Celeb spotting and other matters...

Uill, my Gaelic learning is progressing slowly but steadily. I'm getting much better at identifying words when I hear them, which is a BIG STEP when learning a new language. It can be very frustrating at first when you can't even seem to discern distinct words let alone get any meaning out of what's being said. Going to the Cearcall has helped because, though I still stumble when saying anything, I can follow most of the conversation unless someone has a particularly odd or mumblesome manner of speaking.

I even ventured to go to a Gaelic play yesterday - I was at the final showing of Proiseact nan Ealan's Sequamur at the Festival. While I listened along to the simultaneous translation (and yes, that is correct) - which was excellent as it conveyed a lot of tone as well as just pure meaning - I also tried to catch some of the Gaelic too.
The play itself was memorable and moving. I highly recommend it.
I also spied Cathy MacDonald from Feasgar at the end of the row. But that's just par for the course during the festival. In previous years I've seen other very very minor celebrities such as Marcus Brigstocke, Jon Richardson and Danny Wallace, and even an extremely dishevelled Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. But I digress.

Two weeks ago, a kind woman at the Cearcall gave me an older version of Teach Yourself Gaelic, the one by Roderick Mackinnon rather than the newer version by Boyd Robertson and Iain Taylor. It has the disadvantage of using older spellings such as dorus and various apostrophes floating all over the place. However, the great thing about it is that is absolutely chock-a-block full of exercises and drills. A disturbing trend these days, probably in line with dreadful educational premises, is that a lot of language-learning books have precious few exercises. They often look more like a token gesture rather than a real, targeted way of teaching. Meanwhile, the exercises in this book are also thoughtfully crafted. They start off mind-numbingly easy, and then progress to harder sentences while making use of the new grammar point you've just learnt  and drawing on vocab from previous lessons. Excellent. The vocab lists are also nice and long, though some of the words do seem a little odd to be learning. But then I remember that people seem to talk about different stuff in Gaelic than in English.