking commentary directed toward the Dublin Airport recently when
they put up a bilingual sign urging passengers at certain gates to "be
patient". Some people suspected they generated the Irish version
through Google Translate, although it could just as easily have been
translated with a dictionary.
However it was done, the word used for "patient" was "othar". "Othar"
certainly means "patient" -- but it is a noun referring to someone who
is under a doctor's care. In other words, we're talking about the
difference between "patients" and "patience". "Othar" may have come up
quickly as a translation for "patient", but a simple check would have
prevented putting out an embarrassing sign with a nonsensical message.
Now, if you are using a combined dictionary, like the Foclóir Póca or
something similar, you have both the English-Irish and the
Irish-English sides available to you in one place. When you look up an
English word, just take a moment to flip to the other half of your
dictionary and check out each of the options. You'll avoid saying some
silly things, and you'll also learn about some subtle differences in
Irish vocabulary.
If you use the big dictionaries, the ones from Ó Dónaill an De
Bhaldraithe, it used to be more of a pain to check the results of one
dictionary in the other. But since these dictionaries have become
available online, it has become fast and simple.
You can access these dictionaries on your computer, tablet, or
smartphone at http://breis.focloir.ie/ . When you go to the
English-Irish tab and enter a word, you'll get the usual dictionary
entry, BUT ...
Each of your options is a link to the Irish-English entry, with one
wrinkle. Click on the option, and then click on the Foclóir
Gaeilge-Béarla tab to see the entry from the Irish-to-English side.
Technology has made this step of checking your options faster than
ever. There's no excuse not to double check the words you look up in
your English-Irish dictionary, a very small extra step that will pay
large dividends in expressing yourself correctly in Irish.
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ABOUT GAELTACHT MINNESOTA & THE GAZETTE
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Gaeltacht Minnesota is a volunteer organization that has been teaching
free weekly classes in Irish for more than three decades. Besides free
classes, we offer several workshops each year, publish a printed
newsletter for learners, and participate in a wide variety of community
events.
The GaelMinn Gazette is distributed to our subscriber list on the 25th
of each month: Will Kenny, editor.
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