Hi Catriona! It’s a little worrying how well you predict my responses
But the key issue here, actually (phew, I get to change the record!) is that we don’t have more than a very little new material for the Welsh course - it’s really just the old content moved over into the new app - you could get a bit of yoga stretching out of signing up with the new app and asking admin@ to set you to black belt (which wouldn’t be straight into the new material, but is as close as we can easily manage right now) - but the big step forward will be when we catch up with creating all the extra new material for Welsh as well - currently that’s looking like a ‘before the end of this year’ thing At that point, it’ll be easier for us to set you up to start with new material
Ah, yes, I was thinking more about when the big chunk of new material is available in (N) Welsh. I’ve reached that stage in Italian, having worked my way through lots of old friends like “I told her my room number once but she forgot it” (etc). And more or less stopped starting the response in Italian and finishing it in Welsh
Great news if it will possible to get admin to set me up somewhere around that stage when the new Welsh material is available. Meanwhile, I’ll keep doing my stretches in Italian. And maybe dabbling in something else. Who knows? Always something more to explore!
And we’re going to be able to accelerate production of new courses before the end of the year - we’ve learnt a lot about what we can and can’t do, in the last few months
So I’m trying to access the Irish Gaelic mostly as I have a friend that wants to learn and I thought I’d show him how to access your site. But I can’t get to it. Nothing comes up for me except Welsh.
First real misleading error I’ve come across - I’m having a bit of a hit-and-miss time with when things lenite (soften) and when they don’t, and I’ve run up against the word for “old woman”. Scots Gaelic uses a different word, but Irish has the equivalent of “hen ddynes”, with the ‘old’ before the noun. Based on Scots Gaelic and Welsh I really expected to hear “shan-van”, and was surprised to hear “shan-ban” - but then I checked the spelling, and it looks like a typo (*seanhbean for seanbhean) has mucked up some tts voice generation. Wps.
About 12.5 years since I first started with Say Something in Welsh (and after having dabbled with SSiCornish and SSiDutch), I’m jumping back in again with SSi Irish. My work brings me into contact with Irish speakers, who are so great about using incidental Welsh with me, it’s shamed me. Also, I’m off to Galway in the spring for a conference - can’t rock up there not being able to speak any Irish!
I’m only a couple of sessions in, so early days. But I find it amazing that my Welsh (which I now use all day, every day) was here once. How on earth did I get from there to here?! (I do know, of course - it took a lot of dedication. But it still doesn’t stop me marvelling at the human brain in general, and the special human brain that created SSi in particular…)
As someone whose Welsh is in those early stages you mentioned, your comment is very encouraging. Thank you. I look forward to being able to reach some sort of proficiency in Welsh (though I’ll have to find creative ways to be able to use it daily here in Texas ;).
I’d say machine voice is occasionally a bit too fast. Buntús cainte level fast, which is kinda scary for entry point into teanga. Also, I understand the idea of optimization where different courses use the same set of commentaries and encouragements, but still, I’d say some language-specific stuff is warranted. Without prior experience with initial mutations first contact with lenition produces culture shock, for example. Something like “that’s lenition, just appreciate it at this point” would be helpful.
Something like “that’s lenition, just appreciate it at this point” would be helpful.
IIRC, that’s almost exactly what they did for soft mutations in the Welsh challenges. They asked if you noticed how the /t/ changed to a /d/ (or /d/ to /ð/, etc), told you not to worry about it for now and just try to notice it and then reassured you that you would still be understood if you didn’t remember to make the change. They repeated this the first few times a new one came up (after which, you didn’t really need any more hand holding).
I think the new AI courses are still very much a work in progress. I used the first version of the Italian course and oh my, was it buggy (no criticism intended: this was a year ago now, so very soon after the initial launch and I knew going in I had to expect that); and yet I still found it well worth doing as there really is nothing else like SSi.
I think Aran said they hope to have some new, improved versions coming out soon. I can’t wait.
Edit: I’m not a linguist and have never, sadly, studied the subject other than my own reading, so I’m not sure if mutations are a phonemic change or a phonetic one. In the end, I went with slashes to represent the sounds, as I think mutations can change the (grammatical) meaning and the change is triggered by grammar rather than the phonetic environment, so I think it’s a different phoneme; but feel free to tell me to change them to square brackets if I’ve got that wrong and it’s just a phonetic change. I mention this because in my experience, Russians I’ve met have tended to be quite knowledgeable about these things.
I’m not a linguist either Taught a lot of stuff over the years, but not languages, so your guess how to properly bracket it is as good as mine.
I do remember those remarks in earlier Welsh recordings. Pretty much why I mention it - I know it’s already part of the methodology, it just haven’t got to Irish (yet, hopefully).
Initial mutations in Irish are important as grammatical markers, like in cases where you can only figure if “a” is “his”, “her” or “their” by the mutation or absence of it in the next word. Nice people at Fáilte ar líne project literally say “just appreciate it at this point”, which annoyed the hell out of me on A1 level. But yeah, a few months of appreciation, and then you don’t start to naturally use it properly (too complicated), but at least you can read grammar rules of applying urú and séimhiú and actually make some sense of them. Without any remarks it’s a situation where you encounter something you can’t reproduce and have no clue how it works, which is not good for motivation design.
There’s another thing with Irish, the way it’s written is very different from how it’s pronounced, so reading/writing and listening/speaking skills give less support to each other than usual. I’m curious to see how well it will work with SS format. Specifically, would that be a good entry point, or better learn to read first
Very interesting! I’m coming at Irish as a Welsh speaker, so I’ve noticed the mutations, I’m wondering why they happen, but I’m choosing not to worry about them
I’m also doing it entirely by ear (which is how I learned Welsh). So I’ve got my phone in my pocket the whole time (usually when I’m walking). When I do see a sentence it gives me a bit of shock! (Is that really what I’ve been saying?!
I did have a look at the spelling rules before starting, but I made the decision that speaking was more important to me at the moment. I’ll learn about reading and writing once I can speak - that feels like a very human way to go about things in any case!
Entirely by ear sounds like magic With Welsh I normally don’t know which sounds I just heard until I see the words written, if those are new words. Talked to a lady whose autistic kid is just starting to speak, his speech therapist only managed to bring his speech recognition online by showing him the letters. So I guess depends on the “hardware”. (Low-key dyslexic issues affect up to 20% humans, which is quite a lot!)
That’s a really interesting point! I never thought of myself as an aural learner before I learned Welsh, but it was such a mindblowing experience how the language went straight into a part of my brain that bypassed the reading/writing centre.
But then when I read I “hear” the words in my head - apparently some people don’t do that.
At that point, it’ll be easier for us to set you up to start with new material 
robo-Aran and I are mortal enemies!
With Welsh I normally don’t know which sounds I just heard until I see the words written, if those are new words. Talked to a lady whose autistic kid is just starting to speak, his speech therapist only managed to bring his speech recognition online by showing him the letters. So I guess depends on the “hardware”. (Low-key dyslexic issues affect up to 20% humans, which is quite a lot!)