Getting Books in English and Irish with Irish Audio

My last post was about why we would want books in Irish and English that also had audio. This post is about how we can get them to people

What I want

I want local libraries to get more copies of books with English and Irish text and Irish audio. Ideally E versions as lots of people don't have CD players anymore and getting to the library is hard for some.

What books?

The open door series is our best option. These are short books by the likes of  John Connolly, Roddy Doyle, Marian Keyes and Maeve Binchy

 

Who to talk to

You can just ask your local library to get more copies of these books. Your local library can be found here . You can find, join and get contact information for them there. 

Asking them to get more copies of these books might help. But realistically to get more Irish resources getting the whole library more resources would help. Which is politics.

Libraries are controlled by local councils. Which means your councillor can help get them resources. 

Find your councillor here

The minister for Gaeltacht is Catherine Martin  catherine.martin@oireachtas.ie

and for local government is Darragh O'Brien  darragh.obrien@oireachtas.ie

What to say to them

My email that said

A Chara,

I am trying to learn more of the Irish language. My local library has great support to help me do that. But there is only one series of ebooks in English and Irish and with Irish e-audiobooks and they do not have many copies from it. This is Open Door series https://www.newisland.ie/open-door

 If you could help my local Fingal library with resources to get more digital copies of these books it would help me, and others, in learning Irish.

   Le meas

 

There are not enough resources for adult Irish learners out there. The Open Door series is a resource that libraries currently have. Sending a few emails might get them available to more people. 

Placenames in Irish

You pass loads of clues everyday to the geography and history around you. And until recently I had not been paying attention. I made a map and flashcards to learn the meanings of Irish placenames to help decipher signposts. 

I made this map of 100 Irish words commonly found in place names. Interactive Google Map of Irish placenames 

 

These words are used loads of places. So once you recognise them you pick up on them elsewhere.

In general you can look up addresses and town names on logainm if you get stuck. Corrections and suggestions welcome. If you know of someone who might find this interesting or useful please send it onto them.

I made an Anki Deck here of these words as well to help learning and memorising 

Being stopped at traffic lights since I learned these words is a lot more entertaining.

Books with Irish text and Audio and English translations.

The last post here was about how many words you would have to read in Irish to have seen a particular  number of unique words. 

What books exist with Irish text and Audio and English text available? This is for the Listening-Reading language learning method

1. Small kids books. Gruffalo and other Julia Donaldson books have been translated. These have simple repeating language which make them a good place to start.

There are about 700 words in each of these. Which means there are probably about 800 unique words in two of them. 

Here has a list of 13 free Irish audiobooks but I cannot find English versions of 11 of them.

2. Aesop's Fables in Irish 

English here 

Aesop a Tháinig go hÉirinn text 

Irish Audio  for 8 of the tales, this is a great resource. 

2. An Triail. This is a play on higher level Irish leaving cert. It has about 10000 words and has english versions, audio and a great sentence by sentence audio translation available. Though the level of Irish is pretty high so it is not ideal to start this learning process with. 

3. Other kids books with Irish translations like Diary of a Whimpy Kid and Harry Potter do not seem to have audio versions.

4. The 'we had it tough' books. The Beal Bocht has a great animated film version but no Irish audiobook.

Peig Sayers has one book with an audio recording.

The Islander with Tomás O’ Crohan and 20 years a growing do not seem to have audio recordings.

5. The Little Prince the Irish translation does not have an audiobook yet. But hopefully it will soon. It is a great book of 15000 words 2500 unique ones. And the level is slightly simpler than adult books. 

6. Open Door new Island books. These seem to be the best option at the moment. The ebooks and audiobooks are on the Irish libraries online borrowbox program. But not enough copies are available so you have to wait to get the english and Irish ebooks and the eaudio loans.
Increasing the number of copies the library can lend is probably the simplest way to increase people's access to this reading and listening form of language learning for Irish.

There is 11 of these books in Irish, with audiobook versions and written by great writers in this series. For example Rúin by Patricia Scanlan

7. Looking at gutenberg Irish language section. Douglas Hyde, has the bilingual 

Beside the Fire: A collection of Irish Gaelic folk stories but I can't find an audio recording of it.

8. Mo Sgéal Féin, My Story by Peter O'Leary 

Irish Audio on this great site 

Irish text 

English text 

Séadna by O'Leary is also available

9. Scéalaíocht Amhlaoibh íLuínse fairy stories by Seán Ó Cróinín and Donncha A. Ó Cróinín

has audio on the same site but I can't find an English translation.

10. Graveyard clay by Ó'Cadhain has an audio version and a translation. But seems only suitable for fluent speakers. 

11. A choose your own adventure game with text and audio in both Irish and English https://darkdawn.irishimbasbooks.com/

If you know of other books with English and Irish text and Irish audio available to help people learn the language could you please comment them?

How many Unique Words are in a Text?

How much text would you have to understand to get a good understanding of a language? There is a formula to estimate how many unique words you would find as you read an amount of text.

Heaps' law lets you estimate after 10k, 20k etc how many unique words you would have seen. As the number of words go up how often you find a new word decreases. 

For reference 3,000 words is enough to carry out a lot of everyday conversations. Fluent people know about 10,000 words. You can check the word counts of famous books here to put this graph into context. Graph code here.

Languages are not a list of words to memorise. You have to learn common patterns and grammar also. But as new words become rarer as you see more text you are also getting more repetitions of common patterns. Which will help you internalise those common patterns.

There is a collection of short books, by Irish authors, to help with literacy skills called Open Door. These books are about 10K words each. These books, by famous authors, together cover a lot of the language.  If you read Patricia Scanlon's novella you would see about 2000 unique words. Roddy Doyles would bring you up to 2600. Marian Keys, Maeve Binchy, John Connolly and other great writes are in the series which will keep adding new words. This graph is an estimate of this coverage.

I bring up the series as the have Irish language versions. Including with audio. Irish does not have enough content available in English, Irish and with audio. I will discuss how audio and text might combine together to help language learning in my next post.