Classroom

Hello, my name is Dorothy White.

I am one of the teachers at the weekly Irish classes we have here in Melbourne, and I do enjoy a good joke as you can see.

This year I am teaching level three and I'm pleased to report that all the students are working hard. You will find lots of good material for teaching Irish on the internet, so on our own website we plan to help you use what you've learnt and also provide answers to some of the most common questions that everybody has. I personally think that you should always try and make full use of your Irish in everyday situations, so today's lesson is this -

Take your favourite joke and translate it into Irish. Sounds juvenile but that's the whole idea. Get into the mood. You'll find yourself using all those cases and tenses in no time flat.

Now practice telling your joke to your classmates. Did they laugh ?

Here's one to get you started....... Cad a thabharfá do éan tinn? Tweetment !

Have fun with An Félire.

How many calendars do you have around you ? If you're like me you probably have a monthly one with scenic pictures on the kitchen wall, maybe a daily one on your desk and maybe an annual one stuck to the fridge with the garbage collection days marked on it.

It's not a big deal to make yourself an Irish version of a calendar. Which type would be most useful for you ? Do you need to see the public holidays clearly marked or perhaps the football games featuring your favourite team?

All you need is a computer and printer and off you go. A while ago one of my students devised a simple one-page calendar and you can print a copy (18kb PDF) of it for yourself to see what it looks like. It comes out sideways on a A4 sized page. They tell me the technical term for that style of layout is "landscape" which sounds very fancy indeed.

Anyway, have go at devising your own calendar and see how creative you can get. See if you can find ways of including the Irish words for lots of everyday things. For example -

Shopping
A night out
Pay day
Weddings
Back to school
Birthdays for your relatives
Travel and holidays
etc

Then show it to your teacher and try to explain in Irish what you have done. Little projects like this are a great way to keep your mind fixed on learning Irish even if you can only attend class once a week. Good luck !

Round and round

And finally, many of you internet fans will have seen the little swirly thing that follows your mouse pointer around. There's quite a few variations on that theme available now, but have you ever seen it in Irish ?