Dia daoibh,

Taím ag foglaim na Gaeluinne fós. Ní thuigim mórán ach is maith liom é. Bá mhaith liom ag iarraidh ceist.

As Béarla:
When I do the exercises in "Teach Yourself Irish" I do pretty well. I get the hang of the sentence structure and the verbs (I think because I studied another foreign language for years) but I always get the nouns wrong. Is this something that other English speakers struggle with? Is there any advice besides rote memorisation of how to learn the different forms (genetive etc.)? How well would I be understood if I used a wrong noun form?

Go raibh maith agaibh

Shoshanna,

Two thread down there is an item re Gaelic dictionaries on line. It seems there may be some help for you there. (I haven't actually gone into the site, so 'seems' is appropriate.) Also the Ó Dónaill dictionary (Gaeilge Béarla) gives the genitive singular/nominative plural forms in its listings of nouns, if memory serves.

As to memorising, I suppose it's probably best to learn the noun with its genitive form right from the start.

The Caighdeán Oifigiúil also sets out the nouns by díochlaontaí (declensions) where, within limits, there are patterns/paradigms that you can follow. But I promise you, this is not an 'easy' book. The presentation is dry as dust. Still, it's a handy reference when all else fails.

For me, noun declension learning is one part "learning in context" and one part rote learning.

With regard to the former, one simply needs to read a lot (listening isn't quite as effective, as you can't see the spelling of the word being said).

As for the latter, I like to "write out" my noun declensions -- the physical act of writing helps drive the matter into my brain.

Here's a set of noun declension sheets I made up for Munster nouns:
http://www.gaeilge.org/munster/MunsterNounDeclension.html

If you're going to go to the bother of writing things out, why not do so in an orderly way? These sheets have blanks for every type of noun variation (nom./acc., genitive, vocative, dative) within each declension.

Thank you everyone for writing. I will use the declension sheets because writing things down does help me alot (even with flash cards, it is the writing down part that benefits me most). The sheets looked frightening at first, but (like with making verb sheets) once you get started, then you begin to see how it actually works.

I think that a combination of memorization and just trying to "get the hang of it" is the way to go; I was going too far and just ignoring the different forms of nouns altogether!

As for the cool dictionaries, I will look at them while at the office (yes, there are still a few good jobs left).

Shoshana