The GaelMinn Gazette: May, 2016
THE GAELMINN GAZETTE (#131): May, 2016
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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.
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Content (C) 2016 Gaeltacht Minnesota
CONTENTS
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Tips, Tools, & Tricks
---Verb-Preposition Combinations
GaelMinn News & Announcements
Lessons Learned
---Students Who Help Themselves
About Gaeltacht Minnesota
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TIPS, TOOLS, & TRICKS
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----------VERB-PREPOSITION COMBINATIONS
Here's a different kind of flash card activity.
You may have discovered that the meaning of a verb can vary with the preposition that follows. Students often report a lot of difficulty in keeping the various combinations straight.
For instance, look up "éirigh" in the big Ó Dónaill dictionary (here's the on-line entry: http://www.teanglann.ie/ga/fgb/%C3%A9irigh ) and you'll see that it means "to rise" and "to grow, get, become". Underneath the main entry, and in the sidebar, you'll see that there are separate entries for "éirigh as" and "éirigh le", among other combinations. The former means to quit, to give up doing something ("D'éirigh sé as a phost", "He quit his job"), while the latter means to succeed or to manage to do something ("D'éirigh an scrúdú liom", "I passed the exam".)
So what would you need to drill just these two simple combinations:
- 1 Verb card (éirigh)
- 2 preposition cards (as and le)
- 2 English cards (quit and succeed).
That's a small flash card deck, but it is just a start. You only need a few more verbs, perhaps five in total, to have a good size for practicing. Collect verbs as you read and listen, from your lessons and from anywhere you encounter Irish. Especially notice the most common verbs and the preposition combinations they exhibit.
Or just go to the dictionary and check out which ones have special entries. For example, "cuir" ("put") is quite common, but followed by "le" it can mean to add to something, to increase it. "Cuir as" can mean to deprive someone of something.
Again, five or six verbs are plenty. You don't need to have duplicate cards for prepositions, one for each preposition is fine. And then you have English cards for each verb-preposition combination. Keep these three types of cards in separate decks.
Now, you are ready for to use your flash cards in both directions:
- Draw a verb and a preposition. If possible, find the matching English card (or take a "pass" if you don't have an English card for that combination).
- Draw an English word, and then find the combination that applies.
As your speed at finding the missing pieces improves:
- Find some more verbs and increase the size of your deck. (When it gets too big, remove a few verbs that you have mastered.)
Verb-preposition combinations are a real challenge, yet they pop up as necessary tools at a very basic level of Irish. In other words, you're going to encounter these combinations early and often and that makes them worth your time to master.
But there is no logic to this. The prepositions don't "map" to English usage very well ("listen to" in English becomes "listen with" in Irish). Indeed, often a preposition is needed in one language but not in the other.
The only way to get comfortable with these combinations is to practice them deliberately. A simple set of flash cards can go a long way toward helping keep all these combinations straight so you can add them to your own conversational repertoire.
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GAELTACHT MINNESOTA NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
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----------GREAT ALL-CLASS!
From time to time, we bring all three of our classes together to work on fun activities where students at different levels can help one another. So we all gathered in one (hot) room May 23.
We did puzzles, learned about using Facebook with an Irish language interface, had some show and tell (RnaG clips), and finished with some tongue twisters.
Thanks to everyone who made it to all class for a fun night!
----------CLASS SCHEDULE
No Class May 30, Memorial Day
Last class in Central: June 6
After that, the three classes have independent schedules and locations. Check with your instructor.
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LESSONS LEARNED
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----------STUDENTS WHO HELP THEMSELVES
Watch an Irish class when they encounter new vocabulary, Irish words for which they don't know or can't recall the translation -- whether from reading, a little bit of conversation, a snatch of a song, a proverb --and you'll see some students diving into their dictionaries right away. They must be the weaker ones, right?
And in many of our classes, we have a little period of "Cén scéal?", conversation about what's new in people's lives. Some students remain silent, or try to hide, some can tell a short tale fairly easily. But what about the ones who pull out little notes for their "scéal" of the week, or who have more or less memorized a few sentences they want to say? Are those students reliant on 'crutches' that they should try to do without?
If these are crutches, they are a sign of health, not weakness!
In both of these situations, the students who provide themselves with help are usually the ones moving in the right direction, the ones whose language skills will be stronger a year from now. Some students are embarrassed to look up words in the dictionary -- as if their teachers expect them to know every Irish word they will encounter. Others just look to the teacher to fill in the blanks (But we have a saying in Gaeltacht Minnesota: "Your teacher is not your dictionary, your dictionary is your dictionary.")
Some feel silly using notes or memorized bits to help them converse, as if they were cheating. As a result, they actually converse very little.
As teachers, we have seen that it is often our stronger students who have their dictionaries open first. We have found that students who look for ways to help themselves tackle a challenge -- writing a little speech so they can contribute to the conversation, or keeping a short list of phrases they want to use handy -- are the ones who get better, week after week, and find themselves saying more and more without their notes.
What is there to be embarrassed about? For some reason, Irish students think that new words should stick in their heads the first time they look them up or are given a definition. We all have plenty of evidence, from our own experience and from watching others, that it just doesn't work that way. Yet we see having to look up a word a second time, or "looking up too many words", as some kind of personal failure.
Help yourself, and don't be bashful about it. We all know that you are learning a language, that you aren't a master of the Irish tongue just yet, that's why you're in class.
Use every tool you can to help yourself participate fully in class and in conversation (including conversation with yourself, just practicing on your own). Don't worry how it looks. Every time you interact with the language, by looking things up or checking your notes, you strengthen your abilities.
In other words, the more you use the available "crutches" as you learn, the better you perform when they aren't available. And that makes using the language less stressful and more fun!
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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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