If you’re not in an Irish class right now, here are some ideas for using Irish in your daily life. What tips can you add to the list?
Listen to Raidió na Gaeltachta. For phones or tablets, try the RTÉ Radio Player for Android or Apple.
Listen to the Gaeilge Gan Stró! CDs that came with your textbook (in the car, for example).
Make a calendar or daily to-do list in Irish.
If you use Facebook, set the language to Irish. (There’s even a Facebook page for using Facebook in Irish – how meta!)
If you use Firefox or Twitter, set the language to Irish.
Set your Android phone’s system language to Irish.
Count in Irish: reps of exercises, people ahead of you in line, eggs left in the carton, strokes as you’re brushing your teeth, cars without their lights on at dusk…
Read numbers in Irish – house numbers, phone numbers on TV ads, license plate numbers
Write your shopping list in Irish (as much as you can)
Tell off telemarketers in Irish. Keep an index card by the phone with your script.
Use Gmail as Gaeilge. (Thanks to Midwesterner Dr. Kevin Scannell!) It only works in Gmail, not Inbox.
Cén dath atá air sin? Name the colors of things you can see around you: items in the room, cars on the road, clothing…
Choose a motto (could be a seanfhocal or some other phrase that has meaning to you) and put it on a sticky note where you’ll see it. (monitor, fridge, bathroom mirror, dashboard, near the doorknob on your way out…)
Seanfhocail (old sayings or proverbs) are great little nuggets of Irish. You can find a lot of them on Quizlet: https://quizlet.com/subject/
Speaking of Quizlet, you could always fire up the app and play with a Quizlet set. All mine are here: https://quizlet.com/stwidgie . This user (tuigim) has many sets as well: https://quizlet.com/tuigim You can work with the flashcards, but also try a game or a quiz.
How many malairtí can you do? (Good for a private place in front of a mirror!)
Read a poem aloud. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand it – just read it for the sound. You can read any kind of text, but poems are usually written to be spoken aloud, so they’re a nice choice.
Check out the Irish text-to-speech engine: http://www.abair.tcd.ie/ – paste Irish text into it and try the different dialects.