Now at the completion of my final week in An Cheathrú Rua and in Ireland overall, I am very excited with the progress that I have made in my comprehension and conversational ability in Irish. Though I am still certainly far from being totally fluent, I feel much more confident speaking the words and phrases that I have and also sometimes going out on a limb if I don’t have the exact phrase to express what I would like to. It has been fantastic to put my multiple semesters’ worth of classroom preparation to use while getting a better idea of the casual day-to-day use of Irish among individuals spanning several generations. There have been countless moments throughout the course when a word or phrase that I have read or written multiple times is finally used in an in-person conversation, the radio, or the Irish language TV channel, TG4 and I could practically hear the puzzle pieces clicking together in my head. Just kidding, but it has been extremely gratifying to see real development each day!
As with any language, written phrases tend to be much more formal and complete than those that are spoken, and Irish certainly follows this pattern in numerous ways. Since arriving in An Cheathrú Rua, the most striking thing that I have noticed is the way that phrases are shortened when spoken. I am used to answering in complete sentences more often than not, mostly because it provides more practice in the classroom setting, but it became very typical for me to hear someone answer, “go maith (good/well),” when asked how they were doing rather than in the complete sentence “Tá mé go maith. (I am good/well.)” In conversation, it is also super typical for four or five Irish words to sound as if only one or two words were spoken, or for only one syllable to be pronounced of a word that when written, appears to have two syllables. From what I understand, each dialect has their own way of shortening various phrases to allow speech to flow better, but Connacht Irish requires a fairly sensitive and sometimes creative ear to decipher the spoken word, understand what is being said, and write it correctly if necessary. At the beginning of this week, we completed a listening comprehension exam as a class and were required to answer particular questions in writing while listening to a recorded conversation. The speakers used one particular phrase, “Níl a fhios agam (I do not know),” several times and it sounded as though they were saying “Níl is am.” There is a lot going on when this phrase is spoken to sound like it does including specific pronunciation, but two syllables are actually omitted in speech from what is written. Luckily, this phrase is used quite often in daily conversation and most of us were able to tune our ear to its sound quickly, while using it and other useful phrases in the shortened version ourselves.
