The GaelMinn Gazette: December, 2015
THE GAELMINN GAZETTE (#126): December, 2015
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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) 2015 Gaeltacht Minnesota
CONTENTS
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JANUARY = FUNDRAISING MONTH!
Tips, Tools, & Tricks
---Writing Headlines
GaelMinn News & Announcements
Lessons Learned
---Balancing on a Log
About Gaeltacht Minnesota
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JANUARY = FUNDRAISING MONTH!
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Unlike years past, Gaeltacht Minnesota is not holding a fundraising event this January. Rather, we're designating January as our fundraising month. In recent years, we found that while people find it harder to fit our event into their schedules, they also find it more convenient to drop off a donation in class or send one in the mail.
We run a very lean volunteer organization, but we do have expenses. And in particular, donations allow us to keep our workshops -- where so many students begin their pursuit of this entertaining language -- as affordable as possible.
If you're a student, please make a donation in class during the first part of 2016. Others can mail a check to Gaeltacht Minnesota at Box 14964, Minneapolis 55414. (We are not an incorporated not-for-profit, so you have to make your own decision about tax deductibility.)
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TIPS, TOOLS, & TRICKS
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----------WRITING HEADLINES
Translating headlines from English into Irish is great practice, and it can be a lot of fun.
One reason this is a useful exercise is that it gives you practice in making decisions. And this is a great time of year to find headlines, and create headlines of your own.
Keep in mind that in newspapers, stories are written first and the headlines added to fit the story. When translating a headline from English, then, think about the story, and rewrite the English headline to make it easier to come up with an Irish version.
Again, make choices about what the Irish headline will say. Don't just struggle to precisely capture the English meaning. Because so much is left out in the telegraphic style of headlines, you have to make compromises. And learning to make some compromises in your translations is good for you, it will help you in conversation.
Suppose the English headline is simply, SMITH WINS!
Right away you have a decision, because English convention uses the present tense in headlines like that. But translating it with the present in Irish -- BUANN SMITH -- adds a habitual aspect that isn't there in the English, unless the original story was about Smith winning again and again.
So with a little thought, you might rewrite the English version to SMITH WON! Then it is an easy jump to BHUAIGH SMITH!
Or you could choose to avoid the tense problem entirely. How about, BUA AG SMITH! ("Victory to Smith")
Of course, that's a simple example, but the principle holds true when you get to trickier items. When you have difficulty translating a headline from English, don't keep banging your head against it until you are frustrated. Simply write another headline that would fit the same basic story, and keep tweaking it until you find a version that is easy to adapt to Irish.
And this is a good time of year to practice with headlines. First of all, you'll see and hear plenty of "Top Ten Stories of 2015" retrospectives in the media. Those are big stories, you already know what happened, so it is easy to take a few of those headlines from these lists and work with them in Irish.
Second, there are lots of opportunities to write new headlines, because the end of the year, the holiday season, is filled with events that you can summarize. I might write, NOLLAIG CHIÚIN TIGH KENNY, about a quiet Christmas at the Kennys.
Or maybe your Christmas party got a little livelier (with a little lubrication!): UNCAIL HARRY AG DAMHSA AR AN MBORD, Uncle Harry dances on the table.
One great source of headline-writing practice is those annual family newsletters people often send in their holiday cards. Imagine that a friend or relative asked you about a mutual acquaintance: "What did you hear from the Smiths?"
Pull out the Smith newsletter and summarize the key items in it in three or four headlines. Then work them into Irish.
If you write a newsletter at this time of year, write headlines for it. Once you have those rendered in Irish, you have good starting points for conversation to share at your next study group or class.
Headlines are great practice tools. But the trick is being flexible about them, not trying to translate them exactly ... which is usually impossible because so many words are left out, and there is so much the reader has to fill in, in whatever language is being used.
Finding that flexibility and making headlines work in Irish can teach you how to work around obstacles in conversation and writing.
And it can be a lot of fun!
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GAELTACHT MINNESOTA NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
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----------WE HAD A GREAT CHRISTMAS DINNER!
We had a great night at Kieran's in December for our 35th annual Christmas dinner. Besides students and instructors, we were delighted to see friends and family who support us throughout the year. Special thanks to Martin, Pete, and Tom for providing the tunes, and to Suin for organizing the event. Thanks, too, to everyone who shared a "party piece". And congratulations to Jennica and Ed, who took home the traveling trophy.
----------SCOTS GÀIDHLIG II
Our introduction to Scots Gaelic continues with Part II in winter term Community Education. If you took Part I, join us to learn more about basic conversation in Scots Gaelic, known as Gàidhlig, along with its history and current use in Scotland, and its relation to other Celtic languages.
If you didn't take Part I, but have previous experience with the language, you might want to check with us at info@gaelminn.org to see if this class is a fit for you.
Class runs for four Monday sessions, 7-8pm, starting Feb 1 (no class Feb 18).
Online registration opens January 4. Visit St. Paul Community Education at http://commed.spps.org/ .
----------CLASS SCHEDULE
January 11: classes resume in Central
January 18: Martin Luther King Day, no class
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LESSONS LEARNED
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----------BALANCING ON A LOG
Do you keep a log of your Irish studies?
At its simplest, you could start by simply marking the days on which you do something with Irish, no matter how slight, on a calendar. This may seem too simple to be helpful, but it is a surprisingly powerful aid to good study habits.
First, it keeps you honest. For instance, if I asked you when was the last time you used your Irish, you might not have a sure answer. You might assume that it was just a few days ago. But your log might reveal a lapse of a week or ten days. Those days without Irish fly by more quickly than we realize.
Next, it gets at frequency, which really matters. Two or three ten-minute sessions in a week can help you progress more quickly than a single half-hour session (especially since it is so much harder to find half an hour to set aside). A simple log like the one proposed quickly reveals gaps of even a few days in practice, and so helps you to make use of your Irish skills more regularly.
Finally, by keeping it so simple, just a check mark, you make it easy to do. You can build the habit of logging your studies fairly easily.
And when this simple checkmark log is a strong habit, you can add information, particularly an estimate of how much time you spent on Irish. Again, on the one hand, you may be overestimating, or even underestimating, the time you spend on the language each week. And on the other, you will be able to tell whether you spread out the work or put it all into an occasional long session.
Take, say, a month to build this step, to acquire the habit of roughly noting time spent on Irish each day. Then you'll be ready for the next step.
And that's to add the "what" to the log. You could make note of the topic or resource used, but that's not what I see as most important.
I'd suggest using four simple codes in your log and noting the time spent in each of the following activities:
R = Reading (including translating from Irish to English)
W = Writing (including translating from English to Irish)
L = Listening, whether to recordings, streams, or in conversation
S = Speaking, not only to others, but to yourself (or pets, plants ...)
When you log these activities, you can check to see whether your activities are out of balance. Unless they explicitly manage that balance -- which requires data -- most students end up at:
R > W and L > S
That is, they spend a lot more time reading and translating Irish sources than they do writing in Irish or translating into Irish -- among the most valuable of study activities. And they are more likely to listen to the language than they are to speak it.
This lack of production practice, writing and speaking, can be crippling when faced with real-time conversation. Checking your balance so you can direct more time into production activities can be a huge boost to your Irish skills.
Again, don't jump right to the more detailed log. Use a simple approach to build your logging habit, and then make it a routine to review your collected data so you can manage your study activities for the best results.
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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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You can stay up to date with Gaeltacht Minnesota at www.gaelminn.org , or drop us a line anytime at info@gaelminn.org .
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