Help ... irish

saturn5rocket

Hi all,

I'm slightly worried as I have my irish orals this coming week.
Unfortunately, i was never that good with the irish language, and always proved difficult in school. I have no idea how to talk even basic conversation for the orals (my family, my date of birth, my hobbies, what i want to do after the leaving etc) and I was just wondering if anyone had any tips or useful things that would get me by for the test?
Many thanks in advance and much appreciation to anyone who can help!

Over and out!

kev9100

The best advice I can give you is to keep it simple and to use the verb the examiner gives you. For example, if you're asked "cad a rinne tu blah blah", reply with rinne me.

Liveit

oww crap I totally forgot about the orals.... ha oh well!

DancingQueen:)

Look on skoool.ie, they normally have great tips. The best thing I can say is to keep speaking Irish. Even if you don't know how to say something try to rephrase it in a way you do. Practise whenever you get a chance and I find even watching TG4 for a short time helps too. (Radió Rí-Rá was good too but i'm not sure if thats still on air) Ask your teachers for help too, they have to deal with it every year and i'm sure they can help a lot. Good Luck

Appleglue

I am also Disgracefully bad at irish, I hope to ask a friend who is a whiz kid in Irish to write me very simple sentences which I'd likely use and ways to spin the conversation to say what I want,
I can do a little improvisation but it will be pretty lame.
keep it simple

dambarude

Keep it simple. Take your time. Go over the most common verbs in the main tenses (present/past/future), and you can't go too far wrong. Know about your family/hobbies etc. That should get you through most of it. They're not going to ask you about NAMA unless they think you're up to it, or you lead into it.
Are you doing honours or pass?

saturn5rocket

thanks for all the helpful replies, i'm doing pass irish so they'll probably keep it simple enough anyway, its just for example if they ask me something like "what do you think of the education system?" i wouldn't have a clue, "ni thuigim!!" So i'm a little bit panicky, but I will have a look over the most used verbs, cheers for all the tips!

dambarude

They probably wouldn't go into anything too hard, but even if they did, there's a simple answer you could give. Something like:

Ní maith liom an córas oideachais sa tír seo. Cuireann sé brú ar dhaoine óga. Ach níl a fhios agam cén córas eile a bheadh níos fearr.

I'd say if you keep it fairly short and blunt, they shouldn't interrogate you too much about, and they might just move on.

saturn5rocket

hi all,

i'm just trying to learn off a few set sentences to do with my hobbies, my family, school etc but i'm confused on how to say things like " i don't think its interesting" - would you say "ni cheapaim go bhfuil se suimiuil"?

Thanks in advance!

dambarude

Yep, what you've said is right. Another way of saying it is "Níl aon suim agam ann", which is like "I've no interest in it".