Fáilte/Welcome

Welcome to the general Talk Irish forum. This is the place to post your general questions about learning, talking or teaching Irish.

Anyone who's logged in can post to this forum.

We're trying to create new forums in specific areas - for example, Irish placenames, Irish surnames, Irish USA etc. If you'd like us to start a forum for you or your learner's group, just let us know!

Ádh mór ort!

Go raibh maith agat! Ceapaim go bhfuil an forum seo comhchosúil leis an website 'daltaí.com' Tá súil agam go mbeidh móran díospóireacht ar an forum seo! ( Tá súil agam go bhfuil mo Gaeilge ceart!)

An bhfuil fhios ar aon duine cén áit dá foghlaim mé gramadach Gaeilge? Gabh mo lethscéal. Níl Gaeilge maith agam.

hiya Michelle,
I finally got round to logging into your forum, better late than never eh!
I'll get catching up with you at our retreat in donegal, gonna miss this boo hoo

regards

john paul 

Hello!  I just joined and I feel lost already..lol

I've learned a small amount of Irish from the BBC Northern

Ireland language lesson of  Giota Beag agus Giota Beag Eile

and from their Colin and Cumberland site. So for all of you

who speak the language well, I hope you'll be able to put up

with my lack of the language and the zillion questions I'm sure

I'll be asking!

Off to check out the rest of the site!

Slán,

Debra

 Hi Debra, and welcome to the site!

We have members with all levels of Irish here, from complete beginners to more fluent speakers - so don't let that put you off.  All you need is a love of Irish!

Feel free to post your questions and suggestions here on the forum and hopefully someone will have an answer for you. Don't forget to tell us what you'd like to see on the site, too, and we'll do our best to help. 

Fáilte!

Hopefully the lost feeling will go away as soon as we get our interactive games and free podcasts up and running!

The first Irish I learned was from listening to the Giota Beag and Giota Beag Eile audio files on the BBC NI site - back then you could only stream the content online, but now you can download it for your mp3 player, which is excellent. Fearghal Mag Uiginn is a teacher who originally created the content for a radio series.

How did you get on with the Colin and Cumberland interactive games? Did you find them easy to play and understand?

Ádh mór ort!

Michelle 

Oh I love Colin and Cumberland! lol  It's a great way to learn.

I first started with the Giota Beag and Giota Beag Eile which I

thought was outstanding as well!  I have to admit that I am glad

to hear that there are beginners here like myself. Now I'm not so

nervous.

Thank you for the warm welcome. 

Slán,

Debra

Thank you Karen! When I'm repeating the lessons from

Giota Beag, etc. I feel like I'm doing just fine..BUT when you

actually find people who are fluent in the language...haha..another

story altogether. But with such nice people as yourself, I think I

just might can learn this. I hope so! It is a beautiful language, isn't it?

Thank you again!

Slán,

Debra

ok I am a very new beginner....I have started reading a book that has a lot gaelic words and I would like to pronounce them correctly...besides, I met an Irish man once and I sat for hours listening to him tell stories in gaelic and it was so beautiful....time to learn a new language....i'm not too old to start!

 Hi and fáilte chuig Labhair Gaeilge (welcome to Talk Irish)! Listening to the Seanachie (storyteller) sounds like an amazing experience...no wonder you want to learn more!

What book are you reading? If you'd like some help in pronouncing the words, maybe you could start a new post with the book's title, and type in some of the words you're not sure about. We might even be able to get you some audio files recorded.

Le gach dea ghuí,

Michelle 

The Seanachie was wonderful.

The name of the book is a A Druid's Herbal, by Ellen Evert Hopman.

Starting with her description of Bards:

pencerdd
bardd teulu
Cerddorion

Then she is describing the The Coligny Calendar and uses:
Samonios
Dumannois
Rivros
Anagantios
Ogronios
Cutios
Giamonios
Simivisonios
Equos
Elembivios
Edrinios
Cantlos
I realize that these are all months of the year but I want to know how to pronounce them correctly. I also want to know how to pronounce the Celtic Trees in the Tree Calendar, as well as the Ogham.

I did read a post from someone else here, and went to the bbc site with cumberland, I have started learning from them, it really is a great site.

I don't think that that is Irish it seems to be more Welsh based and is probably a very old version. Although I could be wrong.

I've done a quick Google search on the Coligny Calendar, and found this post http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coligny_calendar at wikipedia. The calendar was found in Coligny, France (which was known as Gaul to the Romans at the time). It dates back to either the first or second century AD. The calendar's makers would have been Celts.

I've no idea how to pronounce these words - I think we'd need an expert in Ancient Celtic languages to help with that. But I found this site http://www.roman-britain.org/coligny.htm which has translations of the months but I don't know how accurate they are. Ogronios is translated as Time of Ice, Simivisionios is Time of Brightness.

 Hope this is interesting!

 Hi,

My name's Martin. I'm a freelance journalist for national magazines, local newspapers and websites/online publications.

I'm learning Irish as part of my challenge:

In order to encourage people to pluck up the courage to "have a go" at learning a language, I've challenged myself to learn as many languages as possible in just 1 year.

You can read the blog about my challenge here: http://joinmartin.wordpress.com.

The blog has proved really popular. Over 2000 people have read the blog since it was created a few months ago. It's read in the USA, Canada, New Zealand and, of course, the UK. Celeb interviews and expert interviews are in the pipeline and a lot of people have "taken up the JOIN MARTIN CHALLENGE" and started to learn a language. A week ago, we had over 200 people discover the blog for the first time in a single day. The blog is very popular with UK journalists and media professionals as well as with the public.

I need all the help and support I can get if I am going to make a success of my challenge and I'd love to hear from other Irish learners who'd like to share their experiences of learning the language. You can contact me via the blog.

 All the best,

Martin 

www.joinmartin.wordpress.com