It’s really interesting reading your comments on Irish, as I come from virtually no knowledge apart from having dabbled in it a little. I’m not sure I agree with your suggestion that reading should be mandatory from the beginning though.
My first attempt at learning Irish was a few years ago now before a trip to Ireland. The only resource I had was Duolingo, and it drove me insane that it forced me to write the words. I found myself shouting at my tablet, “I’m not going to Ireland to write Irish! I just want to speak it!” and I gave up. Even with the early SSi Irish, when I wanted to learn a little, I always shut my eyes to focus on the sounds, and didn’t want to see how the words were written as it was a distraction. I wanted to get a feel for the sound of it first, and become comfortable with producing those sounds myself, before I was sidetracked by how the written words looked.
I did the same with the little bit of SSi Dutch that exists - learnt from listening and saying the phrases before I went to the Netherlands for a weekend. I saw written Dutch there and my reaction was, “Good grief! Is that how you write that word I’ve been saying?” but Dutch friends were impressed by my pronunciation.
For me, I think it’s important that the reading aspect is optional. Personally I would get a grasp on speaking some Irish first, then turn the text on and surprise myself with what the words actually look like … and until I started learning with SSi, I’ve always considered myself very much a visual learner! That’s how I learnt languages in school, and when I went to a class that focused just on speaking and we didn’t write anything down, I couldn’t remember a thing from one week to the next. Of course that didn’t have the constant spaced repetition of SSi, which is what makes a huge difference.
But it will be interesting to see what other people think once they have that opportunity to choose.
I suspect we might be getting into learning preferences again, but I’m with you on the Irish Deborah. I have mostly been doing the Irish course with the phone in my pocket. Now and again I’ll look to see how something is spelled, but that’s mainly to check my assumptions about grammar. I have also been doing Duolingo on the side (and getting frustrated about spelling) as well as dipping into some grammar books.
I’ve booked to go to a residential course in Galway at the end of the month. It will be very interesting to me to test out (a) how my pronunciation so far stands up, (b) how much of an issue spelling is on that course, and (c) what their “traditional” teaching methods are like (and how they compare to the Dysgu Cymraeg curriculum).
I’m at the beginning of brown belt now - should be on black by the time I go. The course is a 5-day one for beginners (so A1, I think) and I’ll miss the first two days of it because of work. I figured that I should have enough Irish to be able to cope with missing the first two days, and that if the Irish they are teaching is far more basic than the level I have (entirely possible) I will at least be in a Gaeltacht village with people who are willing to speak to learners…
Hi @elizaveta! I’ll ask if we can share the name, but I can tell you that she is a native speaker (as in, grew up speaking Irish at home with native speaker parents, and uses Irish at work most of the time!), and we worked together, face-to-face for two days in Baile Átha Cliath 
For the methodology to work we always need to stretch the language a little bit every now and then. A small amount of our time was spent actually translating (I would get claude to give it a go in very small batches, our translator would fix them and give feedback, then Claude would try again, rinse and repeat. Over time Claude got better at it, but she still checked every single phrase), then most of our time was spent discussing the bits that didn’t map very well, so that we could make it fit the methodology without compromising too much on correctness/naturalness. So I take responsibility for any weird bits - they’re all there because we had to try to follow the methodology and she agreed it would probably not be too weird to do it that way.
Then, we spent some time going through the way the seeds were broken down into the bits that get introduced, putting more emphasis on the start of the course to save time, but still reading through them all. And then, when I generated a bunch of practice phrases for the course after getting back home, she did a run through proofreading them and deleting all the bad ones. After that I had to generate some more (giving claude the context of everything we deleted and kept, so it might do better), and those are still in the course and still need proofreading (our translator had to start another project by that point)
Hope that helps clarify things!
Very interesting! It’s almost like watching the beginning of 2 distinct languages, as must have happened millions of times throughout history.
IMHO, that’s not what will happen here, though, Deborah. To me, it seems obvious that the more beautiful of the two languages and the one with the better claim to continuity with Ireland’s history and the history of its people will die unless the full weight of conservation efforts are thrown behind that variety.
That could be the case. I’m watching with interest to see what happens here in the Basque Country, with the unified “Batua” version being taught in schools, especially in areas like Araba province, where the language was virtually lost and is being brought back.
In other areas there are dialects, which I hope won’t be lost. A teacher explained to me that they teach Batua to the children as the “official” language, but they use the local dialect on a casual basis. Some older first language speakers seem to be quite anti Batua, but I’m not sure how much that means they don’t want to speak to them though.
Thanks for the abair.ie tip, Liza, we’ll definitely have a look at that when we get some time, and see if it would be possible for us to integrate it with our current set of building tools.
We will definitely be looking to make it possible for people to contribute human voices to the project - we’re working on a layer for non-LLM building at the moment - and if we get the growth to make it possible, we’ll be particularly likely to fund (or co-fund) voices for the Celtic languages, as our core mission.
I’m almost half-way through Brown/WhiteStripe now - hoping to get to Black before I go off to Galway!
There are a few niggles along the way (missing lenition, additional words, etc) but I have to confess to being a selfish user and not stopping to take screenshots (as I’m usually walking or driving and the phone’s in my pocket). Sorry. Doesn’t really bother me though - I just plough on.
But there’s an odd glitch that I did want to report - around the last quarter of Brown and the first quarter of Brown/WhiteStripe. The algorithm seems to get fixated on variations of the sentence “she could bring her brother on Monday” to the exclusion of everything else. When a new element is introduced there are a handful of chunks to practice it, but then it’s back to this blessed woman and her brother.
I thought getting on to white stripe might dislodge it, but it kept on with the same pattern, so I skipped over a lot. Now I’m over a quarter of the way through it’s started bringing other chunks back in (which is both a relief and a challenge, because I’d forgotten quite a few of them!)
Not complaining at all - it’s still working a dream for me Just in case it’s helpful feedback.
You’re doing so well, @sara-peacock-1! I can’t wait to hear how you get on when you go to Galway.
That’s very useful feedback, and I have no idea why the spaced repetition algorithm would keep giving you variations on that woman and her brother (he must be a very special brother 
) but I’ll look into it and pass information to the Tech Team.
Go raibh maith agat!
My word you’re doing brilliantly! I absolutely can’t wait to hear how your visit goes! Oh, also, I strongly recommend that you try to get one conversation practice under your belt before going, ideallly for two hours - that should really fire it all up for you. I know some Irish speakers based in/near Cardiff who would probably be up for it, if that would be helpful
Thought this might be of interest here
That sounds amazing!
Thanks for your reply which I’ve only just found probably because I was looking on My Posts. Oh well. I tried both those links and a blank page with the Say Something logo is all that appears. Could that be because I’m trying to access it on computer rather than mobile?
That shouldn’t be a problem, unless perhaps you’re on a very old computer - if you could give us make/model/OS that would help figure out what’s happening
And browser, I’d imagine (?)
Hi @aran! I didn’t get the time to do any practice before going (although I did manage to get a couple of really rudimentary conversations while I was there…)
Could I take you up on your offer of an introduction to Irish speakers in my area? I’d be happy to offer up Welsh in return…
Deffo - I don’t know loads, but I’ve got one good contact who probably knows all the Irish speakers in Cardiff, I’ll dig out her email for you
openness to their feedback isn’t great either.
Given the hours I have spent in communication with you alone on these matters - in public and in private - I think this claim is unfair and misleading.
I believe that the vast majority of our community members see that we are consistently grateful for all input (and indeed all our work has been shaped and refined by our learners from the very first 15 free Welsh lessons we published onwards).
I don’t think there have been any problems here with the clarity of your communication.
The main problem for me is that you have made unfair and dismissive comments about our response to your input - suggesting that the sum total of the extensive communication you and I have shared boils down to ‘everything is okay and will work out’ is deeply misleading.
I have gone into considerable detail with you about how we work, how we hope to keep improving, what we’re currently working on, and what we see as the most valuable ways forward.
Given your misleading characterisation of my communications with you, I’m not motivated to continue our discussions.
I wish you all the best with your study of Irish, and your sincere desire to make a positive contribution to the future of the Irish language - a desire we share.
Generally, this amount of data is supposed to be out in the open anyway. Transparency about technical side is literally in UNESCO recommendations for applying AI to endangered languages, and roadmap with explicit timeline would actually prevent a share of concerns. I don’t think hurt feelings are the real problem here, but I’ll comply. Take care.