Anyone know of resources for a student to self-teach Gaelic?

[Michelle in MO]

(Which, I'm assuming, is the correct name for the native language of Ireland. Please correct me if I'm wrong!)

 

My middle daughter, who loves fantasy books (quality ones), myths, legends, etc., spent the entire day recuperating from having two baby teeth pulled (braces coming soon!). She copied literally pages of information on Gaelic and the Irish from the internet into a notebook, which I guess functions as her "copybook". She expressed a real interest in learning Gaelic. When she'll find time to do this once school starts is beyond me, but if she's motivated and can do it on her own, that would be fine with me.

 

Does anyone know of any good resources along these lines, especially one that would include CD's for correct pronunciation? She was going over examples of words and spellings of Irish words, which I had seen before. The spelling is quite a bit different from the pronunciation, although I would imagine there are probably spelling/pronunciation rules for Gaelic just as there are in English, so that it "makes sense" if you see a certain combination of letters.

 

Thanks for any and all help!

[Plaid Dad]

Have you seen Teach Yourself Irish?

 

"Gaelic" used on its own usually refers to the Celtic language of Scotland. The Irish name for their own language is Gaeilge, but it's just referred to as "Irish" in English. :)

[Michelle in MO]

Scotland and Ireland had different forms of the Celtic tongue, but was not aware of the names.

 

I'll check this resource out! Thank you very much!

[GraceinMD]

She expressed a real interest in learning Gaelic. When she'll find time to do this once school starts is beyond me, but if she's motivated and can do it on her own, that would be fine with me.

 

Does anyone know of any good resources along these lines, especially one that would include CD's for correct pronunciation?

 

Dh (linguist) suggested

1) contacting the Irish embassy, since they have been trying very hard, with very limited success, to have people learn the language - and thus may have a lot of materials available.

 

Here's a link to some more info: http://www.irishembassy.nl/home/index.aspx?id=27458

 

2) that she learn Welsh instead (:D) since it's a much prettier language, and widely used, and would thus be easier to learn (I pointed out that you didn't ask that, and he said, "Well, if I had a child who really wanted to learn a Celtic language, I'd steer them right to Welsh!)

 

Go n'eiri an t-adh leat!

[Kathleen in VA]

My son bought himself a course called "Scottish Gaelic in Three Months" published by Dorling-Kindersley. It has two cassette tapes and a 225-page book. He never got around to using it, but I just thought you'd like to know this sort of thing is out there.

 

Ours is just sitting on the shelf collecting dust if you're interested in buying it.

[Michelle in MO]

I'll look into these resources. Kathleen, thanks for the offer. I'll talk to my dd and see what she says.

 

Welsh would be interesting. When we bought the first Charlotte Church CD, two or perhaps three of the songs were in Welsh (she's from Wales). One of the songs had the Welsh word for window, which is ffenestr. The Latin word for window is fenestra, and the German word for window is Fenster. See how similar they all are? There must be some relationship here. To me it's a fascinating study in the reach of the Roman empire---or perhaps this is a false conclusion and there's another story? I don't know; but I love looking at words in different languages and their relationship to one another.

 

At any rate, I'll take a look at all of these resources and discuss with dd. I'm glad she's developing a passion for something; I think she wants to use this as a springboard for further literature study. She talks about wanting to study in England someday. I want to help keep her interests alive.

 

Thanks for all the info!

[Kathleen in VA]

One of my favorite words is defenestration which means "the act of throwing something or someone out of a window." I love all those connections, too.:)

[Ailaena]

I know you said Gaelic, but I am jumping on the Welsh train to share a fun Welsh resource: BBC's Big Welsh Challenge

 

 

 

(sorry)

 

 

 

 

ETA: French is fenêtre, Spanish is ventana, Romanian is fereastră

[Laurie]

Irish is available.

[SkateLeft]

Can't help with Irish, but there's a *wonderful* series out there for Scottish Gaelic, called "Speaking Our Language" which includes books, audio and even videos (though I don't know if you can get the video in the US.) I bought my copies when I lived in Scotland, but I've seen them here in the US as well.

[Michelle in MO]

One of my favorite words is defenestration which means "the act of throwing something or someone out of a window." I love all those connections, too.:)

 

I've never performed "defenestration" on anyone, but isn't it interesting that we have it in our language?

 

ETA: French is fenêtre, Spanish is ventana, Romanian is fereastră

 

I thought of fenetre (can someone help me find language accent marks?) also later. It doesn't surprise me at all if the Spanish and Romanian (and probably Italian) words are all very similar.

 

I presume that the word was borrowed from Latin into these other languages, even Welsh and German, although they're not Romance languages, because the Romans were the conquerors. I could be wrong, though. The study of the history of languages is fascinating!

[mommaduck]

subbing

[EKS]

Rosetta Stone has something called "Irish" but I don't know if that is the same as Gaelic.