I ordered a second hand copy from Amazon.com, and I was wondering if anyone had any opionions on it.
Also, I understand it originally came with speech recordings? If anyone had any information about that I'd appreciate it. -Thanks!

It's a great book, the best course in Irish together with Learning Irish! Much better than the Teach Yourself Irish that they sell today. It is in the West Munster dialect, so I like it particularly much.

There are about an hour of recording with two good native speakers from Múscraí in Country Cork. They read all the words in the vocabulary lists as well as all the sentences in the lessons.

Jonas, I'm wondering, is it good introductory material and how far do you think it will have taken a person towards fluency by it's end (I understand that its probably not as user-friendly as some of the newer books)?

So then, I don't suppose you or anyone other would know where someone could get a copy of the accompanying recordings? I've tried searching the internet and have been watching on ebay for awhile with no luck. I was hoping someone had perhaps taken the time to convert it to mp3? -thanks much

Good questions. I came across this book when I already spoke that very dialect, so I never used it to learn from. It was just a pleasant sensation to see how they describing, step by steo, the way I was speaking - even the small details of the dialect. It was a big change from books that focused on completely different dialects.

The main problem is the lay-out. The content is excellent, but it's presented in an off-putting way. Rather than the clear tables that are so common in modern courses, there is just a lot of text to go through. Another thing is that it is very much a book for a traditional Irish society. You'll be able to describe aspects of rural life but not to discuss going to a club. But it does take you very far towards fluency, I'd say that you don't need any other book if you get through it.

I do have the recordings in mp3. Actually, I only got them this Monday from a person who had copied them.

I recently "upgraded" to the CD version of "Teach Yourself Irish" I enjoy it immensely, especially because the speakers talk SLOWLY compared to the previous cassette-based version that I have. I've always wondered why all other adult-language tapes/CDs have their recordings at normal speech rates. As a former piano teacher, I found that the quickest and best learners, often children, were the ones who learned SLOWLY, whereas the least successful students were the ones (often adults) who rushed through the learning process and never learned anything at all.

Has anyone else listened to the new, CD version of Teach Yourself Irish? Are the speakers possibly from the much coveted original cassette edition or the second cassette edition?

Le meas,

Dáithí

Dáithí - The book and tapes Jonas and NateB refer to is written by Myles Dillon and Donncha ó Cróinín. I'm fairly sure your CDs match the text by Diarmuid Ó Sé and Joseph Sheils now used at Brookdale. I doubt very much the same speakers were used on the old tapes and the new CDs since the books have no connection with each other and due to the vast time difference between their release.

You are quite right, Daisy. The excellent course by Dillon and Ó Cróinín should under no circumstances be confused with the less-than-average course now sold as Teach Yourself Irish. (Ó Sé is a reall good scholar and writer, so I blame the publishing house. There are almost no good Teach Yourself books published anymore).

Which ones would you recommend from that series Jonas?

Do you mean the new ones? There is no language for which Teach Yourself publish the best course available, so in that sense I would not recommend any of their books. But some of them clearly better than the other. The Italian course is not so bad and neither is the Serbian one. The Portuguese one is quite ok as well, and the Scottish Gaelic is in fact quite decent. The new Welsh course is not too bad, but not close to Colloquial Welsh. So, any of those courses would be helpful, but there are much better courses for each of those languages.

Be wary of copyright violations. I would love if such items were freely available, but protect yourself from any lawsuits or penalities first.

(Having the copyright holder's permission is enough).

If anyone can prove that the TYI recordings of Myles Dillon and Donncha ó Cróinín have passed into the public domain, I'll be more than happy to open this thread again.

Caoimhín