Bitesize Lesson Highlight: Professions and Occupations

It’s time for another nibble of Bitesize Irish!

From time to time, we’d like to offer you a little taste of what the Bitesize Irish Gaelic on-line learning program has to offer by highlighting one of our lessons.

In this highlight, we’ll look at one of our vocabulary lessons: Professions & Occupations.

Important conversational topic

Talking about what you do for a living is often one of the first things that happens in a conversation. Here are a few possibilities from our  Professions & Occupations lesson:

dochtúir

doctor

múinteoir

teacher

feirmeoir

farmer

freastalaí

waiter

Saying what your occupation is

This is the general pattern for saying what your profession is:

• Is + [your occupation] + pronoun.

For example, if you want to tell someone that you’re a teacher, you’d say:

Is múinteoir mé

I am a teacher.

Saying what someone else’s occupation is

To say what someone else’s occupation is, you use the same formula as above, adding the person’s name at the end:

• Is + [your occupation] + pronoun + name.

For example:

Is feirmeoir é Eoin

Eoin is a farmer.

Important note! Irish differs from English in that the pronoun is retained, even when you’re talking about a particular person by name. So, whereas in English we might say Eoin is a farmer, in Irish we say the equivalent of Eoin he is a farmer.

Here’s another example:

Is dochtúir í Caoimhe

Caoimhe is a doctor.

We use í instead of é for the pronoun because Caoimhe is a female name. The Irish equivalent of “she” here is í, whereas the equivalent of “he” is é.

Over to you!

How do you think you’d say the following?

• Seán is a teacher
• Máire is a waiter
• I am a farmer

Types of lessons at Bitesize

As of this writing, Bitesize currently offers three types of lessons:

• Vocabulary: These lessons help you learn new words and terms in the language, and show you how to apply them by putting them into useful, everyday, sentences.
• Grammar: These lessons give you the basic building blocks of the language in easy, “bitesized”steps, so it doesn’t get overwhelming.
• Conversation: These lessons give you a chance to use what you’re learning in real-world situations, such as meeting and introducing people, ordering in a restaurant, giving directions, etc.

All of the lessons are audio-rich, so you can learn the correct pronunciation by listening to and emulating the speaker.

These lesson highlights, or “nibbles,” which we’ll offer from time to time, will always include some of the audio from the lesson being featured, so you can get a feel for how the program works.  Bitesize members, of course, can access the complete lesson, with full audio.

Happy learning!