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Summary: A Tip For Buying This Product
Review: Amazon.com seems to sell this Irish course two ways-- with the book and tapes separately, and also together as a set. If you are looking for the set, the top part of the cover is green with "Learning Irish" in orange letters, the word "Irish" being large and in a Gaelic style font, and the bottom has 4 photographs on it (girls in traditional costume, a hill and water, a row of buildings, and two men playing music). I hope that this helps prevent some confusion.I am working through this course now and enjoying it. It has quite a bit of grammar, relatively few exercises, and long vocabulary lists, so it will take a bit of effort on your part to get through it and learn all the material. It is a pretty good course, all told.
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Summary: Learning Irish
Review: Date: Sunday, February 06, 2000 As someone who had started before on various other courses, I found LEARNING IRISH simply excellent. You get the feeling from the beginning that the author is building your confidence while introducing you step by step to the Irish language. The boxed-off tables in the initial lessons are particularly useful. The build up of the vocabulary and the gradual introduction of the two verbs 'to be' and the handling of the noun are all outstanding. The texts attached to each lesson give it a life and context which is most helpful. This is a course with no gimmicks. It's demanding but it works. The cassettes which accompany the book are clear and natural and I found them very helpful. I recommend LEARNING IRISH heartily to anyone who wishes to learn the Irish Language.
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Summary: only the book itself is needed
Review: good beginning course in irish. i'm getting a lot out of it. i especially appreciate the fact that the transcriptions are done in IPA and not in the writer's own system. i've had to buy and return several other courses because they thought it would be easier on me if they wrote the pronounciations in english graphemes. his descriptions of irish sounds are done with a linguist's eye, but in a way that is easily accessable to those not familiar with linguistic jargon.
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Summary: Watch out! Book and tapes are sold separately.
Review: I bought the audio cassette edition for obvious reasons (I'm trying to learn on my own without the benefit of a native speaker to guide me and drill pronunciation with me.) The quality of the spoken recordings is very high, though I was somewhat irked to find the book absent (the cassettes are pretty much useless on their own); so I had to buy the book separately. That makes a total of over 50 dollars - but still,I guess that's a pittance for lifelong access to the magical kingdom of Irish language and literature!
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Summary: Good for lists and grammar
Review: I have been studying Irish for the last 2 1/2 years from a top professor in the area here in the states. At first we used the "Teach Yourself Irish" book and tapes for an into, and then she made her own materials. This book I have found is a good resource for finding lists of grammar, conjugations, vocab etc. I highly reccomend that since it is such a difficult language to find a qualified teacher who you can work with face to face, since much of the pronunciation is difficult and varies from county to county. But, if that isn't available to you or you have moved on from a class and want to study more, this is a great resource to reflect on! It has more mechanics than the conversation driven Teach Yourself, and goes more in deapth than any other book or book/tape set I've seen. Also, if you're looking for additional resources, check out www.readireland.com
Good luck! lena gra geal mo chroi, slan!
Rating:
Summary: Good for lists and grammar
Review: I have been studying Irish for the last 2 1/2 years from a top professor in the area here in the states. At first we used the "Teach Yourself Irish" book and tapes for an into, and then she made her own materials. This book I have found is a good resource for finding lists of grammar, conjugations, vocab etc. I highly reccomend that since it is such a difficult language to find a qualified teacher who you can work with face to face, since much of the pronunciation is difficult and varies from county to county. But, if that isn't available to you or you have moved on from a class and want to study more, this is a great resource to reflect on! It has more mechanics than the conversation driven Teach Yourself, and goes more in deapth than any other book or book/tape set I've seen. Also, if you're looking for additional resources, check out www.readireland.com
Good luck! lena gra geal mo chroi, slan!
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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.
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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
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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)
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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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