The Spanish learning is going so well that I decided to try Welsh as well. Not because I'm currently in Hay-on-Wye and fighting off hordes of Welsh (yeah, right). More because it's an interesting language and it'd be nice to be able to work out what some of the road signs say.
Of course, me being me and not quite thinking this through, I made a start on my Welsh language learning adventure in a lunch break at work. Sure I must have pulled some weird faces because I was trying not to repeat the phrases aloud. At least with my Spanish lessons I've been listening to them at home so only my dad and sister have to put up with my slightly mangled pronunciation. Indeed, my dad's still amused that the tutor on Coffee Break Spanish is a Scot.
Wait till he hears the Welsh lessons I've found...
The Welsh course is (helpfully) by actual Welsh people. Which is great. But the course itself is a sort of "learn by repetition" sort of thing. It's very dry compared to the fun of Coffee Break Spanish, but it seems to be building vocabulary quite quickly.
That said, it's not holding my attention so I've moved on for now. Instead I'm making a start on Irish. As you may have gathered from other posts, I'm heading out to Ireland for a couple of weeks with friends in September and given that a lot of our route goes through Irish-speaking areas (Gaeltacht), I thought it would be cool to be able to say a few words.
Cupla focal...
I'm enjoying my Spanish lessons loads so I had a poke around the Radio Lingua Network website and discovered that they do a short course in Irish, helpfully called One Minute Irish. It only covers the very basic and unlike the basic podcasts for Spanish, German, French and Italian, it's not free (£7.50 for the 10 lessons). However, in keeping with Coffee Break Spanish, it's turning out to be good fun and I'm beginning to get my head round some basic phrases.
Dia duit!
It might be One Minute Irish, but the actual podcasts tend to last 3-4 minutes; enough time to go through the phrases a couple of times and get your tongue round the slightly weirder parts of Irish pronunciation. Someone explain to me why dia duit, meaning "good day", is pronounced almost jia ditch?
The lessons themselves are great and rely on repetition, but if you want to know how the phrase is actually spelled the podcasts come with synchronised flash cards so the words come up as they're spoken. Personally, I found it easier to listen to the lessons first and then go back through and see how everything was spelled. Best not to confuse myself with counter-intuitive spelling!
It's pretty good fun. Not sure I'll be brave enough to actually try it out on real Irish speaking people though. I feel funny looks might be the only response... We'll see.
The lessons themselves are great and rely on repetition, but if you want to know how the phrase is actually spelled the podcasts come with synchronised flash cards so the words come up as they're spoken. Personally, I found it easier to listen to the lessons first and then go back through and see how everything was spelled. Best not to confuse myself with counter-intuitive spelling!
It's pretty good fun. Not sure I'll be brave enough to actually try it out on real Irish speaking people though. I feel funny looks might be the only response... We'll see.
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