I'm going to learn the Irish language in 30 days

[AT1990]

I'm going to buy a book by a U.S. Green Beret that says anyone can become proficient in any language in 30 days. I'm pretty sure the book will work, since he is military certified in 7 languages.

[pluralist]

You can probably learn the basics in 30 days - as with any language, practise is needed to attain fluency.

[AT1990]

The book, is really a workbook that helps a person learn a language super fast. I will still need to another complete course.

[Jemee Hope]

I have the book somewhere on my hard drive. If you can stick with it, it will really help you get the basics down.

[Jemee Hope]

Let us know how you make out.

[st333ve]

Sounds too good to be true, the army can learn a language in 30 days but im not in the army and ive a job to hold down a girlfriend, shopping bills......

A

[Insider2007]

Maybe they should give it out in schools to learn Irish with. Most Irish people learn Irish for 14 years and still emerge without a clue about it, and even worse, in many cases a determination the minute they leave school never to speak it again!

[belfastlad]

If you locked yourself in a room for 30 days and focused on only learning the language I suppose you could.

[GJG]

Maybe they should give it out in schools to learn Irish with. Most Irish people learn Irish for 14 years and still emerge without a clue about it, and even worse, in many cases a determination the minute they leave school never to speak it again!

I'm struck by the memory of a (not at all stupid) girl in my sixth-year class walking into an unattended class and announcing as she strode through the classroom "That's it - I don't have to do Irish any more. The headmaster says I can give it up. I've done Irish for 14 years and I still don't know a single word. Can you believe it? 14 years and I don't even know one word. Oh, hang on - I know one word."

At that she took a piece of chalk and wrote the letters SHA on the blackboard.

"That's 'Sea' - that's Irish for 'Yes'. That's the only word I know in Irish."

[Podolski]

I sometimes wonder what I was doing learning Irish for 14 years and being unable to hold a conversation with native speakers at the end of that time. Mind you, most of the time was spent learning inane poetry and irrelevant and ancient short stories, not to mention Peig Sayers ramblings. Personally I think poetry and prose should be completely taken out of the sylabbus until such time as students are proficient in the basics of the language and even then should be confined to specialist studies.

I'll say one thing for the Israelis (and it's rare for me to praise that country), they founded a state in 1948 made up of people from around the world with many different languages and, from nothing revived an almost dead language and made it an everyday spoken language.

Here, apart from uprooting a few families from Connemara and replanting them in Rathcairn in County Meath, little was done other than paying lip-service to the Irish language. Even its declaration as an official language of the European Union was no more than a superficial sop. The language is dying and is not being taught properly in the schools.