I just noticed that Geoglot Apps released Irish Verb Blitz, an Irish verb conjugation app last weekend. I haven’t tried the game myself, but presently it has only been downloaded about 5 times with no reviews. As they have a series of Verb Blitz games, I imagine they decided to release an Irish version as they’d only need to replace the database. The issue with this one-model for all languages approach is that the present conjugations are technically incorrect (brisim mé makes no sense, it is either brisim or bris mé). Also there is no reference to negation or questions (níor bhris mé, ar bhris tú?).

The game includes four game modes:

  1. Infinitive quiz: do you know the meaning of the each verb?
  2. Conjugation quiz: can you select the correct verb form for the English translation?
  3. Snap quiz: can you spot when the Irish and English sentences match? Try to get ten in a row!
  4. Gapfill: can you spell out the missing word in the conjugated sentence?

I honestly haven’t heard of GeoGlot before, but they do support an impressive amount of niche languages, including Hungarian, Icelandic, Scottish and Welsh. Although I haven’t tried the app, from the above screenshots it doesn’t appeal to me as a user, it doesn’t seem fun like Duolingo or Caoga caoga, and displaying the first person singular and plural conjugations as brisim mé etc. doesn’t make any sense as it will only confuse new language learnings, and warrant negative feedback from those more proficient in the language.

I would like to work on a Konjugator mobile game soon, but I imagine it would firstly be German or Russian. Maybe there is a market for a fun Irish verb conjugation game, but after receiving lower than expected downloads for Caoga caoga, as a single developer with zero budget, now isn’t the time.

References

Irish Verb Blitz for Android Released – Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

App Store - Irish Verb Blitz

Play Store - Irish Verb Blitz