ellievsbear
Xuebing Du
izzy's playlists!
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Stranger Things
hello vonnie
Andulka
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pixel skylines
dirt enthusiast
Cosmic Funnies
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
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titsay
Monterey Bay Aquarium
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Game of Thrones Daily
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@gaeilge-rules
Masterpost for Resources
I thought I would put together a small post of all the resources that I’ve currently listed on the blog already.
Getting into Irish Language Twitter
Podcasts
Websites for Improving Your Reading Ability
Irish Language Music
Pop-up Gaeltacht
Explaining the Website Peig
Beginners Resources
An Article about Learning Irish in Dublin
TV (Mostly TG4)
Books (Post written in Irish)
Books 2 the electric boogaloo
Grammar Notes for Regular Verbs
OPW is offering free tours through irish of historic sites in dublin throughout seachtain na gaeilge for anyone willing to send them an email
making a letterboxd list of celtic language films :) going to try and watch as many as i can this year. hopefully.
Ffilmiau yn yr ieithoedd Celtaidd / Scannáin sa teangacha Ceilteacha / Fylmys y'n tavosow Keltek
here is the list in case anyone wants it :) there's definitely more stuff out there but i think this is enough for now considering this list has over 130 films on it and i've only seen 1 of them
(not all of them are entirely in a celtic language and some of them are only short films)
there only appear to be 2 manx films on the entirety of letterboxd although other stuff does exist!!
Irish language TV channel TG4 has co-produced a new animated Christmas film in collaboration with BBC Northern Ireland and Welsh language st
update for podcasts in 2025: i am going to go ahead and plug Dúchas from Raidió Rí Rá which is a podcast about folklore, mythology, fairytales (pisreoga) and irish heritage
check out their first episode about the banshee and see if it works for you but the two lads are very funny and i had a blast
realising that i did not clarify that this podcast is in irish! i think i just assumed that only people familiar with this blog would see it lol! podchraoladh trí mheán na gaeilge é seo! ná héisteacht leis mura bhfuil fiú giota bheag ghaeilge agat
update for podcasts in 2025: i am going to go ahead and plug Dúchas from Raidió Rí Rá which is a podcast about folklore, mythology, fairytales (pisreoga) and irish heritage
check out their first episode about the banshee and see if it works for you but the two lads are very funny and i had a blast
update for podcasts in 2025: i am going to go ahead and plug Dúchas from Raidió Rí Rá which is a podcast about folklore, mythology, fairytales (pisreoga) and irish heritage
check out their first episode about the banshee and see if it works for you but the two lads are very funny and i had a blast
Did you know that there are video games in the Irish language that you can enjoy today? Check out our listed here.
bought dicey dungeons today!
on a one-man mission chun cluichí ríomhaire a chur ar fáil sa ghaeilge
i can also recommend If Found má tá suim agaibh i visual novels
Did you know that there are video games in the Irish language that you can enjoy today? Check out our listed here.
bought dicey dungeons today!
on a one-man mission chun cluichí ríomhaire a chur ar fáil sa ghaeilge
Did you know that there are video games in the Irish language that you can enjoy today? Check out our listed here.
bought dicey dungeons today!
celtic languages mega drive folder
261 files and 13 subfolders
i've been meaning to share my folder of celtic language pdfs for a while now, especially since duolingo has gotten even worse. the folder has pdfs of language-learning material, as well as some stuff on literature, history, indentity, etc. this is very much a work-in-progress, as i will add to the folder as i find more resources.
my folder currently has: welsh, breton, cornish, irish, scottish gaelic, manx, béarlagair na saor, early modern irish and classical gaelic, old irish, middle welsh, old welsh, and proto-celtic (although not all of them have a lot of pdfs in their folders yet).
(also if you want online resources, fiction books, media, etc, then take a look at this website: https://www.celtic-languages.org/Main_Page - it has both free and paid resources for irish, scottish gaelic, manx, welsh, cornish, breton, old irish, and classical gaelic.)
Grammar time
This was my mams when she was in school and she gave it to me. It has everything from how to congugate regular verbs and every irregular verb, how to put things into questions, how to reply in the affirmative/the negative, useful question words, prepositions, all of the essentials. It's okay if you don't understand all of it, I didn't at first, but now I love this cheat sheet
since a ton of people are getting into music as gaeilge because of hozier, can i recommend my fave artist, róisín seoighe? she's a native irish speaker and language ambassador whose lyrics often involve the preservation of irish culture and deep rage against colonization. níl mé marbh ("i'm not dead") makes me cry like a baby and sin do lamh ("reach out") makes me want to burn all of colonialism down. she's also done several collabs with imlé, another EXCELLENT irish language band that does modern-feeling rock and dance music! my fave of their collabs right now is ÉAD ("jealous").
both artists have less than 1,700 monthly listeners on spotify simply because they sing in irish & they deserve more bc their music Really Is Excellent. translations of many songs are google-able & when there Aren't english translations, it's really good practice for people learning irish!
Don't Use Duolingo if You Really Want to Learn Irish
That title is a bit dramatic, but I really don't think that duolingo is a useful tool for Irish, especially in its current state, so I want to talk a bit about why, and I'll also talk about some alternatives.
Pronunciation
The first and most egregious issue is that at some point recently-ish, duo decided to start using Text-To-Speech for their Irish course, rather than recordings of a native speaker. The problem here is that their TTS is not trained on native speakers of Irish and pronounces words incorrectly. It doesn't make consistent distinctions between broad and slender consonants for example.
Irish has no standard pronunciation, so I understand how it can feel weird to choose just one dialect for the purposes of pronunciation (the old recordings were from a speaker of Galway Irish), but having just one dialect is much better than TTS which sounds like a learner, imagine if they had TTS for the French course which sounded like an anglophone schoolkid trying to pronounce french, and claimed they were teaching you how to speak french!
Grammar
Duo tends to be correct on grammar at least, which is a start. But often people using it get very confused about the grammar because duo doesn't explain any of it. I think there's a place for immersion in language learning, and I don't think everything has to be explained like that, but within duo's system of sentence testing and exercises like that, not having any explanation for why it's "mo chóta" and not "mo cóta" can be really confusing. Duo used to have more grammar information, it's a shame that they removed it, I wonder why they did it.
Money and Motivation
Duolingo is a business, and their motivation is not to help you learn a language 'fully', but to keep you using their app and hopefully have a higher chance of sharing it with others, competing with others, buying or causing others to buy memberships or lingots or any other in-app purchases.
I don't want to make it out like duo is some big conspiracy and they're tricking people, I don't think that's the case, but it's good to remember that their primary motivation is to keep people using the app, rather than help people move to a level in a language where they don't need the app anymore.
Keep this in mind whenever you see people trying to sell you stuff for language learning.
Why do people use Duolingo
I do get it, and I don't want to make anyone feel bad for using duo, there's a ton of reasons people tend towards it at first 1. It's really well known, so especially if you're learning a language and haven't heard of other resources for it, you'll check duolingo 2. It's very motivating for a lot of people, checking in every day and forming that habit is a really good way of sticking with a language 3. It's fun, people enjoy it
If you use it for reason 3. and you still like it, then don't worry about this post, I'm not trying to yuck anyone's yums, keep having fun!
If you use it for reasons 1. or 2. you can still keep using it if you like, but I want to suggest some other things which you might find helpful in trying to get to a higher level in Irish.
Other Resources
To address the pronunciation issue, I'd heavily recommend you disregard the pronunciation in duolingo, if you're looking for more reliable sources of pronunciation, I'd look towards recordings of native speakers, you can find that on:
Teanglann and Foclóir (they use the same recordings)
Fuaimeanna
and a really useful and underused one: https://davissandefur.github.io/minimal-pairs/ where you can hear the difference between similar sounds that English speakers often mix up in Irish.
A lot of people like duolingo because it's nice to have a clear path forward, a progression that you can get into without too much decision-making. For this I recommend getting a good textbook or course and working through it, the ones I'll recommend also have native speaker audio on them.
Learning Irish by Mícheál Ó Siadhail, this book teaches Galway Irish, not just in pronunciation but in grammar too. It's quite dense but it's well thought out and well explained.
Teach Yourself Irish (1961) this book is available for free online, and is a really good option if you're interested in Cork Irish (Munster), and have some experience with grammatical terminology. I used this book myself and really liked it, but it's very intense and not for everyone. (If you do end up using it, feel free to skip the appendices at the start, they're more of a reference and sometimes put people off from actually getting to the first chapter. Also if you have any questions about it or need any help just let me know.)
If you want a video course, there's a great course called "Now You're Talking" which is available for free online, along with audio files and worksheets here. It features Donegal Irish and leads into the more intermediate level course called Céim ar Aghaidh also available online.
There's other textbooks that I have less experience with (Buntús na Gaeilge, Gaeilge/Gramadach Gan Stró, etc.) but if they work for you, stick with them, there's nothing worse than not making progress because you keep switching resources trying to find the "perfect one"
Whether or not you continue to use Duolingo, I would really really encourage you to try engaging with media in Irish. People often shy away from this when they're learning because they don't feel like they're "ready" yet. But you basically never feel like you're ready, you just have to try and find something near your level and try to get comfortable with not understanding everything. This is where you learn a huge portion of the language, you hear how things are pronounced you see what words mean in what contexts, getting input in your target language is so important!
I know content can be kind of hard to find, so I'll make a few recommendations here: There's a wealth of content available for free online (more if you're in ireland but some internationally) on TG4 If you're still starting out, I'd recommend trying to watch some kids shows since they'll have simpler language and will be easier to follow. I wouldn't recommend using English subtitles when you watch them. Some good options include:
Dónall Dána: an Irish dub of Horrid Henry, silly and childish but the actors have good Irish and importantly the show has Irish language subtitles, they don't always match but if you're still beginning and can't necessarily get everything by ear, they're really useful. (Mostly Galway Irish)
Curious George: another dub, again with Irish language subtitles (I can't remember what dialects were in it off the top of my head but I'd assume mostly galway again)
Seó Luna: No subtitles, but a good option if you're aiming for Munster Irish, the lead character has Kerry Irish
Miraculous: No subtitles but a better show than most of the other kids' ones and more bearable to watch as an adult (Mostly Galway Irish)
Ros na Rún: Moving away from kids shows, a long running soap opera, this has Irish subtitles and a really good mix of dialects within the show. If you're finding the kids shows boring or too easy I'd really recommend it, but it can be complex because of the amount of characters, dialects, and plotlines. I'd recommend starting at the beginning of a newer season and just trying to catch on to what's happening as you go.
There are a lot of books, if you live in Ireland you can get nearly any Irish book for free from a library, so please check out your local library or request some of these from other libraries in the system:
There's a series of fairytales (Rápúnzell, Luaithríona etc.) by Máiréad Ní Ghráda which are illustrated and for children, which are a really good option for when you're just starting out reading
There's kids books about Fionn and the Fianna by Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin
There's a cute little kids' book in Kerry Irish about a cat named Mábúis
Leabhar Breac has a lot of graphic novels, some of them based on Irish mythology, some on other stuff. The fact that they're illustrated can make it a lot easier to follow even if you don't understand all the words at first.
Gliadar has just released their Scott Pilgrim translation
If you're looking for something a bit more advanced you can look at some of the books for adult learners by Comhar, they contain simplified language and glossaries but have full original adult stories.
And if you're wanting full, natural, native-level Irish there's a load of books by those same groups, and others like An Gúm, Cló Iar-Chonnacht, Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne, Éabhlóid, Coiscéim, and more.
And don't shy away from older books written in Seanchló either, they can be more challenging but it's a whole extra world of books
If you're trying to improve your listening comprehension, I definitely recommend listening to shows on Raidió na Gaeltachta, hearing native Irish speakers talk at full speed is really good practice. But I get that it can be overwhelming at first. Here are some things you can do as you build up to that:
Watching those same TV shows I mentioned without subtitles is a good way to build up listening skills.
Vifax is a website where you can practice listening to short news segments and answer questions on them, then getting to look at the transcript with notes afterwards.
Snas is kind of the evolution of vifax, now using clips from both the news and Ros na Rún.
I really hope that this post can help people move away from duolingo if they're looking to take their Irish learning to the next level, if you've got any questions, just let me know!
