💾 Archived View for tilde.club › ~winter › gemlog › 2024 › 7-15.gmi captured on 2024-08-18 at 17:55:50. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Almost done my Irish course, with another $130 (or whatever) payment looming at the end of the month, I've decided I've just had it. I'm not going to finish the course in time. It's not worth it to me to pay another chunk of money for next year if I don't have a course I want to do. And so I cancelled my subscription, and have been unsubscribing from the mess of email lists over the last few days.
Goodbye, green owl.
Not that I'm done with Irish. Glossika looks like a reasonable replacement, and costs about as much, maybe a little more. I've played around with it for a few days. It seems okay? I might toss my hobby language money at it for next year. We'll see.
One of the problems with living where I do is there aren't really any native Irish speakers, even in that "I studied it in school" way that I understand is common there. French being one of Canada's two official languages, I learned that in much the same way, starting it in the fourth grade, then conjugating words and devising sentences, year after year after year. My last course was an introductory undergraduate course in university. My last experience speaking it was some halting conversations in Switzerland a decade later. Friends of mine who were fortunate enough to be put in French immersion as kids came out able to fluidly read and speak the language. I belong to that other group, the muddlers.
In the back of my head, I have this idea to one day go to the Gaeltacht and do an immersive summer. I don't know if anything will ever come of it. It seems like such a low-priority, long-term goal that, well, I suspect not. But you never know. For years, learning Irish was the same way. Then I finally took the plunge, and acquired some small amount of proficiency. I'm proud of myself, my tenacity. So, maybe.