Rating: 
Summary: You need to buy the book, too
Review: I just received my audio tapes so I can start learning Irish. Make sure you also buy the book, as the tapes are all in Irish, and are meant to go along with exercises in the book. The tapes are good quality with great pronunciation and a lot of vocabulary.
Rating: 
Summary: Incredibly intense learning program
Review: If your intention is to learn the language and not just how to throw out "help-me-I-need-directions" phrases, this is the way to go. Make sure you get the set with the tapes. Irish pronunciation is absolutely unconscionable. Fathomless, I tell you! Why on earth put all those letters in the middle or end of the word if you just already know you're not going to bother pronouncing them?? I digress. This book has one downfall. It teaches a little bit parts to whole. One lesson will tell you the vocabulary word "say" as in "they say." Many lessons later you learn "say" as in "I say." Rather than learning conjugation, you learn the word. HOWEVER, you do eventually learn conjugation (oh, dear, do you ever!), and you kinda hafta know some already conjugated words to make sentences more interesting than "there is a dog." Irish grammar is freakish, even more so than the strange at-the-end-of-the-sentence-is-a-verb German. Sometimes to express an action you use the English "to be" (Ta). This book walks you through it all. I do every lesson, copy the vocab to cards, practice the cards all the time, and listen to the blasted cassettes every time I'm in the car. So, every now and then, I take my husband's car....Anyways, it's really quite intense. Do not enter into this lightly! This is a language in dire straits. You can become a speaker and help to keep it alive.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely amazing
Review: Irish, the ancient language of Ireland, is still a living language and spoken as the native tongue on the western seabord of Ireland; it is a language extremely rich in culture and literature. Today a revival is taking place in Ireland, and more and more people outside the traditional Irish-speaking areas are once again learning the tongue of their ancestors. The same revival is also taking place abroad - many Irish speakers can be found outside Ireland. My grandmother, who was a native speaker, emigrated from Co. Cork while still young, but she never forgot her language. I learned quite a bit from her, and have had a burning interested in Irish since then. When it comes to learning Irish, there is no other book that could match this brilliant book by Ó Siadhail. Indeed, I doubt there is any language course in any other language that equals it. It starts of from the absolute beginnings and take the learner through 36 extensive lessons. After having completed these lessons the learner should be quite confident in speaking an Irish ranging far beyond just daily topics. Every chapter consists of four parts: a vocabulary, thorough grammar explanations, a text and excersises. The structure is perfectly logic, always building on what the learner already knows. The course advances quite fast, but never makes any sudden leaps. Thus, the learner never feels that he suddenly finds himself in troubbles due to not understanding the words or the grammar. The language taught in the course is natural spoken Irish, so the learner will be perfectly accustomed to hearing natural and idiomatic Irish. In fact, even for a fluent Irish speaker this course is a catch, since it is so extensive as to be considered one of the best descriptions of the Irish dialect of Conamara. Thus, even after completing the book, the learner can come bakc to it again and again. I definitely recommend this wonderful book to everyone who wishes to learn this wonderful language
Rating: 
Summary: It's the best way of learnig Irish like a native, but...
Review: it isn't for everybody, I'm afraid.
If you have patience, and eight hours a day to study Irish, you can cope it successfully in a couple of years; once you have mastered it, you can traslate everything, provided that you haven't forgotten your own language.
It really teaches to think in Irish, and this is the only textbook that really does it; but it's so tremendous, and unless you aren't serious in your studies you can't in the meanwhile say not a single word in Irish- it's definitively better in order to enable you to understand it.
I will master it, some day or other...( perhaps)
Rating:
Summary: THE standard for learning Irish
Review: Míchael ó Siadhail is a leading scholar and teacher of the Irish language. Once you get past the phonetics.. important for ear training - this course is the cornerstone of the study of Irish as spoken in the West. A few people report trouble; perhaps they are looking for an instant Irish phrasebook approach. For the serious student who truly desires to learn Irish, there is no substitute for this book.
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Summary: The book we all started with
Review: Mícheál Ó Siadhail's "Learning Irish" is, quite simply, the text book we all started with who are now entering the Irish-speaking life. It teaches a living dialect of the labguage, instead of maintaining the fiction of the existence of a standard language outside the pulpits of official scribes. It also jettisons boldly those features of the standard grammar which are not alive anymore in spoken Irish. This is, of course, a mixed blessing. On the one hand it makes the learners more friendly towards native spoken Irish - no more written-language pedants with a hideous accent trying to tell the natives how they should speak Irish. On the other hand, reading literature after this course may require some readjustments to the more complex morphology of the written language. However, the book duly highlights the most difficult and idiomatic features of Irish grammar, instead of leaving the learner with a developed "what's it in English" syndrome, as too many textbooks do, thus producing intermediate learners with a better-than-native grasp of the genitive, but with no idea at all of the distinction between the two verbs "to be". Ó Siadhail firmly tells us about the most idiomatic parts of Irish, equipping us very well to meet the reality of the Gaeltacht.
Rating:
Summary: very solid course for learning Irish Gaelic
Review: This book is a proper teaching book, similar to what I used in school, with vocabulary builder and lessons that guide you step by step to learning Irish Gaelic. Make sure you get the edition that has the textbook and the audio tapes. You cannot learn Gaelic easily without hearing it!! For those that are looking to learn Scots Gaelic - I recommend Gaelic Made Easy - A Guide to Gaelic for Beginners by John M Patterson from Gairm Publishing.
Rating:
Summary: very solid course for learning Irish Gaelic
Review: This book is a proper teaching book, similar to what I used in school, with vocabulary builder and lessons that guide you step by step to learning Irish Gaelic. Make sure you get the edition that has the textbook and the audio tapes. You cannot learn Gaelic easily without hearing it!! For those that are looking to learn Scots Gaelic - I recommend Gaelic Made Easy - A Guide to Gaelic for Beginners by John M Patterson from Gairm Publishing.
Rating:
Summary: This edition provides a great introduction to the language.
Review: This edition, the book and audio casettes, gives a great introduction to the Irish language. Combining 36 lessons, an extensive pronunciation guide, and an Irish-English/English-Irish dictionary, this book is the best I've used. Be sure to get both the book and the casettes, as they may be sold separately.
Rating:
Summary: An outstanding introduction to learning modern Irish.
Review: This is an outstanding introduction to modern Irish for the novice. No prior knowledge of Irish or other Celtic languages is assumed. I found this book extremely accesible and it served as an interesting window onto an aspect of Irish culture of which most Americans are ignorant. The text is very straightforward and didactic. Of the introductions to the Irish language now available, I felt that this was the most useful to someone trying to learn on his/her own. I could see that in a classroom setting, using this book would greatly speed one's developing mastery of Irish. Highly recommended!
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