I wouldn’t have had the confidence to sign up to my first Irish class without Duolingo. As a person, I never like to go in blind, to anything, ever. This can be restrictive in many ways, but the stress of feeling unprepared is just too much for me. So Duolingo offered a gateway into the Irish language that I’m incredibly grateful for. But while there are many things that Duolingo is, there are many, many more that it isn’t.
I’ve been using Duolingo since 1st August 2019 and have since logged an embarrassing number of hours on the platform. Learning Irish on Duolingo is like being in the nest of a giant, passive-aggressive owl – safe, but really not practical forever. The Irish Duolingo course is incredibly short in comparison to courses available for some of the planet’s most-spoken languages and therefore understandably doesn’t cover everything you’ll ever need to know. Inevitably, you’ll need to move away into the big, bad world of independent learning, which is more like being pushed out of the nest by Tómas de Bhaldraithe with a broom. At least that’s what I’m finding as I start to rely less on Duolingo’s rigid list of accepted answers and search for the nuance in the language. However, if you’re delving into Duolingo in 2020, here’s some advice for getting the most from the platform.
- Lower Your Expectations. I know no one expects to be fluent after completing Duolingo, but you’d at least like to think you’d be able to have a simple conversation, right? Sadly, Duolingo prepares you for a little reading, writing and (unfortunately) translating into English as the default. At this point I’ve gilded around 60% of my tree but the first time someone spoke Irish to me in a non-structured, non-rehearsed situation, my mind went blank and I started to sweat like Bertie Ahern realising he has to answer, “so what’s the craic with you and the youngwan then?” with, “which one?” Duolingo gives you the tools (vocab, grammar and some pronunciation) to prepare you for conversation, but you have to build conversation experience yourself. The best advice here is:
- Once you become familiar with a concept, stop trying to translate it into English in your head and just take it for what it is. Dia duit is dia duit (or dia dhuit, depending on your dialect). You know what it means and when to use it, and even if the question is “Write this in English,” try and separate it from “Hello.” This will help down the line when you’re reading as Gaeilge for it to stay as Gaeilge in your head, the same way it feels to read and think in English.
- Practise saying everything out loud if you’re in a position to do so. If Duolingo isn’t telling you how to pronounce something, or you want to hear it in your own dialect, you can check out my Resources post for how to do this.
- If you can, use Duolingo for desktop. This option isn’t available for everyone, but it offers additional features that mobile app users will miss. Arguably the most important are the “Notes” sections that are attached to the majority of lessons, especially those introducing new concepts. These give a summary of the new grammar rules being tested in each section and I’d recommend reading this before starting a newly unlocked level. If you don’t have access to a laptop or computer, login into Duolingo on your device’s browser, head to Duolingo.com/learn, click on the level you’d like to complete and the “Notes” can be found by clicking on the Lightbulb💡.
- Gild as you Go. Try not to work on too many lessons at once. And try not to move on to the next topic until you’ve grasped the ones before it, as content is continuous and will come up in future lessons. I try to gild my topics as soon as possible, which (once purchased with gems/lingots) unlocks the timed practise option. This is great for building up your skills and gives the added incentive of trying to beat the clock. I often will take one day a week to only practise old lessons, to consolidate what I already know.
- Use Keyboard. Push yourself to use the “use keyboard” option instead of the word banks as soon as possible to improve your writing and spelling. It also prevents you guessing answers from the words you have available in the word bank. If you’re struggling with spelling, you can use the Duolingo Memrise course to improve.
- Take Notes. Duolingo isn’t an immersion experience, nor is it such a feat of engineering that normal pedagogical rules no longer apply; if you started learning anything else, you’d take notes. I learn best by writing things down, so I often re-write the Duolingo notes sections into my notebook. However, I’ll usually change the format slightly to suit the way I know my brain learns best. I also make note of questions I consistently get wrong and write out an explanation for myself. Do what works for you, and there are lots of memory games and techniques you can use to help stubborn words and phrases to stay in your brain, some of which are in my Resources post.
- Develop a system. If you know you’re with Irish for the long haul, there are a few things you can do at the start to make life easier.
- When you encounter a new noun, learn whether it’s masculine or feminine. This matters, and unfortunately isn’t something Duolingo makes a conscious effort to help you with. One of the best ways you can do this is write down new vocab as you encounter it with the definite article + noun (e.g. an bhean instead of just bean). In many cases this’ll help you remember the gender. If the noun starts with a letter that isn’t affected by the addition of “an,” (if this doesn’t make sense to you yet, don’t worry) you can use colours to help you remember. For example, I enclose feminine nouns in pink pen and leave masculine nouns as they are (please don’t drag me for the gender-normative colours, it just works for me and in fairness the pink pen is while nice).
- You can do the same at this point and learn your plurals. Unlike the completely nonsensical English language where you just add an “s” or just completely make it up (see: child – children, what?), Irish has patterns. However, if you’re just starting to learn the language, these patterns can be a lot to take in, so my advice would be to just learn the plurals as you go.
- If you’re a glutton for punishment, you could learn the genitive singular and plural every time you encounter a new noun, too. But no one would blame you for sacking this one off, especially if (like myself) you didn’t know what a genitive case was until starting the course.
I have a lot of systems, but when I encounter new nouns, or ones I think I’ll use fairly often, I draw something like the figure below. Teanglann.ie does this in a similar way. If you type your noun of choice into teanglann.ie, go across to the Grammar tab (denoted by a little picture of a spanner), and scroll down, you’ll see the nominative and genitive plural and singular for each noun.
However, if you’re just doing the Irish course casually, feel free to ignore number 6 and just have fun with it.
- Learn your Grammar. This can be interpreted in one of two ways.
- Learn English grammar. If you’re learning Irish with English as your first language, it’s likely that you picked up English grammar by osmosis, in that you understand exactly how everything works but not what it’s called. For example, until last August I had no idea what a nominative or genitive case was, when to use the vocative case or what on earth a conditional mood was. I didn’t know the difference between attributive and predicative adjectives and while this isn’t terribly important in English, it makes a difference in Irish. Getting to grips with (albeit very basic) grammatical concepts will make understanding Irish much easier. The BBC Bitesize Irish Lessons were particularly helpful for this.
- Learn Irish grammar. Learn word order, learn the copula (as best you can, I’ll admit I largely haven’t a clue still), learn leathan le leathan agus caol le caol, learn that adjectives must match their nouns in number, gender and case. These might not mean much now, but learn your rules as you go and it will make things easier down the road.
- Use the discussion forums – with caution. When I get something wrong on Duolingo and I don’t know why, I always click on the discussion to try and help me work it out. Often, it’ll be obvious – a séimhiú missed here, a wrong conjugation there – but sometimes a question is so baffling that even my best guess is a mile off. Usually it means I’ve not understood something, Duolingo hasn’t explained it yet (or ever, *cough* the copula *cough*) or it’s idiomatic/something that’s unique to Irish. However. Don’t trust everything you read. You’ll soon learn who to trust, or at least trust enough for the time being (Duolingo users scilling and SatharnPHL are usually pretty good) to point you in the right direction. Some people like to complain or make jokes about Pól (translation of whose name I feel strongly opposed to, but a story for another time); don’t be those people. They prevent others from finding solutions by clogging up the comments section. And finally, ask. A sensible question will usually get an answer; whether or not you trust it is up to you.
9. Join a Classroom. If you’re starting with a friend, or know of an existing classroom, try to join. It’s a system where you’re set homework by an administrator that comes through every now and then and your task is to level up or gild a skill. If you struggle with motivation, a classroom could be for you. @Motherfoclóir on twitter run a classroom that will hopefully be re-opening in the new year, so you can follow them for updates.
Finally, At the risk of being awfully cheesy: Learn what works for you. Duolingo streaks, stats, metrics and all of that work for me. I love analytics and the pressure of a streak to make sure I do my Duolingo every day. If like me you enjoy some additional data, you can head to Duome.eu/yourUsername to get a little more information about your learning journey. However for some, this takes the fun out of the whole experience. The end goal of Duolingo is to move away from it, so use it if it works for you but don’t feel beholden to it. Enjoy Irish and use Duolingo for what you need it for.
Finding Líofacht 