Summer language project: Boosting my Irish
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Why did Benny decide to make Irish his summer language focus?
Welcome to the Language and Travel Hacking Podcast from Fluent in three months.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Language and Travel Hacking Podcast. I'm your host Benny Lewis and today I'm talking about Irish, the language that is going to be my focus this summer. Today I'm actually heading back to Ireland on a flight as this podcast goes out and it'll be the first summer that I've spent in Ireland beyond just very brief trips in a very, very long time. After 23 years of chasing other languages around the world, pretty much only ever returning to Ireland for real time for the period leading up to Christmas, I wanted to actually spend the summer in Ireland and I am definitely not going to switch off my language learning. I'm coming home specifically to fix my Irish.
Honestly, out of all the languages I keep up, the ones I call permanent rather than a dabble, Irish is pretty much my weakest after Mandarin. And that stings more than I'd let on because it should be my language.
What made Benny realize his Irish was the weakest of his native languages?
I'm Irish. I learned it in school, but the problem is I spent decades focusing much more on other languages and I got very far with a lot of them and my Irish kind of lagged behind. And there's something a bit backwards about being able to hold my own so confidently in so many languages while the one from my own country is one I'm so shaky in. So Irish has always been one I really want to get right someday and I let slide the longest and I really do want to get it to fluency as soon as possible within the restrictions of my travels bringing me outside of Ireland as much as I do. So at the end of last year, I finally did something about it and I kicked off a proper Irish project and I went home for a whole month.
I had an intensive burst and for several weeks I threw real hours at it every day and it worked.
How did an intensive Irish study burst last year improve his skills?
By the end of those bursts, I was doing much better and it's like that with anything. Anytime I stop treating a language as background noise and give it true concentration, it climbs and I get better at it. My Irish improved significantly over those few weeks. And that's a good pattern that whenever you put a true burst into your language that you get to see the benefits. And it's something I'd recommend to you regardless of what language you're learning. A neglected language doesn't come back because you feel guilty about it. It comes back when you corner it and give it a real block of time and refuse to let yourself off the hook. So I'm doing that again.
What is the planned Gaeltacht immersion and why is it important?
And this time it's for two months, which includes an entire week in the Gaeltacht. And if you don't know what that means, the Gaeltacht is the part of Ireland where Irish is still the everyday living language of the community and not just some school subject. I'm going specifically to Glen Colmkill in Donegal and I'll be there for a language and culture immersion program and that means days and days of the language surrounded by Irish including music and dance and the place itself has lots of Irish traditions and the whole culture is wrapped around it so it's always a very enjoyable experience when I get to do that. I haven't had that particular language and culture immersion week for quite a while and i always enjoy it when i can and that week in the gail talked will absolutely motivate me in the approximately week and a half i have leading up to it that i'm really going to be pushing myself as hard as i can to
because as many of you know, once you have a deadline and an opportunity coming up or travel experience, that really pushes you to work even harder on your language. And after the Gaeltacht, the rest of my two months, I'm gonna obviously try to keep that fire lit. I'll be going to Irish language events and meetups and conversation groups where people speak it for the sheer joy of it. And I'll be practising both in person and online Because you can find people to speak Irish with anywhere from these days, especially with a good internet connection. And I fully intend to keep it going after I've left, but this is going to give me a nice big burst that I'll have something even better to maintain as my other language projects move on.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Why did Benny decide to make Irish his summer language focus?
0:11–1:30
2
What made Benny realize his Irish was the weakest of his native languages?
1:30–2:25
3
How did an intensive Irish study burst last year improve his skills?
2:25–3:04
4
What is the planned Gaeltacht immersion and why is it important?
3:04–5:05
5
How will Benny keep practicing Irish after the Gaeltacht week?
5:05–6:36
6
What resources does Benny offer listeners who want to follow his Irish journey?
6:36–7:53