The GaelMinn Gazette: October, 2014
THE GAELMINN GAZETTE (#113): October, 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 Irish. And if you received this Gazette from someone else, go to www.gaelminn.org to sign up.
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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Tips, Tools, & Tricks
---New On-line Newspaper
GaelMinn News & Announcements
Lessons Learned
---All's Well That Ends Well
About Gaeltacht Minnesota
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TIPS, TOOLS, & TRICKS
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----------NEW ONLINE NEWSPAPER
Say "Irish Language Newspaper" in a word-association test and the responses might be "checkered history" or "endangered species".
Or "Phoenix", as a new newspaper, Tuairisc, has arisen from the ashes of past efforts such as Foinse and Gaelscéal. This time around, the newspaper is entirely on-line, to be found at http://tuairisc.ie .
Make no mistake, this is a real newspaper, there's just no print version. It has only been published for a couple of weeks so far, but it is worth bookmarking by students of every level of ability (even though there is no English on the site).
Let's break that down a little bit.
FOR ALL STUDENTS:
There is plenty of written content, news articles of all kinds, and that means just a ton of Irish text.
Now, if you're relatively new to the language, reading and translating many of these articles might not be practical. They are not watered down in the least, they are aimed at a fairly capable readership.
BUT that doesn't mean you cannot use all this great content to further your studies. We regularly suggest, in this e-zine, that students learn to practice identifying grammar points without translating, without worrying about what things mean.
Just as a reminder, here are a few things even a relative beginner can do with one of these articles:
* Circle all the examples of lenition. For bonus points, explain why the lenition occurs (in instances when you can do it without looking up the meaning).
* Similarly, circle examples of eclipsis and explain.
* Find prepositional pronouns (acu, dó, etc.) and identify person and number.
* Find the verbs and identify tense.
You get the idea. Do NOT translate anything (which takes some will power, admittedly), just look for patterns that you want to master.
One thing you CAN translate, to help you with later visits, is the bar of headings (departments, more or less) near the top of the page: Nuacht, Tuairimíocht, etc.
FOR ADVANCED STUDENTS
Naturally, figuring out what the articles say is appropriate for intermediate to advanced students.
You might also give a listen to some of the "Físeáin", animated bits on the revived page for satire, "Ar Son na Cúise". (ASNC, as they call it, was a hilarious page in the old Foinse a few years ago. Seán Tadhg Ó Gairbhí, a director of the new on=line Tuairisc, was editor of the old Foinse.)
Besides a bit of spoken language, it is fun to notice the pretty good attempts to capture the accents and speaking styles of the "stars" of these little shows, from Gaeltacht Minister Joe McHugh to RnaG and TG4 host Máirtín Tom Sheáinín.
FOR BEGINNING/INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS
There is a section titled Foghlaimeoirí ("Learners"). It isn't complete yet, but it has a couple of features that are well worth trying.
The big one is the "Úrscéal d’fhoghlaimeoirí ", the novel for learners. This is an adult story (love in a time of war, in fact) that is written specifically for adult learners. The author is Pol Ó Muirí, who has written quite a few of these things in the past. Sentences are very short and simple.
At the moment the first two chapters of a proposed ten-week series are available. The lovely thing for everyone is that not only is the text on-line, there is an audio recording of the story being read by well-known broadcaster, language supporter, and footballer Dara Ó Cinnéide. (Note, when your read Part 1, it SEEMS like there is a duplication of the first several paragraphs, but actually there are subtle differences, the story being told from two different perspectives.)
An amusing twist is that the author uses Ulster Irish, while the narrator is firmly in the Munster camp.
ALSO IN THIS SECTION, try the CROSFHOCAL, the crossword puzzle. You complete it in your browser, you can get hints, and the level is definitely fairly simple.
Everyone can get some use out of Tuairisc.ie, so bookmark it in your browser and spend a little time using the site to improve your skills and have some fun.
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GAELTACHT MINNESOTA NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
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----------WELCOME NEW STUDENTS
Congratulations to the students who recently completed our fall four-week "Introduction to Irish Gaelic" through Community Ed. We're looking forward to having more than a dozen of these new students join our regular Monday evening activities, continuing under Mary's tutelage. Rumor has it that this class was unusually quick to pick up things in the Intro class, so they are off to a great start!
----------CHRISTMAS DINNER
One tradition for not only our students -- whether the new ones just mentioned, or those who have been with us a long time, or even "lapsed" students -- but for our friends, family, and supporters is our annual Christmas Dinner. We regard this as one of our most important activities of the year, as it is a time to celebrate the hard work our gang puts into learning the language all year round.
For the 34th consecutive year, we'll gather in mid-December for a meal, some tunes and songs, and the awarding of our traveling trophy. This year the event will be held on Monday, December 15, at Kieran's Pub in Minneapolis.
Reservations and pre-ordered meals are required, and we'll have menu information and reservation forms available on our web site at www.gaelminn.org within the next couple of weeks.
----------LAURA MACKENZIE HONORED BY IMDA
Every year the Irish Music and Dance Association honors one individual for her/his contribution to the community, and this year it is the highly deserving Laura MacKenzie. Laura is a brilliant musician, master of multiple instruments, teacher, and longtime keeper of the Celtic music tradition in the Twin Cities.
Laura has also been kind enough to come along with Marty and Pete and Dáithí to play for us at our annual Christmas Dinner.
Laura will be honored on the evening of Saturday, November 22nd, at The Celtic Junction. It is sure to be a great evening of music, besides a nice opportunity to show we appreciate her support. Details weren't set as this newsletter went out, but event details and perhaps advance tickets (which benefit the IMDA educational grant program) should be available soon at http://www.thecelticjunction.com/ .
----------CLASS SCHEDULE
December 8 is the last night in Central, December 15 being the Christmas Dinner. We haven't confirmed our start date in January yet.
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LESSONS LEARNED
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----------ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
In Irish, as in English, we read from left to right. And naturally, time's arrow is uncompromising when it comes to speech: by definition, the "front" of a word comes before the "end" of the word.
Add to that the fact that the fronts of Irish words tend to do funny things, and it is only natural that those front-ends get a lot of our attention when reading or listening to Irish.
But what if we worked backwards some of the time?
Here's a simple experiment: take a couple of paragraphs of Irish text, from any source, and circle, say, the last three letters of any verb you find. How much can you tell from the circled letters?
Well, more than you might think. Let's take the verb cuir ("put"), and look at the "he" version of several tenses (and moods, technically) -- we have shown the last three letters in upper case:
Present: cuireANN sé
Future: cuirfIDH sé
Conditional: chuirfeADH sé
Past Habitual: chuireADH sé
Looking at just those three letters, you can immediately identify the present and future tenses. And if you get a broad DH ending, you narrow it down to two options, the conditional and the past habitual -- generally the least used and most confusing forms for learners, so the more quickly and easily you can detect these forms, the better.
For the tie-breaker between these two options, continue to work backwards until you see whether there is an F in the middle (conditional) or not (past habitual). Since the front-ends of these two verb forms are the same, working backwards gets you to a decision faster than working from left to right.
(The same final letters apply to endings of Type 2 verbs like ceannaigh, but instead of looking for an F in the middle of the verb, it's the vowel, í vs. ó, that is the "tie-breaker".)
Now, do this with a fairly long piece of text (perhaps taken from Tuairisc.ie, above), and it is remarkable how the patterns of verb formation pop out at you when you see all those ending circled (and repeated across various verbs) in one place.
As your focus on verb ending patterns sharpens, you can start to listen for verb endings more effectively. Some verb endings are harder to distinguish by ear than by eye, but having seen the patterns clearly will do a lot to help your listening.
Beyond verbs, there are many other parts of speech that benefit from the same exercise:
* Circle all the endings of prepositional pronouns -- agat, libh, etc. -- and it will strengthen your connection between these combined forms and the subject pronouns (tú, sé, sibh, etc.).
* Noun endings are great to work with, especially as so many of them have broad-slender distinctions that are important. Noticing this broad-slender shift in bád-báid and cupán-cupáin can help you see when the shift occurs, and also help tune your ears to broad-slender distinctions in speech. Noun endings are also great for learning plurals, seeing -anna and -íní and other common patterns.
If you are more advanced, you can test yourself on the explanations for these differences. That is, when you see that -áin ending, for instance, you can ask yourself whether you are dealing with a plural, or a genitive, on whether you know the reason behind the spelling (and sound) change.
But this activity of circling word endings is very helpful even if you are not far along in your studies. Recognizing recurring patterns is one of the core challenges of language learning, and highlighting JUST the endings of words will reveal those patterns much more strongly.
A tip: don't try to circle every type of speech in one passage. Just concentrate on verbs, for several study sessions, before you try nouns, or vice versa.
But learn to read backwards, and you'll find that speaking forwards becomes a bit easier as well!
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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 introducing the language to readers of columns in regional publications, 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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