Antje shares her experience learning Irish as a non-native English speaker in Germany. Having grown up in the GDR, Antje tells Emma that Ireland was the first place she visited after the fall of the Berlin wall, making her way to Kerry to cycle The Ring of Kerry in 1990.
She began working more on her English and in turn wanted to learn ‘Irish-English’, or ‘Hiberno-English’ and ended up making her way to Gaeilge at the end of 2021.
‘A language needs to be spoken, you need to use all the parts of the language when you learn it.’
Antje uses social media to her advantage when learning a language, initially creating videos privately to practice speaking and eventually moving on to Instagram, gaining a following on @weird_german_for_you. The same goes for Irish, @antje_as_gaeilge contains stories and posts of recipes, life updates and her progress on learning how to play the bodhrán, all as Gaeilge!
Antje is a GROW member of Bitesize Irish. She’s an active member of Bitesize Pobal, our private online learners’ community. She regularly takes part in Bitesize Beo sessions for GROW members. These are weekly conversation practice sessions. The group video calls follow scripted conversations, allowing you to role-play.