Watch back January’s Live Q&A with Aisling and Siobhán above!
Here are some notes and links from the Q&A:
- Irish for Families:
- Tógaimis le Gaeilge iad Facebook group for parents who are raising their children through Irish
- Bitesize Irish’s Gaeilge for Families
- Gaschaint: Irish phrases throughout the day (book)
- Irish for Parents
- Text and audio:
- Leighleat.com – stories with both text and audio.
- Scéalta do pháistí le Glór na nGael – children’s books read aloud, includes both text
- Fabhalscéalta do Leanaí – fairy tales read aloud, includes both text and audio.
- Nuacht mhall – the weekly news read slowly. A transcript and a glossary is in the episode description.
- Vifax – Practice your Irish with clips from the daily news on TG4 (Irish language TV) on vifax.nuim.ie. There’s also a worksheet available for each clip, including a transcript of the audio on the last page of the pdf.
- “Best piece of advice you have received during your Irish language learning journey”:
- Aisling:
- My friend who is a native speaker said to see what sounds better when trying to figure out the genitive. For example, bun + cathaoir = bun na cathaoireach (bottom of the chair), bun + sráid = bun na sráide (bottom of the street).
- Also, a lecturer once said to us you are either learning a language or losing it. And at first I thought it was very daunting but it reframes how we view fluency. We are always learning, we aren’t racing to an end point.
- Siobhán:
- Listening a ton and reading a ton.
- Forcing yourself to find the correct phrase or word for something instead of using the English term when speaking is a great way to improve your Irish if you have someone to practice your Irish with, be that in person or online, in spoken or written form.
- There’s never any shame in looking up the dictionary which is now a thousand times easier with the online dictionaries teanglann.ie and focloir.ie.
- Aisling:
- Cuid
- You use cuid when the noun is in the plural e.g.: mo chuid leabhar = my books
- Also used when the noun is in its singular form or when talking of things that are quantifiable: e.g.: do chuid Gaeilge = your Irish, ár gcuid airgid = your money, mo chuid bainne = my milk
- the noun that follows cuid is in the genitive: airgead = money/silver, but ár gcuid airgid = your money
- though cuid is not necessarily supposed to be used for a solid, inherent quality/property (e.g. body parts).(mo chosa = my feet) you will still often see and hear it used like this.
- Cuid is also used to mean a share of something so do chuid Gaeilge could be translated as “your share of Irish“.
- ag cur + noun
- ag cur fearthainne / ag cur báistí – raining
- ag cur sneachta – snowing
- ag cur fola – bleeding
- ceobhrán – drizzle
- Tá ceobhrán ann – It’s drizzly
- Ceobháisteach – heavy drizzle
- Tá ceobháisteach ann / Tá sé ag cur ceobháistí (possibly)- it’s drizzling heavily
- ag cur cloichshneachta – “hailstoning”
- ag cur flichshneachta – sleeting
- ag cur seaca – freezing (frost forming)
- sioc – frost (seaca is the genitive form)
