Sorry if this is in the wrong place or if I’ve not found previously posted discussion of the same topic.
I’m at green belt level in Irish and am wondering what the current recommendation is for reading or not reading the second person’s response, which shows the Irish written out.
I did the first 25 lessons in Welsh a few years back before this current app format and I seem to remember that reading was discouraged. Has that recommendation changed? If I remember correctly, you have to go hunting for the written answer in the old system but it is included with the second speaker now.
I would have posted this to Irish but I’m not seeing the way to do that with a new topic. Quite possibly my bad.
thanks in advance
Bruce
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From the discussions while the app was in development, I think they reluctantly included text because so many learners wanted it, but SSi still firmly believes it is better not to look, at least at first. It used to be “do at least level 1 before trying to read” IIRC. I don’t know how the belt colours correspond to the challenge levels though. Did we ever get an answer on that? I know it has been asked quite a bit.
AutoMagic had an option to hide the text. It never actually worked for me, but it was there. Maybe the app will have that eventually, and some guidance on when to read or not?
For now, if you can stick to just speaking and listening, do that until you’re actually planning to pick up a magazine or a book. You already know how to read, so picking up the phonics won’t take long when you are ready.
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To develop a better accent and tune your ear into a new language, it is a good idea to avoid reading it at first - especially one like Irish where the spelling is so different to English. Once you start to feel confident with saying some of the words, and the pronunciation is starting to feel a little more natural to you, then looking at the written words can reinforce it.
Personally, what I find with Irish, is that it helps to treat it like learning to read by the “whole word” method. I don’t think too much about the correlation between the sounds and the letters, just “this Irish word looks like that”, and I’m gradually trying to internalise how the words are written. It’s an interesting experiment so far 
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I mostly do Irish when driving, so it’s hidden behind the SatNav and safely invisible; but I do find it helpful to look at it on occasion (when I safely & legally can!) - sometimes it’s hard to be sure whether the voices are saying a /d/ or a /g/, sometimes the two accents are slightly different (eg the male speaker pronounces the f in cuirfidh but the female voice doesn’t) etc. But it’s an occasional help, not a perpetual reliance, for me.
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thanks for the observations/clarification.
I my experience, I can tell that it was very good for my learning, when I did the “classic” 25-lesson course, just following the recommendation quite strictly for Level 1 and Level 2.
However, comparing my previous experiences in language learning, I think the biggest difference is really between:
- learning mostly by reading and from reading and translating a lot of text by yourself (without any audio)
In first case, you use the sounds you already know for “hearing” the text in your head and will tend to use them for speaking
and
- learning mostly by listening, and only looking at texts matching an audio you’re hearing at the same time, similarly to what happens with the new course, following written lyrics while listening to songs or matching transcriptions of the advanced material (without analyzing them word by word yet), or listening to audiobooks for learner while looking at the text. (probably similar to what @Deborah-SSi is describing?)
This may actually help you catch words and figure out the language, and even help your pronunciation .
At least this was my experience with Welsh!
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I’ve started Irish as well now, and (having done the Welsh SSi almost entirely by ear) decided that was the way to go. I do sneak a peek now and then, and it’s been useful to see where words like “go” and “maith” contribute to larger stock phrases. I hope one day to understand how that works!
But for now I find that watching the screen hinders my ability to implant the words and structures into my brain - that’s what has worked so brilliantly for me with the SSi system.
I like Deborah’s “whole word” reading method, though - I think that’s going to be the way to go with the Irish.
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I’m actually starting to find that the Irish spelling system is sneaking into my subconscious. When I see an unknown word in Irish now, I’m finding that I almost automatically know how to say it! I’m very surprised when that happens, but it just shows how amazing the subconscious can be when you let it!
I found explanation of Irish phonetics in “Teach yourself Irish” very useful, but only at the point where I already knew how many of words sound, so I could organize my experience into the system and feel like the puzzle pieces click into all the right places. Starting with reading the rules isn’t very useful, because there’s too many of them to remember in one go.
I’m text-first, so I can’t quite remember the sound without letters, but I also tend to subconsciously filter out sound if I have subtitles. Showing text, but only on the second speaker feels like a very good compromise.
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There’s also quite a bit of phonetic diversity between dialects. www.teanglann.ie gives pronunciation variants for three main dialects. For the most part words are spelled the same, but sound differently (also, occasional differences in how initial mutations apply).
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I imagine “Now you’re talking Irish” could supplement SS well. That’s actual human voice, but in Ulster dialect (instead of more usual Connacht).
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