Q&A le Siobhán agus Eoin – Eanáir 2020

January’s Live Q&A with Eoin and Siobhán from Bitesize Irish took place on Thursday, 16 January at 20:00 Irish time! Watch it above!

• An Fáinne (“The Ring”) is a little badge historically worn by people to show that they are fluent in Irish, to show other Irish speakers to speak Irish with them. These days, variants of An Fáinne can be purchaesd online, including a “Cúpla Focal” badge to show you speak a little Irish. It can be purchased from Conradh na Gaeilge
• Learn songs to learn Irish. Songs are a good way to learn a language. They are structured, you have the words in front of you. You don’t need to even understand all the words to practice it. You can practice it on your own. And you can ultimately share it with others. Bitesize has a full video course to teach you three traditional Irish language songs. It’s called “Sing a Song in Irish”. Become a Bitesize Irish member
• Litríocht.com sells “every Irish language book in print”. We recommend “Peigín Leitir Móir” which is a book of songs and poems for children, with a lovely accompanying CD.
• Find free Irish language audiobooks on Soundcloud. Look for publishers An Gúm and Cois Life
• To type the síneadh fada (accented letters) on your phone, long-press the letter while typing. You may have to configure your keyboard to support this. For example on Android, the Swiftkey keyboard lets you enable a setting to long-press a letter to choose an accented version of it. That app also lets you install the Irish language predictive text.
• How do you pronounce “mh”, “bh”, “th”, “sh”, “ch”, “fh” and “dh”? Start with “fh”, because it’s silent. Then, “mh” and “bh” act the same, which are often a “v” sound. Take our full course as a Bitesize Irish member. The video course is called “Crack Irish Pronunciation”, and you can sign up as a Bitesize Irish member here
• Irish used to be written with dots above consonants when the letter was “lenited”. This was in the “Gaelic script” or “An Cló Gaelach”. Those accent marks are called “buailte”. Because of the expense of printing at the time, these were phased out to an added “h”, for example “mh” and “fh”. Wouldn’t it be nice if we re-introduced these characters that are unique to Irish? Wikipedia has an indepth article
• Róisín Seoighe is a contemporary singer songwriter from Conamara. You can find her music on Spotify and Twitter and Facebook
• Watch TG Lurgan music videos if you like popular songs – they have some fantastic covers of contemporary music
• Listen to Raidió na Gaeltachta to get exposure to different Irish language dialects. This Irish language station features local news from different areas.
• Listen to local radio stations Raidió na Life (Dublin station) and Raidió Fáilte (Belfast station). Listen passively to immerse yourself, and sometimes listen actively to try to pick out certain words. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t understand.
• Install app An Seinnteoir to listen to our Irish language radio stations on your phone and table. Install it on Android and on iOS
• Use Teanglann to search for a word, and then go to the “Foghraíocht” / “Pronunciation” tab of that word (when available) to hear it pronounced in the three main dialtes.