Tìr Na Sìthe

I was asked: “Does anyone know how the Eurotalk App works? I am a complete beginner and these language learning programs, always help me the best.”

I've used it. It isn't even vaguely "immersion", though it may help you learn a few short vocabulary lists. That's a start, but it won't get you to conversational. And Gaelic culture is essentially communal: conversation, song and story -- that is the goal. The same can be said about the Atlantic Gaelic Academy's Skype classes, or "beag air beag", or the Mango Languages programme, or RadioLingua's charming "One Minute Gaelic" podcast. They can get you started, but they are unlikely to bring you to fluency. To acquire fluency, you need immersion.

Immersion is about USING Gaelic in the everyday things you do, and having the sounds of it going on all around you. And it works. There are a lot of vernacular Gaelic recordings on the web. Make a play-list of it and put it on a continuous loop on your devices. Play it on the radio while you're doing household chores. Watch Gaelic TV -- Machair is available on youtube, and Bannon can often be found on streaming services. Listen to lesson tapes (Speaking Our Language is good, or Can Seo -- both on Youtube -- or the CDs from Complete Gaelic (which you can buy as a Kindle book) or Catriona NicIobhair's "Gaelic through Conversation" (http://www.gaeliccollege.edu/.../gaelic-through.../) while you are driving or walking. Set your operating system language to Gaelic on your i-Devices or Mac (or lobby Windows and Google to provide Gaelic for your non-Apple devices). Install the Firefox browser and Open Office in Gaelic. It will slow you down, but you're probably familiar enough with computers to learn quickly that "Faidhle" means "File" and "Deasaich" means "Edit". Seeing "DiMàirt, 17 dhen Fhaoilleach"every time you open your phone will teach you quickly the names of the weekdays and months.

All that being said, teachers and other learners can waste a very great deal of time trying to convince one another that "X" is the only way to learn, or that they are only capable of learning by method "X". If something helps you learn, then use it. If someone you trust advocates a method, then try it. If you have the time, use as many methods as actually work for you. Frankly, if you sincerely believe that you "must" study grammar in order to learn, no-one is going to convince you differently and you might as well get on with it and stop wasting time arguing. With increasing experience, most learners see that translation-based techniques should be avoided (see the sidebar about language-learning and the brain) and unceasing aural repetition should be emphasised. And those are the identifying features of immersive learning. Other language-learning tools can give you the bare minimum you need to get started. In some cases they can supplement immersive learning. But immersion is key and without it your learning curve is cut short -- and unless you live in Cape Breton or the Hebrides, immersion is something you have to do to yourself.

As of Summer 2017, Learning Gaelic On Your Own Course & Guidelines is the latest handbook from the Moray Language Centre, a think-tank dedicated to producing targetted Gaelic courses that allow the complete beginner to break through to speaking Gaelic in 200 hours or less. You can obtain your copy of the handbook for $25. After you have paid, the handbook will be emailed to you in PDF format from the Moray Language Centre. This web-page is not a substitue for the Moray Language Centre's Learning Gaelic On Your Own Course & Guidelines.

Moray Language Centre courses use a proven effective method referred to as “Total Immersion Plus” (or “TIP”) developed by the Centre's CEO, Finlay M. Macleod. With the TIP method, students hear and speak only Gaelic during classes: whole sentences at a natural spoken tempo, no vocabulary lists, no reading or writing, and no grammer lessons. Now TIP may be fine for those in Cape Breton or the Hebrides where they can find classrooms with fluent presentors! But what about the rest of us, who are beginning the work of rebuilding diaspora Gaeltachds “on our own”? Fortunately, we have Gaelic radio programmes that can be recorded, both on BBC Alba and CBC Cape Breton; and a wealth of recorded Gaelic in university archives throughout the world. We will immerse ourselves in those recordings. How to do that, and succeed, is the substance of the Learning Gaelic On Your Own Course & Guidelines handbook.

An clàr-innse

Course Overview

Language acquisition is all about repetition: hearing words and phrases repeated over and over, and then repeating over and over the phrases you have heard. Here's how it works when you are learning Gaelic using radio programmes:

Month #1

Month #2:

Month #3

Month #4

Months #5 through #8

Months #9 through #12

Months #13 through #36

After a year, take a couple of months to review what you did in the previous year.

After eighteen months, start having regular conversations with Gaelic speakers in addition to this work

After three years, look into other Moray Language Centre programmes to enrich your Gaelic, for example, by shifting the language of family and home from English to Gaelic.

Equipment

*A Bit about Sound on the Internet

If you use a music service like iTunes or or Google play, you'll be used to the idea of “downloading music”. The song is a digital file stored on the Internet. Downloading it makes a copy on your device. You then play the copy as often as you like. Downloading takes only a few seconds, even though the song may be minutes long.

Some Gaelic archives let you download their content in the same way. The files will be called something like .mp3 or .mp4 or .wav. Some content providers – like the BBC – don't want to let you have a copy of the programme, because of copyright. So they don't let you do a simple download of the sound file. They give you a link that sends the sound-file only to your computer's sound card at the same speed that it plays at. They want you to think you can't “download” the file. But, in order for your computer to play the programme, your computer HAS to have access to it. It IS loaded “down” to your computer from the Internet – just slowly and without being stored as a file on the way. Such providers are counting on your sound card to play the data and discard it immediately.

Since the data DOES come through your computer, you DO have access to it. You just need a way for your sound card, instead of discarding the data as it is played, to send the data to something that will store it. A looping device takes the data from your sound card and sends it to another app: in this case, to Audacity.

Ready, Set, Go!

Ready...

Installing Audacity

When the download starts you will be prompted to confirm that you want to save it. Click “Ceart ma-tha” (“Okay”).

The download will be stored in your downloads directory. It's an automatic installer, with the name that you clicked on up above. Go to your downloads directory and double-click that file.

The installer will open an installation window. Follow the prompts, which will depend on what operating system you are using. The following pictures show a Mac installation.

Installing Soundflower (Mac Users only)

Click the first link on this page to download the .dmg file. It will ask you to confirm that you want to download the file.

The download will be stored in your downloads directory. It's an automatic installer, with the name that you clicked on up above. Go to your downloads directory and find it.

Double click on the file that was just downloaded. It opens an directory window.

Double click on the yellow picture of a box being opened up. That will launch the installer.

Enter your password and click “Install Software”. Software begin installing and you will see the window update several times.

... Set ...

Recording the first Programme

In the top left corner are the control buttons for recording and playback – Pause, Play, Stop, to Start, to End, Record:

Just under these control buttons, there are four fields with drop-down lists used to set up the input (what will be recorded) and the output (what will be played).

If you are using a Mac, leave the first field at “Core Audio” and set the second field to “Soundflower (2ch)”. If you are using Windows, set the first field to “Windows WASAPI” and set the second field to “Speakers (loopback)*”.

*There may be other options in the dropdown box. For Windows systems, always pick something that shows “loopback” for the second window.

Set the fourth field to “Built-In Output” (or “Speakers” if you are using external speakers)*.

Click the “Record” button. A window will open and begin drawing a long straight blue line. It is recording, but there is no sound on the input:

Go to https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jddy. Begin playing the episode you want to record, and adjust your volume so that it is loud and clear. Then stop the episode. Click on your system speaker icon, and select “Soundflower (2ch)” -- if you are using a Mac – or “Speakers (loopback)” -- if you are using Windows.

Now, start the episode playing again. Return to Audacity: you will see that the blue trace now shows oscillations representing the sound that is being recorded.

Leave the programme playing aloud for the full 90 minutes. If you silence it or turn off your sound, it will stop recording. If you receive any other sounds on your computer, such as beeps or notifications, they will be captured on your recording.

When the programme is complete, go back to the beginning and delete all of the silence – that is, the flat line -- at the beginning of the recording. Then go to File ... Save Project As ... and save it under name with a .aup file extension: for example AithrisNaMaidne20180620.aup.

Breaking the Project into Tracks

Aithris Na Maidne is a ninety-minute news review programme covering a range of topics with different presenters and different styles. You may want to break it into a series of shorter “tracks”. Shorter tracks have a number of advantages over a single 90-minute track. Each episode of Aithris Na Maidne follows the same standard pattern, and you can define the tracks based on that pattern. The precise times vary slightly, the following being the track breakdown from June 20 2018:

Go through the programme: select about 5 minutes of audio, and copy it into a new Audacity project. Choose File ... Export ... Export as MP3 and save it with a slightly different name and the .mp3 file extension: for example AithrisNaMaidne20180620-1.mp3. When prompted for additional information, make sure you enter exactly the same “Album” name for each track, and make sure you enter the correct “track number”. This will allow you to play all the clips in order when you begin listening via your smartphone or music player.

Continue exporting 5-minute “tracks” in MP3 format until the whole programme is exported. Excise any English segments you notice while doing this. 18 5-minute tracks are easier to manage in your device than one 90-minute track.

Sync the Tracks onto Your Phone or MP3 Player

Finally, import the mp3 files into your music player or smartphone. To import them into iTunes:

Your Gaelic tracks will be moved to your iTunes library and you can sync them to your device in the same way as any other music.

... GO!

Days 1 to 5: Immersion in the Sounds and Rhythms of Gaelic

The first five days are for “Gaelic-washing” your brain*. Play the album over and over, many times a day if possible. Use earbuds to shut out other sounds that might interfere with the Gaelic pathways you are building. Listen while you walk, or do housework, or work out. Do not worry about understanding: just let the Gaelic soak in. If you know any words of Gaelic, listen to see if they pop out at you: some common words to listen for are “agus”, “ag radh”,. If if doesn't disturb your sleep, leave the album playing quietly all night (Sleep and learning researchers are divided about whether this helps, but feel free to try it.

*A Bit About Learning and the Brain.

ordinary language course starts with going through the alphabet and associating Gaelic phonemes with the letters, even using English phonics to spell equivalent phonemes, and then with memorizing a list of vocabulary and grammer rules. That kind of learning means that when you speak, you go through a process like that shown above.

When you are learning something, your brain is creating neural pathways for your thoughts to flow along; much the way water creates a channel or pathway when ice melts and begins to flow downhill. The more your thoughts follow that pathway, the stronger that pathway will be – like water digging a deeper and deeper channel. If you learn by translation and grammer, your Gaelic will become “entrenched” in this kind of thought-pathway.

An ordinary course teaches a lot about Gaelic and a lot about linguistics. It doesn't create fluency. Fluency looks like this: A connection must exist directly from the abstract idea or visualization of apple, to the word “Ubhal” complete with its pronunciation. Children who grew up around Gaelic-speaking grandparents have a head-start, even if they never learned Gaelic, because their brain has already built pathways for distinguishing the sounds of Gaelic, just by hearing it. The first five days you spend “Gaelic-washing” your brain, are building the neural pathways for processing Gaelic sounds.

Although this course doesn't use vocabulary flip cards, any courses that do use flipcards should use a similar “no-translation” technique: a picture on one side, and the word in the target language on the other side; nothing at all on the card should be in the majority language.

Days 6 to 15: Listening intently for word patterns

After five days, the programme script should feel familiar. You should be automatically sensing what sounds will come next. Concentrate and try to repeat the script simultaneously with the programme presenters. Set regular times to work on active listening. Choose a regular environment to work in, free of English sounds and English writing and other distractions. Try to listen to the script at least three times a day with this level of concentration. Three times a day is four and a half hours. If you can manage that, then these ten days will add up to 45 hours! If you can't manage it, then remember twice through is still better than one, and once through is better than none.

Days 16 to 30: Repeating the Sounds of the Language

After fifteen days, you should be becoming comfortable subvocalizing the script simultaneously with the presenters. Now you will work on making those sounds for yourself. You'll need to record your own voice as well as listening to the presenters' voices. There are two good options for doing this:

Music Player and Voice Memos:

This option has the advantage that, even though you need to use your hands, it is portable: you can do it while out walking or while working on the treadmill. The disadvantage is that switching back and forth between apps can be quite cumbersome. You may find you forget the phrase while you are managing the apps.

Music Player and Voice Memos on two different devices:

This option has the advantage that you don't lose time and focus switching between apps, and it is still portable. The disadvantage is that you have to be lucky enough to afford two smart devices.

Audacity:

This option has the advantage that listen and record can be done with a single app, without switching back and forth. However since it requires a laptop, you are generally restricted to your desk while doing this work.

I continue to search for an integrated listen-and-record smartphone app that allows you to load in your own sound files.

Be aware that the muscles of your face and throat will tire easily at first, because they are being used in new ways. They will strengthen as you continue the work.

Track	From	to	Topic
1	0.0.0	0.0.10	Ùrlar na Phrograim
	0.0.10	0.0.17	Greetings and Presenter introductions
	0.0.17	0.1.0	Ceann Naidheachan
	0.1.0	0.6.33	Naidheachan
2	0.6.33	0.7.15	Sìde
2	0.7.15	0.8.20	Turas
3	0.8.20	0.13.10	Topic one
4	0.13.10	0.17.27	Topic two
5	0.17.27	0.17.58	Ceann Naidheachan
5	0.17.58	18.32	Aistichean
6	0.18.32	0.21.20	Caledonia
7	0.21.20	0.25.03	Beachdaich Pàipeiran-Naidheachd
8	0.25.03	0.28.03	Yemen
9	0.28.03	0.29.58	Coimhearsnachd
10	0.29.58	0.30.37	Priomh Naidheachan
10	0.30.37	0.38.48	Naidheachan
11	0.38.48	0.39.32	Sìde
11	0.39.32	0.40.25	Turas
12	0.40.25	0.46.43	Maggaidh
13	0.46.43	0.49.425	Eaconomaidh na-h-Alba
14	0.49.425	0.58.18	Aistichean
15	0.58.18	1.00.26	Smuain na Maidne
15	1.00.26	1.00.485	Sgeulan aig naoi uirean
16	1.00.485	01.03.56	Naidheachdan
17	1.03.56	01.04.58	Sìde
	01.05.01	01.05.30	Turas
	01.05.30	1.06.37	Marbh-sanas, Tachartas na sgìre
18	1.06.37	1.10.36	Clann steach-imriche
19	1.10.36	1.13.29	Eisreadh craimhinn
20	1.13.29	1.16.575	George Soros
21	1.16.575	1.17.25	Ceann Naidheachdan
21	1.17.25	1.21.275	Dà-chànanachas
22	1.21.275	1.26.175	Dìth dachaigh, Creideas Coitcheann
23		1.26.175		flùraichean