Will's Class

Announcements

Proposed Summer Schedule

We'll meet at Maureen's church, off the Diamond Lake Road exit on 35W:

June 5: Last class in Central
June 19, then off three weeks (July 4) to
July 10
July 24
August 7 (Irish Fair is Aug 11-13) three weeks off until
August 28
Two weeks off before resuming at Central Sept 11

Topic Notes

We've spent quite a bit of time on our favorite tenses ...

Looking forward to the rest of spring and summer, two topics that have been requested:

the copula
prepositions

I'm thinking of merging the two topics over the summer ...

Last Time (July 10) (back to top)

Seanfhocal

We went back to the old Dineen dictionary (and which font I won't try to reproduce here). We had the wonderfully compact, Ní moill faobhar, literally, "an edge is not a delay". It means that taking the time to sharpen your tool won't slow you down, it will actually help you be more efficient. (One of the other proverbs was in the sumjunctive mood!)

Comhrá

Caught up on three weeks of activities, including a dramatic incident with fireworks in a garage ...

Copula Work

First we went through our sorting exercise, classfiying "to be" sentences as needing is or tá forms. Students thought this was a good activity, and all displayed a good understanding of the differences.

Then we shared our English sentences collected in the wild, 10 Tá and 10 Is. Again, these were very good, and the few that were in the wrong "bin" wer caught by the students themselves as they read them out.

We then talked about what is challenging about the copula. This above need to pick the right verb is a bit one, and will need a lot more drill. We talked about understanding definite vs. indefinite nouns and how that factors in, so I'll try to have more on that for next time.

Article

We translated an article about the new Taoiseach and his enthusiasm for the Irish language. This was pretty straightforward, although there were a couple of pretty convoluted sentences, and a fair number of verbs in the conditonal.

Homework

For July 24

We're going to invent some new "as white as snow" type expressions, see this homework assignment.
And we have another short article to translate, this one about Irish illegals in the U.S. You can also access this article directly here, which will allow you to use the embedded dictionary feature.

June 5 will be an all-class, so you have a month to translate this essay from Tuairimí. While you're at it, think of some comments/observations of your own you'd like to make in response to the essay.

Previous Class (June 19) (back to top)

Seanfhocal

We had a couple of seanfhocal in seanchló from the old Dineen dictionary (and which font I won't try to reproduce here). Modernized, one of them read, Aithníonn fear na h-olna dhíol fear na h-olna cheannach: The wool seller knows (recognizes) the wool buyer.

Comhrá

It had been a while since we had time to chat, so we got caught up, in Irish -- well done.

Essay

We went over our translations of this essay from Tuairimí. That didn't present many serious challenges. We also shared our own experiences/attitudes about shopping.

Audio

We found some time to listen to:

A report on the firing of the FBI director, and
The first address in Irish of the new Taoiseach.

Comments and questions are welcome via e-mail