Tools & Links

An Gaeilgeoir

An Gaeilgeoir is a quarterly eight-page newsletter for students and teachers of Irish. Go here for more information, or here for a subscription form.

Some past articles which are particularly useful for students are available for downloading as reprints below (See the Reprints & Study Aids section of this page).
We also are trying to get a few of the puzzles that have appeared in past issues up on the site. Look here to see what we have so far.

Verb Article Tools

The November (Samhain) 2007 issue of An Gaeilgeoir included some suggestions for "Conversational Verb Study". You can download the two tools mentioned in that article here:

The verb list. Just print out the list, close your eyes and poke your finger at the list, and start your drill with that verb. Do not bother to look up the meanings of these verbs, learn to use the verbs just by grammar, not by meaning.
The "verb starters" card deck, a simple sheet that you can print and cut out to make a little deck of verb/person combinations. Use these to randomize your drills.

Comedian Des Bishop has gotten a lot of attention lately. Originally from America, he moved to Ireland as a teenager. Now, as an adult, he decided to learn Irish (he wasn't required to, as an immigrant). In fact, he decided to learn enough in just one year to do his stand-up routine as Gaeilge, in time for this year's Seachtain na Gaeilge celebration, and he made it.

He has a lot of interesting things to say to our typical students. On the one hand, they don't have the advantage of being able to move to the Gaeltacht. But on the other, he is someone who tackled the language as an adult, and many of his comments will resonate with our students. And he worked at it, he knew it wasn't enough to move into an Irish-speaking community, he studied hard.

See his story on television

There have been many articles and interviews with him recently. The most accessible account, because it is mostly in English, is his new RTÉ series "In the Name of the Fada". You can view these programs in your browser, and they are well worth a look.

WARNING: Bishop uses the "F word" fairly regularly in his comedy routines, so if you decide to watch these shows, be prepared for that.

Visit his site, try out learning tools

Go to www.desbishop.com, read the box at the right on his home page, and you'll see that he has posted an "interactive course" in Irish on his site. Now, I haven't tried these personally, but give it a look and let us know what you think.

Radio interview

If your Irish is fairly good, take a listen to an interview with him (mp3 file) on RnaG's program Irish Aniar (list of all podcasts from that program here).

Reprints & Study Aids (back to top)

Reprints and study aids are provided in Acrobat Reader format (PDF) files, which you can download and view or print from your computer if you have the Acrobat Reader from Adobe installed. (Most people who surf the 'net very much already have the plug-in installed.)

PLEASE: you are welcome to use these materials for your own study, or with students or colleagues in your study groups. Please remember, however, that Gaeltacht Minnesota has invested some effort into preparing these documents and making them available. They may notbe sold, and they should only be reproduced in their original form, with the Gaeltacht Minnesota identifiers intact. Go raibh maith agat!

Using your Irish-English Dictionary. Beginning students are often dismayed to find that they can't find the Irish words they're trying to translate in the dictionary. Mutations and variations in spelling can make this a little more of a challenge. This article gives you some tips on how to find to "adjust" the word you're looking for, so you can find it in the dictionary.

Pronouncing Vowel Combinations. While it is hard to describe pronunciation in text, many students get a basic handle on the consonants, and the single vowels -- but then run into combinations of two and three vowels at a time, and don't know how to say them. This article gives some general guidelines for these odd-looking combinations of vowels.

Progress In Irish Index. Many students use the little green Progress in Irishbook as a kind of grammar reference and drill book. But it is hard to find a particular point of grammar in that book. We have prepared an index of topics, by lesson number, that makes this a whole lot easier.

Buntús review. If you're working with Buntús Cainte, you may find these chapter review sheets, from Kia's class, helpful.

Audio Files from "Verbal Therapy" for your own drilling

For those of you who attended our Verbal Therapy workshop, I've posted quick 'n' dirty mp3 files of yours truly narrating the verbs that were on the Master Verb List. I leave you about 4 seconds, give or take, to respond -- so you might find the gap a bit short at first, but if you keep drilling, it will be plenty. You can download (right click, save target, and transfer to your own device or save on your computer) or play (left click) the mp3 list for Type 2, and for Type 1, as separate files.

Useful Links (back to top)

The RTÉ site allows you to listen to daily news broadcasts in Irish over the Web. Also check out RnaG for a schedule of radio broadcasting, live streamed over the Internet, in Irish.

Visit www.beo.ie for the new on-line newsletter, supported by advertising and by Foras na Gaeilge (and powered by the folks behind Oideas Gael).

Rather than pepper our pages with links (which we don't have the time to maintain), we'd prefer to refer you to other sites where there are more keystrokes and button clicks being devoted to keeping people up to date on Irish sites. Here are a couple of interesting sites:

Gaeilge ar an Ghréasan is one of the most complete. Although the link descriptions are largely in Irish, they are brief, and with pocket dictionary in hand, you can find lots of stuff.

GaelSaoire is an organization that promotes tourism in Gaeltacht areas, and is worth a prowl if you'll be traveling to Ireland.

The Center for Irish Studies has been a crucial sponsor of our workshops, and sponsors many events that will appeal to anyone interested in things Irish.

For news of events, articles of interest, and, of course, highlights of the Irish Fair, check out Freebird, the Irish Fair Newsletter, edited by our own Siobhán.

Basic Book Yahoo Groups: two Yahoo dicussion Groups have recently been form to deal with the common basic texts that we use in Monday classes.

Irish on Grand is a St. Paul center of Irish merchandise.

Comments and questions are welcome via e-mail

(our e-mail address, broken down to reduce spam from 'spambots', is info at gaelminn dot org)

Quick Links