And Another Reason to Dread Monday...

Have I mentioned that the poet who is the subject of my Ph D was a Gaelic speaker? and wrote lots of his poetry in Gaelic? And that as a result I am going to have to learn Gaelic myself?

I have tried before. Years ago, under the mistaken impression that the Northern Isles, like the Western Isles, was a Gaelic region, my brother in law bought me a Teach Yourself Gaelic course, with tapes. The tapes will tell you how long ago that was!! When I started thinking about this Ph D I hunted the course out and had a go. Epic Fail.

 

About a year ago, thinking I ought to give it another try, perhaps with a more up to date course, I bought one from Mr Amazon. It came highly recommended and had CDs with it. Progress. On the technology front at least. I got very little further than I had with the tapes.

 

Now this is worrying. Languages are my thing. In my time I have learned seven, two of which had non Latin alphabets. If there's one thing that I should be able to do, especially with huge motivation, it's learn another one. But I have an awful feeling that Gaelic might just be beyond me.

 

Let's hope not because I'm about to embark on my third attempt. I'm doing a Gaelic Entry distance learning course via Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic medium college on Skye. This consists of lots of work on your own, which is fine, and an hours telephone tutorial every week with a native speaker, which is not. It's scary scary stuff, especially when you're not convinced you can learn the language and yet it's very important that you should.

 

I don't know why I am so certain that I will find it difficult to impossible, although I have come up with some reasons.

 

It's partly the  sound it makes. Listen to BBC Alba and any notion you may have of Gaelic being a soft  romantic language is swept away. To the uninitiated it sounds like a series of harsh consonants, interspersed with wavering vowels and a lot, and I mean a lot, of shs and chs, most of them made in the back of the throat.  It sounds not very nice, and quite a lot of it is hard to say.

 

It's partly the disconnect between the spelling and pronunciation. What sort of language spells a word leabhar and pronounces it 'yower' (to rhyme with our)? A difficult one, say I. At least when you learn Russian, once you're over the hurdle of the new alphabet it's basically phonetic. With Gaelic, well...

 

And of course it's partly the fact that I've already tried twice without success. And however often I say 'third time's a charm' ,  lets be honest,  that's just a stupid thing people say. It has neither meaning nor effect.

 

Anyway, we have had induction week. I have sent messages, I have recorded an MP3 file, I have done a quiz, answered a questionnaire and stated my time and day preferences for my telephone tutorial. I have downloaded the material for Unit 1. I am as ready as I will ever be, but that doesn't stop me dreading Monday morning. Because that dear friends, is telephone tutorial 1 time.

 

As that other mindless phrase goes 'Wish Me Luck'.