Cocolingo
This year I decided I wanted to get better at speaking Irish.
Like everyone brought up in Ireland, I sort of learned the Irish language in school. It was a compulsory subject, along with English and maths.
But Irish wasn’t really taught like a living conversational language. It was all about learning enough to pass the test. Besides, if there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to put me off something, it’s making it compulsory.
So for the first couple of decades of my life, I had no real interest in the Irish language, just as I had no real interest in traditional Irish music. They were both tainted by some dodgy political associations. They were both distinctly uncool.
But now? Well, Irish traditional music rules my life. And I’ve come to appreciate the Irish language as a beautiful expressive thing.
I joined a WhatsApp group for Irish language learners here in Brighton. The idea is that we’d get together to attempt some converstation as Gaeilge but we’re pretty lax about actually doing that.
Then there’s Duolingo. I started …playing? doing? Not sure what the verb is.
Duolingo is a bit of a mixed bag. I think it works pretty well for vocabulary acquisition. But it’s less useful for grammar. I was glad that I had some rudiments of Irish from school or I would’ve been completely lost.
Duolingo will tell you what the words are, but it never tells you why. For that I’m going to have to knuckle down with some Irish grammar books, videos, or tutors.
Duolingo is famous for its gamification. It mostly worked on me. I had to consciously remind myself sometimes that the purpose was to get better at Irish, not to score more points and ascend a league table.
Oh, did I ascend that league table!
But I can’t take all the credit. That must go to Coco, the cat.
It’s not that Coco is particularly linguistically gifted. Quite the opposite. She never says a word. But she did introduce a routine that lent itself to doing Duolingo every day.
Coco is not our cat. But she makes herself at home here, for which we feel inordinately honoured.
Coco uses our cat flap to come into the house pretty much every morning. Then she patiently waits for one of us to get up. I’m usually up first, so I’m the one who gives Coco what she wants. I go into the living room and sit on the sofa. Coco then climbs on my lap.
It’s a lovely way to start the day.
But of course I can’t just sit there alone with my own thoughts and a cat. I’ve got to do something. So rather than starting the day with some doomscrolling, I start with some Irish on Duolingo.
After an eleven-month streak, something interesting happened; I finished.
I’m not used to things on the internet having an end. Had I been learning a more popular language I’m sure there would’ve been many more lessons. But Irish has a limited lesson plan.
Of course the Duolingo app doesn’t say “You did it! You can delete the app now!” It tries to get me to do refresher exercises, but we both know that there are diminishing returns and we’d just be going through the motions. It’s time for us to part ways.
I’ve started seeing other apps. Mango is really good so far. It helps that they’ve made some minority languages available for free, Irish included.
I’m also watching programmes on TG4, the Irish language television station that has just about everything in its schedule available online for free anywhere in the world. I can’t bring myself to get stuck into Ros na Rún, the trashy Irish language soap opera, but I have no problem binging on CRÁ, the gritty Donegal crime drama.
There are English subtitles available for just about everything on TG4. I wish that Irish subtitles were also available—it’s really handy to hear and read Irish at the same time—but only a few shows offer that, like the kid’s cartoon Lí Ban.
Oh, and I’ve currently got a book on Irish grammar checked out of the local library. So now when Coco comes to visit in the morning, she can keep me company while I try to learn from that.
