[language] Irish 101: take two
Mar. 11th, 2020 10:43 pmVia Amnesty pushing a human rights-related FutureLearn course at me a few weeks ago, I shook the site to see what else fell out & found there was another round of Irish 101 due to start soon. I made one previous attempt at it but gave up during I think week two (or possibly three?) of four, because the approach really wasn't working for me with the level of knowledge I had then -- I was getting anxious and unhappy about being handed set phrases to learn by rote with no unpacking of how they were constructed or what the vocabulary meant, and about unit titles I similarly didn't understand at all, and I was probably in the middle of an essay crisis (as is ever the way), so I was feeling overwhelmed enough that I just... stopped.
And carried on with Duolingo.
And now I feel like Duolingo's given me enough basic vocabulary and grammar overview that I'm getting a whole lot more out of this second attempt at Week 1: I understand how the phrases are made up! I can look at the proverb of the week (seanfhocal na seachtaine) and not only understand more of what's going on in the grammar of the headline (focal = word, cognate vocabulary, lenited in compound; na "of" rather than plural definite article; seachtaine = week, genitive, I think) but pick out most of the words! Tús maith leath na hoibre, a good start is half the work, where "maith" is "good" and "na hoibre" is "of the work" (work:oibreobair), leaving me with tús presumably being "start" (yep! just looked it up) and leath being "half" and, thus, two new words and a sense of accomplishment.
I couldn't make head nor tail of the proverb last time. Fingers crossed for Week 2.
And carried on with Duolingo.
And now I feel like Duolingo's given me enough basic vocabulary and grammar overview that I'm getting a whole lot more out of this second attempt at Week 1: I understand how the phrases are made up! I can look at the proverb of the week (seanfhocal na seachtaine) and not only understand more of what's going on in the grammar of the headline (focal = word, cognate vocabulary, lenited in compound; na "of" rather than plural definite article; seachtaine = week, genitive, I think) but pick out most of the words! Tús maith leath na hoibre, a good start is half the work, where "maith" is "good" and "na hoibre" is "of the work" (work:
I couldn't make head nor tail of the proverb last time. Fingers crossed for Week 2.