Irish Gaelic Language Learning: Month 1 Overview
3 minutes read | 440 words by Ruben Berenguel
Have you thought about playing
dice letter games
foreign language?
It’s been more than a month since I started my goal of learning Gaelic. I’m not happy with how it is going, and I’m the only one to blame for it. Why?
First, I have too many commitments. A few are with myself, others are with my girlfriend and then I have my thesis and research work. All together are way too much to handle in an usual work day, even in an ‘extended work day’, i.e. from 9 to 24 or 1.
I feel capable of learning up to a decent level a language in 3 months, given between thirty minutes and one hour of mindful dedication, daily. Maybe 15 minutes would be enough, if one day I did one full hour. The problem is that I don’t have 15 spare minutes with full mental power. I usually end my research work pretty tired, and once I finish my usual stuff at home, the only thing left is watching Doctor Who on TV and going to bed.
I’m working on a few ideas to solve the lack of time and be able to practice daily: invest 30 minutes twice a week and then you can practice wherever you are (the daily shower is a good moment to vocabulary recall, for example), because you will remember the lesson perfectly. I’ll blog about this shortly, once I get the hang of it.
Just to lower my own expectations, it is very unlikely that I’ll be talking Gaelic (Irish or Scottish, does not matter) by the end of April. But I still can have a shot at it. In any case, I’ll improve my speed in language learning, at least from beginner to decent level.
As a side note, I ordered 6 new language books from The Book Depository, all from the collection Teach Yourself:
- Teach Yourself Complete Icelandic: the new edition, together with the CD
- Teach Yourself Complete Irish: with CD, too, to complement the awesome Bitesize Irish Gaelic course.
- Teach Yourself Complete Norwegian: happened to read Wikipedia’s entry about Norwegian, and was intrigued.
- Teach Yourself Complete Swedish: out of plain geekyness.
- Teach Yourself Complete French: Laia and me both know French but our skills are rusty. Let’s sharpen the saw.
- Teach Yourself Complete German: The same as French goes here
Related Posts:
Icelandic Waterfall and Rock Wallpaper
Road Trip Through Iceland
Eating in Iceland (if you are not an Icelander)
Things you should read about before travelling to Iceland
The 100 Most Common Words in Icelandic (more or less)
9+4 fundamental things you should pack in your travels
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