Pick up a cúpla focal by going high-tech

Emigrant turns love of Irish into an e-learning program in America, writes Pól Ó Muirí.

A chance encounter with an old schoolfriend provided the spark for a retired IBM computer specialist to fashion an e-learning programme for Irish.

Shortly after stepping down from the US computer giant, Patrick McCormack ran into a friend from his Irish school days in Washington. Their conversation led him to attend Irish language classes in the US city.

It was a return to roots for the native of Sallins, Co Kildare, who was one of the first generation of students in the State to find themselves being taught through the medium of Irish at primary level.

Like many of his peers, Mr McCormack emigrated to the United States after securing an MSc in physics in UCD.

He worked in the aerospace industry for four years before beginning a 31-year stint with IBM in marketing, sales and systems engineering. His speciality in his latter years with IBM was computer and communications security and cryptography.

During his working life, Mr McCormack had little use for Irish but he jumped at the chance to join his friend in revitalising his skills in the language. However, he was aghast to find himself being subject to the same teaching methods as he had a primary school 60 years before. They were tedious and inefficient, he says.

In frustration, he told his fellow students that it was the computer age and not the Stone Age.

They challenged him to write a programme and what started off as an endeavour which he thought would last six months, turned into a seven-day week obsession for three-and-half years.

Frequently, working 12-hour days, the fruit of Mr McCormack's efforts was EasyReader. Written in Visual Basic, EasyReader is a PC programme for learning the Irish language. EasyReader comes on CD and uses 400 megabytes on the hard drive.

Once installed, the user can access tools which help improve reading, writing and listening skills. Grammar is also dealt with and a comprehensive dictionary is available.

The programme is designed so that it may be used with other language material available on the internet, such as Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word and Outlook Express.

EasyReader users can click on unfamiliar words or phrases on Web pages and the programme will gave them the meaning. So, for example, were the user to click on the word "fulaingthe" information appears on the screen

1)Verb, Verbal Adjective [fulaing] bear, suffer, tolerate, endure...

There are 17,000 words in the Irish-English dictionary and 22,000 in the English-Irish one and Mr McCormack has provided some short cuts which will be of benefit to PC users.

Whereas Apple Mac users have little difficulty in adding accents to vowels through the alt and e keys to get a síniú fada (a forward accent), PC users can often find that they need the skills of a contortionist to hold down the necessary keys to find the accent. Mr McCormack has added a very handy feature allowing users to strike the necessary vowel key twice to get an accent. So, hitting "a" twice gives á and so on.

Another feature allows users listen to 72 recordings, lasting about two-and-a-half minutes, of texts being read in the three main dialects of Irish - Ulster, Munster and Connacht - by native speakers and 50 different text pieces.

Users can therefore listen to the language being spoken and use it to improve their own pronunciation irrespective of where they happen to live.

EasyReader has a recording facility and the option to add to the dictionary. The programme can be set to work from Irish to English or from English to Irish.

Aimed at students at secondary and third level, the advantages of EasyReader are that it allows the student to see the test, proceed at their own pace, record phrases and to click on words which they don't understand and return to them.

EasyReader can also be used outside the classroom, however, with users having the option to add to the programme themselves.

Mr McCormack describes it as a lifetime product; a renewable educational resource. It was akin to making a statue, he says, chipping and adding more plaster until he was happy with the finished product.

Retailing at $75 (€61) in the United States, the programme cannot be downloaded from the Internet but is available from Mr McCormack's website, www.irishforlife.com.