Irish pronunciation

[Deghebh]

A Chara,

Actually, I did not say I had a low IQ. What I said was it was possible that the difference was 50, but that would make our friend, either 100, or 200. In other words, having taken the Mensa test, scoring about 150, I was allowing our friend to take his own conclusion.
There is a problem with a high IQ, apart from vanity.
7lb of fat only goes so far. What is applied to one set of tasks, deprives another.
Socially, I am a basket case, as some here have noticed.
My school education was an utter disaster. I was not even allowed to sit English GCE. I failed French, but got Maths, Physics, and Tech Drawing. Clearly, I never have done things the 'ordinary' way, very possibly, I cannot. So I beg your indulgence.
The reference to a two year old, refers to my linguistic ability in spoken, or written composition in Irish.
I can bid 'Avé' and 'Valé', Please, thank you, excuse me, and little else.
I did the Pimsleur course, but there is no continuation course.
I cut and fitted the Gael-Linn recording to the TYI book, and also did the same for Buntús Cainte 1.
I have also retypeset quite a few books, but though I have gained insights into how the Irish written phonology works, I have learned little Irish post Pimsleur.

The natural way to learn a language is in the arms of a good woman.
That is how I learned English, but that was 3/4 of a century ago!
Hence the reference to 2yo.

Perhaps I should use the TYI, or BC, which I have prepared for others to use.
I should then take my own medicine.
But strangely, I do not feel able to do this on my own.
I need someone to kick my arse from time to time.

Is mise, le meas,
Deghebh

[Deghebh]

Oh dear, it has gone very quiet here.
Have I killed the chain?
Shame is so little does so much.
Back to slender 'r'.
I have consulted the old books, and the newer.
The sound files issued with Learning Irish indicate that the sound is indeed a fricative, but careful listening indicates that it starts with a 'tap' which sounds almost like a 'd', then runs into a sound almost like an English voiced 'th', but with the tongue withdrawn slightly.
There is no sign in the sonogram if any dental sibilant, so the sound cannot be a 'z', nor can it be a slender 'z', because the high frequencies are not there.
As for IPA symbols, they are alright if you know what the sounds are that the symbols represent, but it seems that this qualification is for the most part imaginary, else this chain would never have started.
Le meas,
Deghebh.

[mōdgethanc]

God, I just found this thread and backread some of it. I was such a dickhead in here 9 years ago. I'm cringing so hard right now.

Again, I'm sorry for that, but this time in particular to Ciarán and linguoboy. You were both right, of course. I didn't know what I was talking about and was just saying shit.

But good news: since then I have bothered to learn more about Celtic languages and how Gaelic spelling works and now I can say that I now Get It. Yeah, it is baffling at first, and complicated, and has irregularities, but it still works. It's not easy to write languages with dozens of consonants with an alphabet that was never meant to do that, but they found a way. That's nifty.

(Also the irony that my first language is English which I've heard called "the world's worst-spelled language".)

Anyway, what do we think of Duolingo for Irish and Scottish Gaelic? Any good?

[linguoboy]

Anyway, what do we think of Duolingo for Irish and Scottish Gaelic? Any good?

I can’t do the Irish because it annoys me too much.

I did the Scottish Gaelic course a couple years back and really enjoyed it. Interesting sentences for the most part (unlike, for instance, the Welsh course). There’s a real range of speakers, a couple of them clearly nonnative, but that’s probably representative of the speaker population.

[mōdgethanc]

Why does it annoy you? And what's wrong with the Welsh course?

Even not speaking the language at all I could tell the Scottish recordings are not all native (some of their vowels seemed not quite right) but figured they were still fairly good and they were just fluent L2 speakers.

[mōdgethanc]

Wait, the consonant in rí is broad and not slender?

Yeah. Same in Scottish Gaelic. /r/ is always broad at the beginning of a word unless it gets lenited, in which case it's slender I think.

How sonorants can be fortis or lenis at all is confusing to me but in modern Irish and Scottish Gaelic it seems like the "fortis" /n, r, l/ of Old Irish ended up becoming velarized, dentalized, or both. Also the fortis /r/ may be a full trill while the lenis /r/s are always taps.

[kevin]

/r/ is always broad at the beginning of a word unless it gets lenited, in which case it's slender I think.

I think the second part depends on the dialect. I'm not entirely sure in which (sub)dialects it becomes slender when lenited, but I associate this feature with Munster.

[mōdgethanc]

Wikipedia seems to say that word-initial /r/ is always broad even when lenited, and same for Scottish Gaelic (where it's then written as a plain [ɾ]). So I guess I was wrong. Maybe some dialect does it, idk.

[silmeth]

Anyway, what do we think of Duolingo for Irish and Scottish Gaelic? Any good?

I think Duolingo – but used in the browser, with lesson tips and notes and full discussions, and with actual typing exercises – is a good resource for beginners.

It doesn’t teach very idiomatic Irish, it doesn’t teach to a very advanced level (lower intermediate, B1-like at best, probably more like A2), and there are issues with many sentences (with what variant translations are accepted mostly, but also there are a few plain mistakes too) – but the pronunciation is OK (for a Connachty sounding standard Irish, the person in the recordings is a Connacht native), and the basics covered generally are OK too.

If it motivates you to keep learning and be consistent in doing exercises every day – that’s great.

Duolingo, I believe, is actually a thing that enabled me to learn Irish. I couldn’t get passed initial learning cliff – getting enough basic grammar and vocab to be able to go through a textbook more comfortably on my own. I started using Irish Duolingo (back in the day, when the recordings were actually really bad), and it kept me motivated to do the chore of memorization lessons. After I finished the Duolingo tree I had much easier time learning from other resources and could start trying to read books in Irish (it was obviously still a big struggle at that time – but I could understand some sentences on my own, and had easier time using a dictionary).

So if you need something that keeps you motivated and lets you build up some initial basic vocab and familiarize with basic sentence structure – IMO Duolingo is great. Just keep in mind that it does have issues, don’t trust it with your life, read the sentence discussions, read another proper textbook, etc.

Especially when a textbook disagrees with Duolingo – trust the textbook more (though I’ve seen some errors in some generally recommended textbooks too…), and you should be fine.

As for Sc. Gaelic Duolingo – they made me a moderator there, so I’m not very objective, but I think it’s pretty good (even though it won’t get you to a very high level either) – and also obviously read the sentence discussions.