The Alberta Street Pub, where players meet on Irish Night
24 minutes and 33 seconds.
This is the first podcast concerning our weekly WAYK Irish Language Night, with fluent speaker and Marylhurst University instructor Bob Burke. WAYK players have come together to “hunt” Bob’s Irish language, and build a roadmap to fluency in Irish. For whatever reason, in the USA we call Irish language “Irish Gaelic”, but in Ireland they just call it “Irish”. This podcast is hosted by Ireland native Patrick Hughes, also the host of the Irish language night. He and WAYK instructor Willem Larsen discuss the progress of the night.
1. TQ: Ultimo
- Ultimo finally happens and speeds everything up.
- Willem reports back from the ultimo circle
- Night without the fluent speaker
2. TQ : Set-Up
- Dark, noise, lots of objects.
- Muddling colours when we got to trading.
3. TQ: Obviously
- Bringing new objects into play.
- Deciding on objects carefully
4. TQ: Technique!
- Trading with two people became like a drill
- Technique talk as a breather
5. TQ: Limit
- How complicated to make ‘Want, Have, Give, Take’ – stay in the present tense?
- The possibilities available if staying in the present
- Chunking it down to the level where everything is coming easy.
6. TQ: Ultimo
- Ultimo new language off so that the fluent speaker’s table is the cutting edge of the language night, to make sure the fluent speaker doesn’t get bored.
I’m glad you brought up the tense thing, which is glossed over entirely in watching the ASL vids of the game. Doesn’t “you stole my pen” throw you straight into past tense though?
And do you use a “this/that” cheat with every spoken language? A couple of the fluent fools I’ve approached have been pretty insistent on, say, a ‘this’ question needing to go with a ‘that’ answer and vice versa.
John,
ASL makes it very easy to do past, present, and future tense, so it can be misleading in terms of what you would do with a spoken language.
Really, the goal is to zoom through all the conversations that will get you fluent at intermediate level, and then start bringing in aspects of time. Sometimes, however, the game will force issues up early (such as future tense, “if you will give me your pen, I will then give you my rock”).
It’s really a matter of feeling your way as a language hunter and a game designer. What will you get you, and your players, through this language as fast as possible? There’s no one right way to do it, only ways that are faster than other ways.