Struggling with Gaelic

I’ve been learning Gaelic for nearly five years now, and I do enjoy it and have made some great friends and we do have fun… but really I’m not getting to grips with it somehow. I confess that I don’t work on it as much as I used to, I used to do half an hour of grammar every day and some reading and other stuff too. I know it’s a difficult language for someone with no Irish connection and without an ear for the language but there are such a lot of things which just don’t seem to stick in my brain!

For example, I’m looking at a sheet of prepositional pronouns, at me, off me, with me etc. There is just such a lot to learn;  most of the ‘me’ pronouns end in ‘m’, agam, díom, romham, orm, fúm… but idir is idir mé. The second person singular end in ‘t’ but it could be agat, duit, uait, fút. Look at roimh, before:

• romham – before me
• romhat – before you
• romhe – before him
• roimpi – before her
• romhainnn – before us
• romhaibh – before you (pl)
• rompu – before them

Now look at idir again:

• idir mé – between me
• idir tú – between you
• idir é between him 
• idir í – between her
• eadrainn between us
• eadraibh – between you (pl)
• eatarthu – between them

Gaelic is a beautiful, wonderful ancient language, and I love learning it and stumbling through my pathetic efforts to speak it and my slightly more successful efforts to read it… but I do just wish I would make a tiny bit more progress!

Oh well, back to my forainmneacha reamhfhoclacha!