TACHARTAS A1+ LÙNA. ’25

ALL-LEVELS EVENT AUGUST ’25

  On Saturday 9th August, we held another session at An Lòchran for beginners and early-intermediate learners of Gaelic. We had a good number of people in – 18, all in all – and an afternoon that everyone said they found useful!

  We kicked off with a quick round of introductions in Gaelic on our tables. After that it was on to our first game, which was based around hobbies. On their tables, the attendees had to decipher sentences ranging from the easy An toil leat snàmh? (“Do you like swimming?”) to more challenging constructions such as Chan eil mi math air rothaireachd, agus chan fhiach e an t-saothair! (“I’m no good at bike-riding, and it’s not worth the effort!”)

  We then tried a wee conversation starter, where people on their individual tables asked one another about their hobbies, what they enjoy and what they don’t. While exercises like this can be a little daunting, it gives you your first inroads into having a conversation in the language.

  After a wee break, we continued with a game around derived verbs (also known as “composite verbs” or “phrasal verbs” – thank you to Riccardo for the reminder!). On this occasion, we based our learning around thoir, one of Gaelic’s ten irregular verbs. This produces such common phrases such as:

 “Thoir dhomh do làmh!” (Give me your hand!)

“Thug e dà bhliadhna an taigh a thogail.” (It took two years to build the house.)

“Thug mi mo chasan leam, leis gun robh an t-eagal orm.” (I took off, because I was frightened.)

“Bheir sinn am plana seo gu buil.” (We’ll put this plan into effect.)

  As you can see, thoir can be used in many different constructions to mean different things. This is similar to English, if you compare the number of different things that e.g. look can mean in English when you bolt things onto the end of it, e.g. I looked up at the stars vs. I looked up a word in the dictionary, Iain looked out of the window vs. Iain looked out for me when I was feeling down, etc.).

We brought the afternoon to a close with a wee written exercise in our groups, where each table had to write a short story using thoir as many times as possible! The results were creative, and funny in places 😁 - here’s a wee excerpt from one of the stories:

“Bu toil leam rudeigin milis,” thuirt Iain anns a’ chafaidh. “An toir thu an clàr-bìdh dhomh?”

“Bheir,” ars Ùisdean, an neach-frithealaidh. Thog e clàr-bìdh agus thug e do dh’Iain e.

“A bheil allergies agad?”

“Tha,” ars Iain. “Cnòthan.”

“Thoir an aire,” ars Ùisdean. “Tha cnòthan anns a’ chèic. Thug am manaidsear orm cnòthan a chur innte.”

In English, that would be as follows:

“I’d like something sweet,” said Iain at the café. “Will you give me the menu?”

“Yes,” said Hugh, the waiter. He picked up a menu and gave it to Iain.

“Do you have any allergies?”

“Yes,” said Iain. “Nuts.”

“Be careful,” said Hugh. “There are nuts in the cake. The manager made me put nuts in it.”

  Well done to everyone on the short stories they came up with! You’ll hear phrasal verbs all the time in Gaelic, and the more you get used to them, the better. After we’d tidied everything away, a couple of us headed next door to the Lismore for a well-earned drink! We would like to say our usual Thank You to those who came along; keep going, every little bit of learning takes you one step closer to your goals on your Gaelic journey, whatever those goals might be for you personally.

  See below for the slide deck we used, as well as some pics taken kindly by Jen 📸

  Andy x