no love, however brief, is ever wasted

Hello everyone! As you may know I've created this challenge to help revive the langblr community. It's a three week challenge designed to get you back into learning languages and (hopefully) give you ideas on how to study and share your knowledge of them. It is completely optional to do, but try to reblog other people's posts if you aren't participating.

The challenge is designed to be done daily, however if you miss a day, you can go back and do it later or continue from where you left off. I do encourage you to do your best to keep up with the challenge though. Tag your posts with #langblr reactivation challenge so that others can find your posts.

If you have any questions, please send me an ask or a message and I'll do my best to answer it.

I'll put the prompts under a read more so this post isn't ridiculously long. Good luck to everyone participating! Remember the best way to promote the langblr revival is by reblogging other people's work.

—

One giant slow-motion fail whale

This is a colonialist doing what colonialists do.

This is a colonialist doing what colonialists do.

This is a colonialist doing what colonialists do.

This is a colonialist doing what colonialists do.

This is a colonialist doing what colonialists do.

Hanif Abdurraqib, On Seatbelts and Sunsets

Excellent question!

Personally, I think it’s a great way to reintroduce a new, younger generation to the language. It covers a lot of cultural topics that many people may never have heard of, like the concept of a Mòd gathering. Additionally, I don't think I had ever heard of IRN BRU, but it’s now on my bucket list to try. (Their adverts alone are, um, quite attention-grabbing.)

According to an article in The Scotsman, as of this March (March 2022, that is - greetings, future readers!), the course has surpassed a million learners, an astounding leap for a language that just decades ago was teetering on the edge of extinction.

And back to the first point, an article in The Guardian made an excellent point about this course helping to dispel the "Scottish cringe", a manifestation of a wider (practically global, though there are exceptions) phenomenon of perceived inferiority of a given indigenous culture in favor of an external, more politically or socially dominant culture or language.

THAT BEING SAID, however, I do have some critiques of my own, and you put forward a good point. From what I understand, the course mainly teaches the Mid-Minch dialect of Scottish Gaelic (shoutout to Sabhal Mòr Ostaig!), with some regional variation in pronunciation between the people providing audio recordings (although they do expose the learner to Canadian Gaelic with a few lessons, which gets a big "thumbs up" from me). With the massive volume of learners coming to the app (an overall very positive thing!) to learn the language, I'm predicting the language will undergo a "dialect levelling" over the next few decades as a result of the popularity of this course. My guess is that the good majority of people learning Gaelic online will start and finish their language learning journey with the Duolingo course and not seek out other resources (or even fellow speakers or learners) to supplement this, which may move Gaelic towards one standard "Duolingo dialect" in the near future if care is not taken to avoid such a fate.

Another thing I've noticed is that as I near the end of the course (I'm on Unit 66 of 69 at the moment), there hasn't been a single prompt for the past fifteen or so units that I haven't already seen. Don't get me wrong, review is always good, but I do wish they would provide more variation in their prompts in the later stages of the course so I could be sure that I'm absorbing more essential vocabulary and grammar and not just drilling myself on Duolingo sentences. I also wish it would cover some more important points of grammar and vocab earlier in the course (concepts in colloquial sentence structure such as how and when to use phrases like "air a bhith", "gum bi", "biodh", etc.). My advice once you've reached about Unit 45 or so is to begin seeking out other learners (or native speakers if you can find them) and begin practicing using the language in a more colloquial fashion.

One note I have about the platform in general: a somewhat common thread among Duolingo learners of any language is that the sentences sound unnatural at times, or that they'll "never use these sentences in real life." While that may be the case in a literal sense, that's not the whole point of the structure of the courses. I think people see sentences like "the bear gave me a strawberry" and think they're not learning anything worthwhile, but what sentences like this teach you is vocabulary in different syntactical situations. This is one of the best ways to learn grammar - that is, to not even realize you're learning it, and to passively absorb it based off of various usage examples. After all, this is how we learn grammar rules as young children! And a side-note, make sure you do the lessons with the sound on, and for your own sake, make sure you're saying each sentence out loud as you go! (Your future conversation partners will thank you for it.)

I also forgot to mention a great resource in my main post - the show Speaking Our Language is available on YouTube for free (at least in the United States), and covers Gaelic as it may be used situationally. It can be a bit goofy at times, and it's a nostalgic snapshot of early- to mid-1990s Scotland, but it's presented in a very digestible and well-paced fashion for learners!

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the national centre for Gaelic language and culture, recently worked with BBC Alba to produce videos, audio and a website called SpeakGaelic. 

There’s videos, an online course, support for tutors, multiple new podcasts, Youtube, various things airing on TV. The actual self-taught online course is only one part of how much this resource has to offer! So here’s some of the things I’ve been looking at. 

1. The website itself

 https://speakgaelic.scot/all-online-courses/

This is just the whole website: explore at your leisure! At the moment they have finished up to around A2 level, and are working on producing higher level content. 

Each topic has a series of 8-10 mini-lessons that are sometimes more duolingo style, and sometimes with videos.

I…actually prefer to use the teaching resources for tutors (linked below) than this course for a few reasons. My main problem is that the vocabulary they present to you is far too fast (in one lesson they might give you 20 words for different Scottish towns), which is fine if you just need to choose the relevant words for where you are from, but in order to pass the quiz to get to the next level you have to get ALL of them right. And Gaelic spelling takes a while to get used to…

There’s also no writing / spelling practice, but to pass the level requires you to write things. Which. Feels counterintuitive! You can learn any level without passing the tests, but it’s annoying because it means your progress isn’t saved to an accurate place. I emailed them about it and got a friendly response back, but this isn’t something they are planning to change. 

2. The classroom materials

 https://speakgaelic.scot/classroom-materials/

Now THIS is where it gets exciting. These are materials designed in theory for tutors - full lesson plans, worksheets, everything - but they are accessible to learners too. In fact, I think they’re much better than the online course. 

Why? Because everything is STRUCTURED. You are given practice, and told what to do, and there are grammatical explanations. (NB: all of these exist in the online course, but not in one handy document for you to look over in one place.) 

You have all of the learner content….

…and you ALSO have teacher content:

‘If learners need more time and practice with the vocative case’ > that’s me! And it shows you then exactly what you should do next. Whereas the online course doesn’t have that option for customisation at all. Most of the worksheets are included in the lesson plan, and some are on the main page. Absolute bliss. 

3. The SpeakGaelic learner podcast

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6x5b901Zj8ky0UsMM4SzZM?si=00c361fe5ffc4f0d

(If you don’t have Spotify, you can just search ‘SpeakGaelic’)

This is an audio version of the lessons above, and goes into more detail - with information from three different native speakers - into some of the grammar things that the course doesn’t really cover in that much depth. There’s conversations you can listen to, and it’s all targeted at complete beginners. If you listen to any other Gaelic podcasts you’ll recognise the presenter, John Urquhart!

After each episode, there’s also a special episode - scroll down to the bottom - with conversation about different topics relevant to the day’s lesson with two of the presenters. Great for providing extra information!

4. The Youtube channel

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppoHU_ece7o&list=PL_U7jPRkbJZtFegaqKKT8MrZnV7ugwHAG&index=1

Ok, so there’s a LOT of content here. First you have the A1-A2 lessons, around 30 minutes each. Despite what the name suggests, these are not the same as the audio podcasts. They have Joy (who presents the online course) but they also give some extra video clips and information about cultural things too!

They’re a little slow, but a good supplement to the material given above. As far as I can tell, there are only 13 of this particular series (and 13 for A2) but the YouTube channel SpeakGaelic itself has hundreds of episodes of everything that goes into the online course. All the videos can be found there. 

This includes all audio and conversations, as well as snapshots on individual learners and some cultural information. 

They also seemingly have started marking some grammar videos! Check out this playlist for more grammar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq9_0ht4L3Y&list=PL_U7jPRkbJZu0uq_6wpzCgZcpddGDU76D

5. The intermediate podcast: Beag air Bheag

https://open.spotify.com/show/34wGOU9sDTE7Vzg0qMexfv?si=314cbbb294b648ec

Once you’re a little further on in your journey (I…can’t understand these yet), there are a few other podcasts on Spotify also by the BBC Radio nan Gàidheal. This is one! This is totally in Gaelic, but spoken fairly slowly and designed for intermediate learners. 

6. The old site: learngaelic.scot

https://learngaelic.scot

Check it out! I…actually prefer this site and the way it teaches. It has some bonuses over the old one - good vocabulary sections, plus a really great directory of Gaelic courses online and in person, as well as a dictionary, and so on. 

It goes all the way up to B2, so is a better choice if you have more than a little Gaelic. 

It’s also a brilliant directory of media in Gaelic - you can watch lots of videos with transcripts in Gaelic with a dictionary, as well as finding native-level material. You can sign up to their newsletter and get weekly Gaelic information too. 

It also has links to Speaking Our Language!! Which is an absolutely wonderful resource from the 90s teaching Gaelic one conversation at a time, and also goes up to a fairly high level. These are all updated for The Modern Age: i.e., they all have PDFs and transcripts, as well as links to the grammar points for whatever lesson you’re listening to. Far more advanced than anything the new site currently has. 

I might do another post once I’ve explored this website a little more! 

7. Bonus: Gaelic with Jason

Finally, one extra! The other main resource I’m using is Gaelic with Jason (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rAE_iLRh4g for example). 

He has a whole bunch of free Youtube videos, but I’m actually doing his paid online course - it’s by the best value for money I know from any course, Gaelic or otherwise. If you have the money for it and like immersive learning with a board and just being chatted to, I’d highly recommend you give it a go. He also has loads of Gaelic books for learners, which are wonderful too, and a folktales and traditions course for intermediate learners. Can’t talk about this man enough. (https://gaelicwithjason.thinkific.com)

—

Once again, I’d really encourage you to check out the teaching materials: I personally find them way more useful than the online course for learners specifically. I’m looking at the teaching materials in conjunction with the audio on YouTube and then the podcasts on Spotify.

All the best!