Latha na #Gàidhlig

'S e latha na Gàidhlig a th'ann an-diugh! And so it's time for an update.

from SocialMediaAlba.scot

When I started this blog, I had secretly hoped that my learning would be filled with weekly or even daily discoveries of new and exciting vocabulary and grammatical epiphanies. I'd read blogs by other friends and acquaintances who tracked their progress in learning a new language and I'd hoped to do the same. BUT... there's one problem in my case - tha mi glè glè leisg. Seriously lazy. I spend the large majority of the twenty-four hours of the day in a horizontal position. Work does take up a lot of my time and so the last thing I feel like doing afterwards is stare at a screen* browsing Learngaelic.scot or struggling with the silly sound files on Taic.

When I first started learning German and French properly during high school, I really went at it. My zeal back then amazes me even now! I would memorise endless vocab lists and read aloud passage after passage just because I loved hearing the nasal sounds of French or the back-of-throat German sounds come out of my mouth. When I couldn't sleep, I would have conversations in my head between a French person and a German person (with the occasional Italian rudely interrupting) to pass the time and hopefully send me to sleep. Sometimes, though, I didn't know a word and just HAD to look it up. So three small dictionaries lay on the floor next to my bunk bed for about three years.

But I don't do any of this now. I don't need to for French or German. But maybe I should start up night-time Gaelic conversations to help me sleep. If I'm honest, though, despite all that effort, my French and German really progressed when I visited France and Germany. Speaking the language with speakers of that language really is the best way to learn it. By far. And I don't do that in Gaelic. So that's my #goal for the next few months. Speak more. Listen more too. Learn all these words ending in -adh. I'll need to start torturing Tormod with my super-slow mangled Gaelic more regularly. Friendships need testing every now and then anyway ;-)

And then maybe by the next Latha na Gàidhlig I'll feel sufficiently justified to add Scottish Gaelic to my list of languages on Facebook. Cuz that's what matters, right?

P.S. Really getting into Beag Air Bheag le Iain Urchardan. It's not super easy but they speak slowly enough that I can note down words I dinnae ken.

* yes, yes, I know a smartphone has a screen. Pipe down! No more questions or comments! (Jokes! Please comment if you take the notion)

Air an t-slighe dhachaigh bhon mhonadh

Latha math dhuibh. Only two weeks remain of my Gaelic course and the class has dwindled down to a faithful remnant. We are following the structure of "Can Seo" which covers the comings and goings of Swotty Mary and ADHD John to and from the moor, with or without the dog or shinty stick. Apparently, 's toil le Iain a bhith anns a' mhonadh ach 's fheàrr le Mairi a bhith aig an taigh còmhla ri a màthair.

The teacher is pleasant and friendly enough. I'm just struggling to take stock of what I have learnt concretely over the weeks.

I'd say one of the things I definitely have a better grip on is the dative case - I now get how the little floating "t-" disappears after "air" or "anns an" for masculine nouns beginning with a vowel, etc., etc. That said, we haven't really covered feminine nouns and it was only yesterday that we looked at the slenderisation of the end of feminine nouns in the dative (what the...?? how on earth do I pronounce 'chaileig', 'làir'? Is this change noticeable in fast speech?). All the same, I'm no longer shocked or confused by the whole thing. A' dol dhan mhonadh and a' coiseachd air an rathad faisg air a' mhuir repeatedly does hammer the point dhachaigh eventually.

As for the genitive, don't ask..


Anyway, yesterday was the feasts of Saints Fergna Britt, Slebhene and Suibhne (Sweeney) a b'e abachan an Eilein Ì a bh'annta. So there you go.

Back from Saor-Laithean

Bliadhna Mhath Ùr!

Gabhaibh mo leisgeul for the long absence. Life gets in the way, ken? Quite a few updates to report on later. And hopefully I'll manage to update this a little more regularly than I have done.

For starters, last December I went to my first bothan ann an Dùn Éideann with Alasdair Mac Ille Bhain (Whyte) á Muile (Mull). I hope to go to another this month, though as yet there has been no news thereof.

I'll also be restarting my Gaelic lessons with the cooncil towards the end of January. That should give me some fodder for this blog, tha mi an dòchas.

Best wishes for 2016!

Dealbh bhon Street Party air Sràid nam Prionnsan ann an Dùn Éideann. Chan eil cuimhne agam air mòran idir, ge-tà...

Gaelic lull...

Seall far a bheil mi gu ruige seo!

Sorry there hasn't been a post for a few weeks. There was no Gaelic class last week and I forgot to post an update the week before.

So far, we've learnt about a few of the different ways of saying 'the'*. The word for 'the' changes depending on whether the noun is masculine or feminine, and whether it is in the nominative case or the dative case.

Masculine nominative
an before c, d, g, l, n, r, s, t
am before b, f, m, p
an t- before a vowel

Examples: an taigh, an ceann, an leabaidh, am peann, am bàta, an t-ìm, an t-achadh

Masculine dative (the dative is used after prepositions)
a' with the following noun aspirated (an h is inserted after the first consonant, except d and t)
an before a vowel

Examples: leis a' pheann, air a' bhòrd, anns an achadh

Feminine nominative
a' with following noun aspirated if starting with b, c, f, g, m, p

(There are more rules but this is all we've learnt so far for feminine nouns)

We've also learnt a few things about the verb Bi (To Be, as featured earlier)

The present tense has four forms:
tha - this is the positive independent form     Ex. Tha mi sgìth - I am tired
chan eil - this is the negative form                Ex. Chan eil mi sgìth - I am not tired.
a bheil - this is the positive question form     Ex. A bheil thu sgìth? - Are you tired?
nach eil - this is the negative question form  Ex. Nach eil thu sgìth? - Aren't you tired?

 The past also has four forms like the present tense:
bha - this is the positive independent form     Ex. Bha mi sgìth - I was tired
cha robh - this is the negative form                Ex. Cha robh mi sgìth - I was not tired.
an robh - this is the positive question form     Ex. An robh thu sgìth? - Were you tired?
nach robh - this is the negative question form  Ex. Nach robh thu sgìth? - Weren't you tired?

The future has four forms, but there is also an extra form after words like question words:
bidh - this is the positive independent form     Ex. Bidh mi sgìth - I will be tired
cha bhi - this is the negative form                   Ex. Cha bhi mi sgìth - I won't be tired.
am bi - this is the positive question form         Ex. Am bi thu sgìth? - Will you be tired?
nach bi - this is the negative question form     Ex. Nach eil thu sgìth? - Won't you be tired?
cuine (etc.) bhitheas - the relative form         Ex. Cuine bhitheas tu air ais? - When will you be back?



*And I thought German was bad... At least der, die and das are a little more different from each other than an, a', an t-, etc.

Trèanaichean

Over the last few weeks I've been reading the surprisingly interesting blog Trèanaichean, tramaichean is tràilidhean by Alasdair MacCaluim. I say surprising because I wouldn't consider myself someone who is particularly interested in trains. But Mr MacCaluim's blog is very good. It's also all in Gaelic so it's excellent for reading practice. I often read it on the bus where I don't have easy access to dictionaries so I reckon I only understand about 30%, or maybe less, but I do think it's helping me to learn vocab and expressions.

For example, in a recent post he mentions meadhanan sòisealta which I didn't understand at first. But then, given the context of the rest of the post (mentioning Twitter, etc.), I realised that sòisealta sounds a lot like social when said aloud, and meadhanan looks a bit like media. So a reasonable guess would be that meadhanan sòisealta is 'social media' in Gaelic.

A lot of language learning is like this and I find it most effective. I remember similar things happening when learning German, weirdly by knowing the etymological Latin roots of English words and morphemes and thinking of their German equivalents. Who says etymology ain't feumail (useful)?

Anyway, the other reason I like reading the blog is that my nephews (one in particular) are a bit mad about trains. While some of this might just be Thomas-mania, I think they're going beyond that to being interested in trains for themselves, the way they work, where the railways go, etc. So it might come in handy reading all about trèanaichean!

Gaelic class and manly nouns

Well, as I suspected, the class I wanted to go to was cancelled due to a lack of uptake so I moved to the same level but on another night. The unfortunate thing is that this is at the same time as the cearcall so no more cearcall till around Christmas, if not April next year!

The class was fairly simple which is to be expected for the first one. All the same, it did get into some grammar points, yet with an emphasis on speaking. We discussed the dative or prepositional case for masculine nouns.

The rules for the definite article of masculine nouns is as follows:

- if the noun starts with a b, f, m, p (labials), the article is am
- if the noun starts with a vowel, the article is an t-
- if the noun starts with anything else, the article is an

 However, if the noun follows a preposition such as air (on), aig (at), anns (in + def. art.), etc., the article and the noun change:

- if the noun starts with a vowel, the article is an (not an t-)
- otherwise, the article is a' plus lenition, e.g. "am muir" after air becomes "air a' mhuir"

I found this very complicated but we went over it several times with conversations and games so I think I have it in my head now. The thing is that's just the masculine nouns! I know it gets more complicated with feminine dative nouns, but that's for another time.

On another note, I watched this sweet programme on the iPlayer last night which combines two of my loves. The programme Trusadh looks at a woman from Uibhist a Deas (South Uist) who knits an Eriskay jumper (geansaidh Èirisgeach) for Pope Francis (am Pàpa)

http://bbc.in/1OMY5ZC

Classes booked!

Well, I've finally got the finger oot and booked some Gaelic classes with the Cooncil. I booked them with the Cooncil for two reasons - they're cheap (I'm a stingy kinda guy), and they're round the corner (I'm a lazy kinda guy).
I signed up for the post-beginners' class but, or should I say so, there's a danger it won't go ahead (I imagine a lot of beginners grit their teeth through to the end of their beginners' course then drop it immediately, so the numbers might not be there for the post-beginners). I hope it will go ahead as I doubt I'll be arsed jumping on a bus to Broughton High. What a trek! Two minutes walk? Yes please.

In other news, I'm progressing further with the old Teach Yourself Gaelic course. The millions of exercises mean I'm finally getting to grips with Gaelic's ridiculous definite article system (worse than German, believe me!) and I'm learning some more vocab along the way. I've not looked at SOL for a while but I've been gu math trang of late so I've fallen behind again.

If anyone reading this wants to leave Gaelic comments for me to decipher, bhinn buidheach dhuibh air an son (out on a limb here - corrections welcome! This also applies to every Gaelic word written on this blog).