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).

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.

Updates...

Latha math dhuibh.

Sorry for the quiet period. Work has been gu math trang and I've also been struggling with what to talk about on here. Unbelievably, SOL on BBC Alba seems to have caught up on me. I had been skipping ahead by viewing the next few episodes on YouTube but now I seem to be at the same stage again. I think I need to give each episode a few more listenings as I'm now starting to struggle (which, in my pride, embarrasses me).

I now also go to a conversation meeting every two weeks. That has been helpful even though I am easily at the lowest level of everyone there. But hey, that's why I'm going - I want to improve enough so that it isn't painful for Tormod on the rare occasions he talks to me in Gaelic in person. This learning a new language thing takes ages, doesn't it? You think I'd know that already...

 Finally, a big thank you to commenter Alan Cameron for his excellent and clear outline of how to use and understand infinitives in Gaelic. That will be a great reference for me in the future!