Preparing my ears for a trip to Ireland

Six weeks from now, I will be in Dublin, Ireland with my husband, Wayne, beginning a two-week tour of our own devising.  The long weekend we spent in Dublin several years ago only whetted our appetites for more.  Wayne fell in love with Eggs Benedict at Wynn's Hotel in central Dublin, and I fell in love with Irish English, so pleasing to the ear.

For this trip, I wanted to prepare myself a little better linguistically.  Google provided multiple sites with lists of Irish vocabulary and expressions.  Many were slang expressions, which we probably won't be hearing or using, but I wanted to focus on a few useful terms to help in our travels around Ireland.

As I read through the lists, I was surprised to find expressions I had heard growing up in a family with Southern roots.  These expressions didn't sound foreign to me at all!

"This dinner is taking ages."  (a long time)
"rare as hen's teeth" (very hard to find)
"doing the washing" (laundry)
"Who all's there?"  (Who is present?)
"conked out" (car stalls or stops suddenly)
"poormouthing" (lamenting lack of money when you actually have plenty)
"belly up" (unsuccessful)

Other Irish English words and expressions were familiar from our travels to the United Kingdom.  All I needed was a review.  We will be renting a car in Ireland, so  "boot" (trunk) and "petrol" (gasoline) are good words to remember.  Potato chips are "crisps," and French fries are "chips."  (An essential food group!)  A fish and chips shop is a "chipper" or a "chippie."    I will need to take a "jumper" (sweater) for the chillier Irish May weather. A"Yank" is an American, from anywhere in the U.S.

Eventually though, I began discovering Irish-English terms that are new to me and that will be useful on our trip.  Very important, of course, is how to locate the restrooms.  In Ireland, one says "toilet" or "jacks."  The doors are marked "fir jacks" (men) and "ban jacks" (women). And let's hope we don't have anything but pleasant relations with the "garda" or "guards" ( Irish policemen).

I'll have to remember that "dinner" refers to "lunch" when making plans for meals.  And that "mineral" is another word for "soft drink."   Also, "sambo" is a sandwich.  If I am in a store, the shopkeeper may greet me with "now."  And I may need to recognize a slang word for euro, "yoyo."  I understand that "cat' may be used to describe something bad or terrible, which I will take great exception to out of respect for Bitsy, our house cat, and her five feral cousins outdoors. Finally, if a lodging is described as "homely," I will know that it is homey and cozy, not ugly!

Finally,  two words kept coming up in every Irish language site I visited, "sláinte" and "craic."  The first is a toast, "to your health," and the second refers to fun or good times.  I found several different pronunciations for "sláinte," so I plan to listen very closely to fellow patrons on pub visits.

The pronunciation of "craic" is close enough to English "crack" to give unsuspecting tourists a start.

Needless to say, I'll be doing field work on Irish English and taking copious linguistic notes to write a follow up blog in May.  That is, if I can find time amongst all the "craic"  I hope to have in Ireland.

Why is language learning so slow?

Have you ever started language study with great enthusiasm and then dropped it?  I'll bet most of us have, with resulting guilt feelings .  Starting on the journey to learn a new language is one of my life's greatest pleasures.  I dream of a new system of communication, a fascinating vocabulary, and even the possibility of traveling to an unknown country.  But it doesn't take long for euphoria to disappear and reality to set in.

I recently enrolled in a once a week, twelve-week Italian class at a local learning institute.

Italian wasn't on my bucket list of languages to learn, but it was the only foreign language course offered this term.  Having a solid background in other Romance languages, I hoped that Italian would come fairly easily and that I could make quick progress.  Wrong!

Today's class is mid-way in the course, a good time to take stock in what I have learned in the Italian language so far. 

 I am becoming acquainted with the Italian sound system.  It took a while to remember that "ce" and "ci" require a beginning sound like "church."  Similarly, "g' takes on the beginning sound of  "judge" before "e" and "i."  Italian has double consonants that have a longer sound than a single consonant (compare Italian for "cup," tazza  with Spanish tasa).  The rhythm and intonation of Italian are also starting to become distinctive to me.

The structure of Italian gives me a comfortable feeling. It is an SVO (subject, verb, object) language, with verbs requiring agreement with subjects and adjectives requiring agreement with nouns. I'm sure some idiosyncratic grammatical features will pop up with time, but they will be intriguing rather than incomprehensible.  I can read simple Italian already.  

The vocabulary of Italian is proving to be more elusive than I would have imagined.  I forgot to take into account the confusion that studying several Romance languages at the same time may bring.  Am I saying a word in Italian, or is it Spanish or Portuguese or even French?  My Italian language study has not progressed enough to say with confidence!

And can I understand spoken Italian?  Not very much!  My husband, Wayne, and I were watching an old WWII movie recently where the action took place in Italy.  A Walk in the Sun was the title. Quite a bit of Italian was spoken (with no subtitles), and I know Wayne expected me to be able to translate.  All I could understand was a random word or two. (I guess I should have lied and made up a credible translation!)

Language acquisition is a relic in the modern world of lightning fast knowledge through technology. So much of the world comes to us so quickly.  We expect language learning to happen overnight. After all, if we need to know how to do almost anything, can't we just google it? 

Barring the unlikely circumstances that I will be spending a year in Italy or becoming best friends with a chatty Italian, I had better resign myself to the slow road to Italian.  Maybe I should stop worrying and just enjoy the journey?

First Steps in Romanian

I am such a sucker for new language offerings on Duolingo, my favorite online language learning program.  Romanian is the latest language that has caught my attention and set me daydreaming about a different country and a new culture.

A quick Internet search located the country of Romania in Eastern Europe.

24 million people speak Romanian as a native language and four million more as a second language. Romanian is the only Romance language currently spoken in an area where Slavic languages dominate. The European Union lists Romanian as one of its official languages.  And if this were not enough enticement, the infamous Dracula is a product of Romanian folk legends. (I may not be reading these!)

Dracula's Castle?

First, a word to naysayers who are not quite as addicted to language study as I am.  Why Romanian, they may ask?  The appeal for me was that Romanian is one of the principal Romance languages (along with Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish). I practice four of them (minus Catalan) on a daily basis on Duolingo.  The lure of learning a new language for which I have somewhat of a head start was too much to resist.

In the introductory Romanian lessons, I looked for familiar vocabulary words.  Hmm.  Not as familiar as I would have preferred!  The word for juice, suc reminded me of suco  in Portuguese; the word for bread, păine, looked like pain in French; cafea (coffee) was close to English; femeie (woman) looks like female in English.  Many of the other words, bărbat (man), băiat (boy) and copil (child) will require more attention. 

I am making baby steps in Romanian at present, perhaps because the beta version currently available on Duolingo is only a web version.  The other languages I study can be done on the fly with the Duolingo app on a mobile device.. 

But I have started using a comparison/contrast technique to determine how to say "a, "an" and "the" in Romanian. You may be smiling at the elementary nature of this grammar point.  But the ability to use indefinite and definite articles is a common starting point in language learning.  (After all, is the meaning of "an apple" the same as "the apple"?)

Here are some patterns I discovered:

un copil - a child
copilul - the child

o cafea - a coffee
cafeaua - the coffee

un măr - an apple
marul - the apple

un băiat - a boy
băiatul - the boy

o femeie - a woman
femeia - the woman


So what can I hypothesize from these few examples?

-The translations for a, an in Romanian are un and o, perhaps un for masculine nouns and o for feminine nouns?

-The definite article (the) in Romanian appears in a surprising position - attached to the end of the noun as a suffix.

- The definite article suffix takes several forms:  -ul; -a; and -ua.

- Sometimes the letter "a" carries a diacritic and is written ă.  Does the diacritic indicate a change in pronunciation or some other feature?

I have more questions than answers at this point. 

Are Romanian nouns classified by gender, and if so, are the genders masculine and feminine as in other Romance languages? What is the determining factor in the form of the definite article?  I have discovered three up to now. What's with the "ă"?  (It took me a while to locate the symbol to type. Now I want to know more about it.) 

The Romanian language has an intrinsic appeal for me.  Who knows why?  Some languages do, and others don't.  I'm looking forward to making many more discoveries in Romanian as my fifth Romance language.