Rosetta Stone - Irish (Volumes 1-3)

Dia duit,

As part of my resolution for the new year, and a commitment to make myself better, I purchased the Rosetta Stone language teaching software and have now been using it for 5 days.  It seems the first 'block' of lessons has been dedicating itself to lightly to vocabulary and actual sentance structure, instead focusing a lot more on pronunciation.  I can construct a few basic sentances now and am trying to dedicate 45min to 1hr a day working on these lessons.  It came with companion CDs too that are basically 'repeat after me' lessons, for the one's I've experienced thus far.

Part of my 'non lesson' time involves me seeing objects and trying to repeat, and if I can, spell the Irish for that word.  I own two cats, so cat is easy, hehe.  Some of what they're teaching me I can make light sense of, such as how singular and plural affects the structure of the verbs and their tense.  I am hoping they will expand more on this in future lessons.  I enabled the international keyboard on that laptop and now have an Irish keyboard I can switch to and use instead of their in program 'vowel palette' which I am not terribly fond of.

This was a rather hefty investment I feel, but I feel it is worth it thus far.  I am going to look for some music in which Irish is spoken to help reinforce my learning at work.  The companion audio CDs are nice, but they're more engaging and I need something that allows me to passively address the pronunciation and grammar of the language.  I do like going from, "Hey!  They just said horse!" to, "Oh, so this song is about his horse!"

After some more time progresses I will weigh in again on how I feel my lessons are going.  I wish there was more focus on writing/spelling the words, but I hope that will come later.

Slán!

PS - If i get something wrong, PLEASE tell me.  Won't learn unless I am corrected.

I bought Rosetta Stone quite a while back. I haven't been best impressed by it. I've had a lot of technical problems with the programme itself (and Rosetta Stone have been incredibly unhelpful about them - I had to troubleshoot the problems myself, which took hours) - including a complete failure of RS when I upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard on my mac - which RS couldn't help me with.

But following your post I took 3 hours to uninstall and reinstall the whole thing (again) on my mac. I now have the programme running (with all my previous history wiped). I'm going to give it a second chance.

I have to say though that first time I wasn't very impressed with RS for the price. I found I did learn words, but really really struggled with the grammar. My husband's a native French speaker, so when I've been stuck on a screen, I've asked him for help, and he's been able to answer the questions, but really doesn't understand how I'm ever going to understand French grammar using their approach - nothing's explained, and a lot of it is guesswork for me.

I bought the Gaeilge set to see how it worked - and it's identical to the French set. However, the dialect's a real problem for me - it's been recorded with Kerry speakers, and I'm really not sure why that was decided. It would've been a lot more useful for RS to have used Connemara speakers and that dialect, as it's more of a middle ground between Ulster and Kerry Irish. My Irish accent is confused as is, and I find the Kerry accent the most difficult for me.

Having said all that, it's a very pretty, and well put together package that can give you great confidence with the vocab you do learn. I just didn't get any grammar from it because it's just thrown at you with no explanation - and I'm afraid I need to know WHY I should do something, not just that I must do it.

You can download the PDFs that contain all the language you'll learn in the course here for free, so you can see what you'll cover and learn http://www.rosettastone.co.uk/global/support/downloads/course-contents. Instead of buying the CDs, I think I'd recommend a user to sign up for the online 3 month membership - that would give you a chance to figure out if you can learn using this method, and if you think the level of language you'll learn will be enough for you.

Any more views on RS?

I find myself agreeing with you for the most part.  It is helping a great deal on leanring the words, but the grammar still feels lacking after only a week.  Sometimes I just don't understand what the differences are betwen the objects they are presenting me.  It's only been a week though, so I am going to give it more time (and hopefully an complete run through) before passing final judgement.  In the time in between, I am going to locate additional learning materials to help with the grammar construction.  I am like you and want to know WHY the structure changes.

As for the install, I had no issues with my install.  It was on an old HP laptop with Windows 7 installed on it.

I will learn Irish though, is this year's goal!

Dia a Maire duit!

I too purchased my 'Rosetta Stone-Irish' at the beginning of the year.   I'm planning a trip to Ireland in some months and want to be prepared for the 100k or so Irish speakers.   I've used 'Rosetta Stone' for Russian and Greek in the past.   It's my opinion that Irish is, by far, the most difficult language I've studied.

Like you, I try to complement the Rossetta Stone with other resources.   I find this web site is useful and I've purchased a text book that I do concurrently.   The text really helps with the spelling variants (lenition), cases and person. 

In my experience, immersion as much as possible with a variety of resources is key.   Although I am a 'Rosetta Stone' fan, it is only one piece of the puzzle.   Too bad there's no Irish TV I can find!

All the best,

Maria, 4th generation American from Counties Mayo and Roscommon

try TG4 for some Irish TV

note TG4 is a link to a web site

Thanks for the information, Mac.   Is that on Direct TV?   I live on the east coast.

Go raibh maith agat.

Maria

Maidín mhaith, Maripat aimn dom.  Táim ag foghlaim Irish blian sinn sé. (Good morning, I am Maripat.  I am learning Irish this year)

I home schooled for years and suggest you see what your learning style is (audio, visual, written)

I a write learner so I write small books on my computer and take them with me as I learn (probably should be writing in irish ach, nil moran liom (little with me))

Let me know how the course is-I too wish to buy it ach (but) know of no one to talk irish with (except my 21 mnth grandson).  So, tá mé ag obair with different items and am coming along.

Slan agat

PS I too walk around naming things, it is the sentence structure and verbs that I have a hard time finding a system that will teach it.

Maripat

Maripat

Go mhaith! Just clicked in and am happy to say I can now hear irish

Thanks

GRMA

Stupid firewall at work...  Going to have to try from home.  Got to love when your office releases a 'Hear what we do on twitter!' email and then you click the link they provide only to be greeted by the "Corporate Firewall of Doom!".

I do look forward to hearing this though!  Thank you for the link.

I frickin LOVE Irish TV!!!  It's a great tool in my Irish language armamentarium!

Thanks for the info, Domhnall!

maria919:

I frickin LOVE Irish TV!!!  It's a great tool in my Irish language armamentarium!

Thanks for the info, Domhnall!

tá fáilte romhat

just found gt4 tv; try to listen to Sponge Bob in Irish lol

Is breá liom 'Southpark' as Gaeilge

The best of luck with your learning.  I too give my "thumbs up" to TG4.  You'll find some good programs there that will help as well as confuse you.  The best thing to remember is to not give up and keep plugging along.  You'll soon be able to pick a word or phrase here and there and be able to make sense of what's being said.  

Slán,

Doug

I try learning irish with "teach yourself irish". If you like to learn the grammar I would say this book is perfect. At the beginning of a lesson you have a dialogue youcan listen to on a cd. Afterwards there are language notes and a big grammar part. At the end of each lesson there is a practice part.

Slán,

Weisi