Hi Jens! With a start like that, we like you already. Tá fáilte romhat!

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Hello, everyone, I'm Speedwell (it might as well be my actual name; I've been using it online for 20 years). I'm an American woman from Houston who married an Irish man and immigrated to live with him here in Co. Sligo earlier this year.

To the apparent confusion (if not shock) of the locals, I want to learn Irish properly. That means I want to read, write, and speak it well enough to sound educated and literate. A cab driver told me, "Oh, you're likely to have some trouble with that; it is different from when I learned it in school". A neighbor said, "You know, you don't really have to learn it; everyone speaks English around here". A shop owner said, "Well, you can do that if you want, but I don't see why you would really want to". The universal question is, "Why on earth would you want to learn to speak Irish?".

Well, folks, I may be a damnyankee by birth, and not the slightest bit Irish by descent, but I seem to find myself on the actual island of Ireland with a view to becoming a citizen in a few years, "if the Lord's willin' and the crick don' rise". When my daddy immigrated to the US, intending to become a citizen, he didn't waste any time learning English to a very high standard. I guess it's a matter of personal pride for me as much as wanting to learn to be a full participant in Irish culture. Every time I mispronounce a town name or shop name or person's name and the native Irishman gets THAT look on his face (you know, the combination of amusement and contempt), I feel like a g..d... idiot. Every time I learn the tune to an Irish song, I want to know the words; after all the song isn't a song without its words, and the words determine, in large part, why the music is like it is and what you can and cannot do with the melody. Every time I see an official communication that's half in Irish, I feel half illiterate, and dammit, all my jobs have required me to know English better than everyone else. I am not used to being illiterate. I am used to being a monoglot, however, and that ignorant damyankee habit is going to change ASAP.

I think I really do need more than online helps, especially with pronunciation, since I sometimes have a hard time understanding speech (due to mild high-frequency deafness I've had all my life) and a hard time admitting it. We don't have the money for private lessons, as I'm a student and still looking for work over here. I'm also learning to drive a stick shift, something I've never done before, and as the only driver in the family (my husband has vision problems) it's not possible for me to drive far to go to a lesson. Right now it's mostly the bus into Sligo town when I need to go. What ideas do you have for me to expose myself to the spoken language so that I don't get discouraged learning only from the written stuff?

Thanks everyone

Fáilte romhat - welcome. Looking on the web, I've found that they have a Community Education service in Sligo. They might be able to help you.

www.sligovec.ie/education/communityed

Thank you, franc91. They don't seem to offer any Irish language courses, but I'll contact them directly and see whether they know of anything appropriate for me.

I was thinking more in terms of a language buddy, or the kind of class kids take (I'm not too proud to learn alongside children), or even bartering some temp work (office or computer type stuff) for lessons from someone competent, like a retired teacher or native speaker. Are there any posters in Sligo who think their own studies might benefit from teaching a newbie?

Welcome to the forum Speedwell.

I love your enthusiasm. It is sadly often the case that people from other countries often have more of an interest in Irish than Irish people themselves. Don't let the locals lack of interest get you down. You are living between two Gaeltachts, maybe once in a while you can take a trip to West Mayo or North Donegal to hear Irish in the wild .

I don't know about what services are in Sligo. Probably online courses are your best bet.

Fáilte, Speedwell. You are a breath of fresh air. I recommend you contact http://www.cnag.ie (Conradh na Gaeilge). They may be aware of a ciorcal comhrá (conversation circle) near you. In my experience, they provide an excellent opportunity for anyone genuinely interested in learning how to speak Irish. You should definitely find a class to give you something a little more focused too.

What area of Sligo are you in - are there any Gaelscoileanna near you? There are often classes held there.

Keep us up to date with your progress. There are a few Americans who contribute regularly here and they have fluent Irish now. Your positive attitude will be your most useful resource.

Go n'éirí go geal leat - best of luck to you. Saoirse

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Sligo isn't all that far from Gleann Cholm Cille in Donegal, where Oideas Gael runs weekly courses during the summer and also a few other times in the year, at very reasonable prices (I think they may also have a few weekend courses). Check out their web site at this link: http://www.oideas-gael.com. They have all levels, from beginner on up. A number of people on this forum have been there, and enjoyed it immensely. If you get your husband to go with you, he may be surprised how much he can recall from school. A lot of people in Ireland will tell you they don't know a word of Irish, but that often really means that they're afraid to use their Irish for fear of making mistakes.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Hi all,

My name is Matt. I'm an American, and I'm a medical student in Chicago. I'm a 3rd generation American (on both sides of the family), but my mother's side is from Ireland (Co. Cork, her mom's side as well). My grandparents have always been proud of their heritage, so recently I have been reading about Irish history. Naturally, I came across how the Irish language has gone through ups and downs, and the changes that all languages experience over time. But I feel compelled to learn at least some Irish, especially after watching the series "No Bearla". However, the motivation for this feeling, oddly, stems from the year I spent in China. I was there for a year on a scholarship to study Chinese language, and all the time people there asked me questions like "what is American culture?", "what does it mean to be American?". Such seemingly simple questions yet I never had a good answer. After some thought, I guess for me being an American means to have an immense sense of freedom - mainly because an American is free to define themselves in whichever way she or he chooses. This I felt was in stark contrast to the Chinese experience, where even today a person is very much defined by where they are from and who their ancestors are/were.

Logically, the next question that crossed my mind was "who am I?". I can't say I have a complete answer, but I can say that I part of who I am and how I got here started in Ireland. If I'm to understand more about my heritage and who I am, I should at least learn something about the lens that my ancestors saw the world through.

So now we're here, and onto the more practical matters, where do I start? Given that I'm a student and already quite busy, I don't mind buying books and reading but it's practice that makes a language come to life (4000 Chinese characters didn't learn themselves)! What I would really like is to set up some kind of an email exchange, with expectations of correspondence of about once a week. Also, since I know Chinese is a hot language right now, I would have no problem teaching what I know about Chinese to someone willing to learn. I know historically that Chicago has a large Irish community, anyone know of classes there? I'm in the downtown area, perhaps during the summer I'll have some time to take a class.

-Matt

Fáilte romhat a chara agus Nollaig shona dhuit.
Franc

I saw classes mentioned in this link: https://www.facebook.com/IrishLanguageLearners/posts/571158882990206

Daltaí na Gaeilge also has classes listed at this link: http://www.daltai.com/classes/north-central

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.