Bob Burke discovered the Irish language in his 40s. Was that too old to start to learn to speak Irish? Not at all!

Listen to this discussion podcast (in English), and you’ll hear how Bob’s lovely spoken Irish Gaelic is.

Bob is the former president of the North American Association for Celtic Language Teachers.

What you’ll hear:

Click the audio player above, and you’ll get to hear:

* Are you too learn to start to learn to speak Irish Gaelic?

* Not at all! It doesn’t matter what decade of your life you’re in. The worst thing to do is to never start now, only to regret in five years’ time what you could have learned in the meantime.

* Set your expectations!

* As adult learners, we want to jump from “zero to really fluent” in a few months. Sure, you can concentrate on important parts of speech to save time. But it really is a life-long journey if you want to make that real deep connection with your Irish heritage.

* Reach out and find people

* Bob executed some novel approaches to reaching out to find Irish language speakers. He put himself outside of his comfort zone to make contact with others.

* You can reach out to Ireland-related organizations in your area. Bob also visited nursing homes to find native Irish people. He didn’t stop there, and called Catholic parishes to find if they had priests from Ireland.

* The message here is: don’t give up learning to speak Irish Gaelic. Reach out. Find others. Make use of the resources around you.

Mentioned in the show

Design for Irish language immersion in your life

The most successful learners we’ve come across have all made the Irish language part of their daily lives.

Whether it’s spending time on top Facebook pages for Irish Gaelic learners, listening to Raidió na Gaeltachta, or meeting up with fellow learners, they all make the effort to reach out.

Bob has visited Oideas Gael immersion courses a number of times. Listen to our interview with Liam Ó Cuinneagáin, the founder of Oideas Gael.

Daltaí.com is an excellent resource for Irish language learning in North America.

More past interviews from Oregan

OK, Bob’s in Washington State, but just outside of Portland, Oregan.

Catch our other past inspiring episodes with his freinds:

* Brian Ó hAirt

* Aislinn Adams

* Ger Killeen

Start to learn Irish Gaelic today

It’s never too late to start, and don’t regret not starting in a couple of years’ time.

It’s hard to learn a language. And it’s a lifetime journey. But at Bitesize Irish Gaelic, at least we’ve broken down the most important parts in Bitesize portions.

You’ll learn with thousands of recordings, our phonetic prompting guide, and multi-speed conversational lessons.

Click here to take a no-obligations free trial of Bitesize Irish Gaelic, and start learning today.

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