What does Irish sound like? The rhythm of the speech, the intonation. Where is the stress on the words, what are the “filler” sounds?
The first step is just to listen.
Where?
Podcasts:
-Anything on RTE Radio: ‘Nuacht A Haon’, ‘An Saol ó Dheas’, ‘Barrscéalta’. These all sound like old-school local southern US-style radio. They are made for a local audience so there will be a variety of accents, mumbling and regular-person speech. Understanding this will be something to work up to, but it definitely gives the bet sense of the “sound” of the language
-Produced shows–Professional newspeople– Produced shows are nice once you can understand a bit because their Irish is “clean”. They have the clipped professional way of speaking easily identifiable even if you can’t understand them as “newsperson” speech. –‘Blas Pod’ in Ulster (yes it is from the BBC, feel free to laugh out loud for all the old relatives giggling in their graves about this).
RTE- ‘Beo ar Éigean’— inbetween local and professional. These are professional podcasters who have the slick accents & voices but also seem to be good friends, a lot of laughter and normal paced speech.
-Learn Irish! This is a great place once you know a few words. The podcast takes a short news article and reads it to you three times. The first read is one sentence in English and then in Irish. The second read is the whole article in slow Irish. Finally the third read is the whole article in “regular speed” Irish. There is also text where you can follow along.
TV shows
TG4: –This is the place! Adult dramas, mixed Irish and English, kid cartoons.
-The best are the Irish-produced kid shows. They will be completely in Irish and will have the option for Irish subtitles. This is fantastically helpful for matching the sound with the visual–what does ‘dh’ or ‘gc’ sound like? Now you will know. The shows are short so the rule of three works well here. Watch the show first all in Irish with no subtitles, then watch it with the Irish subtitles, and finally you can watch it with the English subtitles.
Songs
—Lurgan, Lurgan, Lurgan!!!! –This is the greatest summer camp ever. Irish kids from the city are sent out to the country to improve their Irish. The way they do it is by making music video Irish covers of popular songs. These are seriously talented kids having fun in the world’s best idea for a language class. Gobs of songs out there, many have Irish subtitles.
Clos-leabhar
-you-tube
— “Scéal an Lá”
—-Soundcloud —
https://soundcloud.com/fornasnagaeilge
leighleat.com
