How I’m immersing myself in Irish… in Texas!

Welcome to the Language and Travel Hacking Podcast from Fluent in Three Months. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Language and Travel Hacking Podcast. I'm your host Benny Lewis and in today's episode I want to talk about how I'm getting immersion of the Irish language even though I'm currently in Texas.

So I mentioned in the previous episode, I'll be heading back to Ireland for a month and a half. And I really want to have some momentum with my Irish. So it's been the priority for my final weeks in America. And that may seem like a bit of a challenge because I'm unlikely to bump into other Irish speakers while I'm here. But I always try to get... as immersed as I can in each language before I travel. And I'm a big fan of what I've always called virtual immersion.

So trying to fill your life with the language while you're in essentially the wrong country. And I really feel like you can do this with any language so even though i'm in texas i'm doing this with irish and i want to talk about that today and hopefully show you that If I can do this for a relatively small language like Irish, you should be able to do this for any language you may be focused on.

Okay, so first up is listening. Now the amount of podcasts that are available, even in a language like Irish, is immense. There's enough uploaded every day that I could essentially be listening to podcasts in Irish 24 hours a day just based on what's brand newly uploaded. loaded so i actually have my pick and i can pick between ones that focus on the particular dialect that i'm prioritizing and so i've got all of those ready to go

for while I'm at the gym or while I'm driving. And that amounts to quite a lot that I'm just listening to in the language every single day. And for studying then, I... usually focus on my flash cards which are through anki and there's a couple of public decks available with a good amount of uh irish vocabulary and it's very well presented you can click between the different dialects as well if you wanted to hear one or the other

But I've also got my own privately made one based off my previous studies in the language that I'm adding to for new vocabulary that I come across. So I'm actually butting at least 30 minutes a day into just studying my...

Anki deck so I'm staying on top of my flashcards and I've also got a lot of Irish books so I might sit down maybe in a cafe and study them for a bit to remind myself of things like grammar to get myself back to where i was before and then for stuff to watch i would maybe have multiple hours of irish language tv to wind my day down with So there's a website, TG4, as we'd say, TG Kahir.

that you don't even need a VPN. So even though I'm in America right now, I can watch all of these shows. For a lot of other languages, you would need to use some kind of a VPN to make it think you're in a different country. They have the right licenses to show this stuff internationally. So fortunately, I don't need this with Irish. So I'm able to watch the daily news in Irish and a bunch of shows, including Silly Soap Opera, I'm able to keep.

up with as i'm winding my day down so plenty of tv and the uh the great thing about the website which was not the case when I last used it a few years ago is you can actually change the subtitles to be in either English or in Irish and I've always personally found it better with when you're watching shows to help you with your language skills to keep the subtitles in the same language the show is in to help you make that association between the written form and the spoken form.

And that helps me a lot if I'm having trouble understanding particular words they're saying that I can actually see it written down. Whereas when I looked at it years ago, there were only subtitles in English, which weren't as helpful because you can get distracted by that and lose sight of the actual language that you're trying to keep up with.

So yeah, I've got plenty of TV, but the main thing I like to wind my day down is with social media. So I have separate TikTok and Instagram accounts completely dedicated to the Irish language. And I've only followed Irish only accounts on them. And I've trained each of the algorithms to only show me content in Irish. And you can do that.

based on following particular hashtags and like holding the screen down and saying not interested when it shows you something in English or in another language. I also tried to leave a few comments. on the Irish content that I like watching. So it learns to show me more of that.

I'm also trying to think up a few ideas. So I'm coming up with my own posts. So I'm posting on my Irish Instagram account, just photo posts. But I'm building up to once I'm back in Ireland, I want to start recording a bunch of videos. specifically vertical videos to share on my TikTok account and through reels on Instagram. So I think production...

can be such a useful thing to do. So not just consuming social media, but contributing to it and trying to post in your target language. So I'm going to be doing that myself and I'm building up to that. So I'd highly recommend that. I've also a bunch of apps I'm using for the likes of dictionaries. There's even a new app that shows Irish speakers that are nearby, Gael Gore.

So that's Galen and G-O-E-R. And I can see people nearby here in Texas. So if I wanted, I could actually message them and get some Irish practice before I even go. And I'm sure I'll see plenty of other people once I'm back in Ireland.

Keep in mind, I've found apps like this for lots of other languages. There's a similar app I found even for Esperanto. When I want to practice my Esperanto, there's people I can find nearby. So if you know where to look or if you ask the right people, they can point you in the direction of really useful apps.

like that. Another way that I can get virtually immersed in the language is to make sure all my technology is in the right language. Unfortunately, if you are not an Apple user, So sorry to all of you Apple fanboys out there, but if you're not an Apple user, you can change your operating system on both your computer and your smartphone to be in a host of languages, including Irish. You can still do this with Apple, but only with major languages. So my operating system is Linux Mint.

And it is completely 100% presented to me in Irish. So I see the names of my programs and I see the calendar is in Irish in the corner of my screen. And I also use Android and my Android phone is... in Irish and when I use certain apps a lot of the keywords are in Irish and it's even translated my smartphone so when I'm going for a jog in the morning and I want to start tracking it on my phone

The word for start is tussie, which is in Irish. So I see a lot of it. It tells me how far I've gone, how many minutes. All of that information is in Irish. even on my smartwatch. So... all of my digital systems that I use and I'm interacting with are in the right language I'd highly recommend you do that for a nice dose of immersion yourself

Of course, you can also use technology to call people. So you can Zoom one-on-one with a teacher or there's a lot of Irish language get-togethers through Zoom for spoken practice. I could do that even though I'm in Texas. So with all of these kind of things, I have my day filled to the brim with the Irish language. It's really helping me to start.

thinking in the language i'm getting my momentum back i'm starting to feel i'm close to where i was at my peak when i was immersed in the irish speaking region of ireland and that's going to really help me to push forward and try to actually get started towards a project maybe next year of aiming for true fluency in the language. But regardless, I'm definitely going to hit the ground running when I get back to Ireland.

So it's going quite well. And as you can see, I am truly dedicated to this virtual immersion and I am living and breathing the language even across the world from where it's spoken. If I can do this, I know you can too. I hope this has given you some inspiration to give it a whirl in your language, whether that's Irish or another one.

And of course, you can follow me on social media as I'm posting in this language. And I'll be sharing on my general language learning Instagram a lot of these tips through English. So people can follow me for that as well. So check. the show notes for links for a bunch of things I was talking about in this episode. And thanks as always for listening. Until the next time, happy language learning and happy travels. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Language and Travel Hacking Podcast.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you found this episode valuable and want to help us out, please leave a review at languagehacking.com forward slash review. The Language and Travel Hacking podcast is presented by Benny Lewis and produced by Kitichai Boonthong, with special thanks to the Fluent in Three Months team. The theme music was written and performed by Shannon Kennedy. Find the show notes at languagehacking.com.

forward slash podcast. Thank you for listening. Happy language learning and happy travels.