Thank you, Alan. A very helpful and reassuring reply - I agree, I imagine a staff member is keeping an eye on this. I do want to contact Aran or whoever needs to know about my interest in the Irish experience planned for September, and fairly soon now. I never know quite when and how will be most efficient… Overall I am not freaked out by any course details but delighted and grateful for encouragement over the years from @Deborah-SSi , @nia.llywelyn , fellow learners such as yourself, the Coventry Welsh, Shrewsbury Welsh, and now Birmingham/Black Country Welsh and, of course all the Jones family and those who have powered through with development. I am a bit of a dilettante at times though.
Thanks for the detail in your reply to @Neide, Kai. Very reassuring.
I agree entirely with the idea of relating Welsh to Irish - I was really enjoying that aspect of it. Unfortunately, I tend to listen whilst doing something else - say, driving - so I was having to try to remember what Aran said in the prompt-before-last all the time…which was just a bit too taxing to cope with.
Thank you, this is all reassuring to hear. I might hang back on immersing myself too much in it for the moment and wait for some of that further development to have happened (sometimes being an early adopter isn’t all it’s cracked up to be! And as someone who already has a lot of the basics, it’s the more naturalistic/fluent-sounding language I’m looking for, not the awkward school or textbook Irish, so it might not be meeting my needs as a course), but this might make me less nervous about suggesting it to others.
Learning a language is not for the faint hearted or for a pastime. It requires dedication and more time than most people imagine. Firstly you have to commit to it, Not ill try it and see. Secondly enjoy the experience don’t make it a chore. Thirdly practice the 4 skills equally Speaking, Listening, Reading and writing. And be prepared for speed bumps, doubts, thoughts of quitting and not progressing. But generally if you power in regardless and keep an element of enjoyment and variation, you will achieve your targets. Backing of and slowing down is acceptable, but stop starting isn’t. Remember learning a language is a luxury not afforded to everyone, but the advantages and buzz factor is amazing.
Hello Alan, There are so many languages in this world that are valuable to learn and use and appreciate that I have to make choices according to how relevant a language feels to my life and whether activities tend to motivate or demotivate me. So across my various languages I have varying ability to speak, to write, to comprehend spoken and written language. I see no problem there.
I have found a way to use, despite the tech glitches and the errors in [this section of - I am only at yellow with white stripe] the Welsh to Irish Beta course: where the voices/written give the wrong solution to the prompt(s) - e.g. when Aran’s voice says ‘wyt ti isio?’ and the Irish voices say ‘ba mhaith leat?’ I forcefully correct the error.
Aran’s voice is out of sync with Irish voices but the written material seems often to fit them. I cannot understand how real Irish speakers recorded "ní mhaith liom’ when there exists “ní maith liom” and “nior mhaith liom” but not the unholy mishmash of the two. Except, that is, that as learner I have often committed errors in those structures when under any sort of pressure.
When presented with these problems simultaneously I try to get through in the time allotted, but if phrases are long I pause, and I answer Aran and I correct or comply with the Irish voices patiently in turn as if they were all competing kids making demands upon me when I’m in loco parentis, lol. I also intone, in addition to imitating both voices supplied, a version in my best Derry accent when I know what that is - e.g. ba/ar mhaith sound like ba/air “why” …
So it is a fun workout, and unlike the 6month Welsh speaker course, not one I can do in bed or while painting a fence.
I do not quite yet need to return to further reading and writing in Irish, I have done plenty beforehand. Getting in the practice from these challenges and thus build confidence to hear and comprehend what I know, to learn to stop bad habits of effortful ‘listening’, and instead concentrate on developing confidence in speaking and in accommodating a range of accents, is plenty to be going on with.
An ambitious range of structures/tenses has already been introduced. I can look those up as I go along.
I’d love to converse with my still variously pre-school, pre-adolescent & adolescent niece & nephews in Luxembourgish. They certainly can’t spell it, probably can barely read it and are not asked to do so. So I won’t prioritise writing that.
Horses/courses. I thoroughly endorse your commitment to engaging in all facets of (what one chooses as one’s own) high priority languages. I also value smatterings, beginnings, and dabblings within safe limitations and boundaries. And beta versions as a game with some jeopardy!
I appreciate your expressing your viewpoint so clearly.
With thanks and best wishes, from Lorna.
Funnily enough i live in Derry City. So i kinda use my best Derry accent also. Took to Irish at 38, 20 years later Cymraeg and español this past year
Hey, sorry I’ve missed these - I’ve had my head down proofreading the new version of the Italian course…
There will be major differences between the new Irish course and the old one through the medium of Welsh, mostly because the medium of Welsh one was just a little demo made quickly with AI to give people a taste of what kind of thing we could make (same goes for other demos). The full Irish course as I explained above involved long discussions with a native speaker, so a bunch of the translation decisions will have been different by chance
I wouldn’t recommend doing them together! We will be making a full version of the Welsh course as well when we can, which will mirror the current full course much more and not have the syncing issues (sorry!!) but, it might be a while…
Can’t comment on Irish grammar stuff, so go raibh míle maith agat, @Alan-Clifford
I’ll keep monitoring so I can pull any bad phrases you guys find
Hello all,
I have just started the Irish course this week, and am feeling a huge amount of benefit from it already. No matter how much grammar you learn, there is nothing like being taught how to put it all together and actually speak the language, even haltingly. Mistakes are your friends, as Aran would say.
I just finished the orange level and noticed a couple of small glitches on that level. One is that ‘It will be easy for you’ is consistently translated as ‘beidh sé éasca ort’, except in one single case the preposition is switched to from ‘ar’ to ‘le’, and both speakers and the written answer say ‘beidh sé éasca leat.’
The other thing I notice is that in the last quarter of the level, the male voice models the same answer - ‘ceist a chur’ - for both ‘to ask a question’ and ‘to ask you a question’. The female voice on the other hand always distinguishes between ‘ceist a chur’ and ‘ceist a chur ort’.
Don’t know if this sort of feedback is useful to you. Let me know if it’s annoying nitpicking!
Slán go fóill,
Ceris
Very useful, go raibh maith agat!
Fáilte romhat!
I have reached the end of the free bit and have found it useful and helpful. I had some doubts about inconsistencies and things that seemed AI generated. I know care has to be taken with pedagogical choices, but hearing in here that they were reviewed by a native speaker for correctness, it does put my mind at ease.
Anyway, now I’m being prompted to pay the 12 pound for monthly access. I’m really considering it, but I can’t seem to find a web page that tells me what I will get. How many other belts? Rough estimate of length of extra material? I mean, unless I’m being silly and I can’t find it?
I literally have money I’m willing to spend but I just wanted to be able to glance at some more info to see the lists of topics and types of contextual situations the remainder will be about.
So, I’m currently waiting to see something like that.
Hello all,
I just finished the orange-white level, and noticed the following on that level:
At the 55 and 65 percent point, ‘this week’ is translated as ‘an seachtain seo’, which I think should be ‘an tseachtain seo’.
At 82 per cent, the answer given to the prompt ‘you feel that you are learning quickly’ is ‘mothaíonn tú go tapa ag foghlaim’, but should perhaps be ‘mothaíonn tú go bhfuil tú ag foghlaim go tapa’?
In the last 15 percent of the level which deals with questions beginning with ‘how’, ‘conas’ is used with both present tense forms of the verb bí (i.e. sometimes 'conas (a)tá tú..?, but other times ‘conas a bhfuil tú…?’) . I think ‘conas’ is only used with tá, and if you want to use the ‘fuil’ form you would use a different word for ‘how?’, like ‘cén chaoi…?’. So you could say ‘conas atá tú?’ or ‘cén chaoi a bhfuil tú?’, but not ‘conas a bhfuil tú?’ or 'cén chaoi atá tú? because each ‘how’ word only triggers one form of the verb ‘bí’.
Hope some of that is useful.
- Ceris
Dia duit
Aontaím leat with the corrections, not the lsy out of the app q&a’s.
An tseachtain seo..
Mothaíonn tú go bhfuil..
I use Ulster. So rather Cad é mar rather than Conas.
Conas uses question form of An bhfuil.. tá/níl.
Cá háit/ cén t-am/ cad chuige & cad chuige nach also use question forms.
All other questions use positive answer form (tá)
Cá háit a bhfuil tú?
Cén t-am a bhfuil tú?
Cad chuige a bhfuil/nach bhfuil tú?
Ach
Cé atá?
Cad é mar atá …
Hi Graeme - this is actually a bit tricky for us, because the method isn’t topic or context generated - we’ve got our own approach based on trying to map out what we think of as the core of the language (which is a combination of frequency but also flexibility, with some context thinking as well) - and then expand from that until we’ve given you enough to be C1 if you do the necessary conversational work.
There’s one broad idea I can give you - we have our own model of what we call seed sentences - which are like the core framework we’re building towards - the free belts work through about 20 seed sentences, I think (although I’m not entirely sure, so I’ve asked tech for confirmation) and the full course goes up to about 500. It’s a lot of content - considerably more than our initial Welsh course (we’ll be looking to catch up for Welsh!).
And go raibh maith agat/diolch yn fawr iawn for your help, @CerisHughes and @Alan-Clifford
Hello aran,
That’s actually really useful to know. I am more technically oriented so I can understand a bit better how it works. Let me know what the tech team confirm, if you can. But I think you sold it to me quite well and I can see what kind of benefit I’d be expecting if going into the full course!
You’re very welcome (quite a surprise to hear that I’ve sold anything, though, that’s never been my strength ).
I’ve just heard back from tech and they say actually it’s more like 7 seed sentences in the free content in general - I’ve asked them to check the Irish course in particular, but it won’t be dramatically different.
Yup, it’s 7 seeds in the Irish course as well, so very much just a taste