I am trying to begin to seriously learn Irish (and I want to teach it to my 8-year-old niece) and I am not sure which books/CDs/DVDs are the best to teach a beginner (that I can buy online). I know some numbers, common phrases, and everyday words, but just enough to get by. I would like to someday be fluent, but for now I just need to build a good foundation. Also, I will be at NUIG next year and taking Irish language classes, so I would like to be as prepared as possible.

GRMA for your help.

I'm going to offer a couple of answers you're probably not expecting.

1. A teacher -- a good one.

You can work from almost any book/tape/CD/DVD and none of it will succeed with you anywhere near as well unless you have a good teacher who will explain things, pronounce things, and interract with you.

Get a good teacher and then let him/her help you choose a book -- as whatever they suggest will be something from which they're best able to teach you.

2. A native speaker.

In some respects, a native speaker can be more valuable to you than a good teacher, but usually not at first -- one can be a good speaker without knowing a darn thing about teaching well. Someone needs to teach you the basics . . . to lay some solid foundations. Then, if you have access to native speakers, you can fashion your Irish into a beautiful edifice.

Without access to native speakers, you may have to settle for the linguistic equivalent of a bungalow or caravan. Not pretty, but it's a place to hang your hat.

Since you're planning to be in Galway soon, you can find native speakers easily enough. So in the meantime, concentrate on number 1 -- a good teacher. Be willing to pay him/her, so that they won't mind spending many hours with you -- and then do just that . . . spend many hours learning. And when your teacher goes home for the day, proceed to spend many more hours -- reviewing what you just did with the teacher, and delving into whatever book(s) he/she has suggested to you.

Alleged self-study courses in Irish are like fools' gold. They look nice, but aren't worth much. Anyone who tells you that you can master Irish on your own is either deluded, or is trying to sell you the latest quackery.

Get a good teacher, master the basics, and then go throw yourself into the Gaeltacht head-first.

That's exactly what I expected--I just hoped for advice on books. I live in a tiny town in MN right now, and there is nowhere within 2 hours to get a class, much less find a teacher to work with several days a week. I plan to move to Galway by next summer (since I have not gotten a work permit yet), and once I am there I will have many more resources. I just wanted to get a step ahead of the classes that I will have at NUIG so that I am as prepared as possible before I even get there. Anyone else's advice would be very helpful--I know it's not nearly an ideal way to learn the language, but it's a start.

GRMA.

I did intuit you were after more of a booklist, but it's important that you have realistic expectations about what you'll accomplish on your own. A teacher, while sometimes difficult to find, is usually best.

I generally recommend Progress in Irish and Buntús Cainte for beginners. The former is good for grammar and written Irish, the latter for spoken Irish. Both are relatively inexpensive.

Neither is "perfect" for self-study, but they both have groups online now working through those books:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buntuscainte
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/progressinirish

If you'd like a video course, the Now You're Talking videos are good for beginners. That course is out of print now, though, so it may take you a while to find a copy. There was also a book & cassettes to accompany the TV programmes. It's in Ulster Irish, though, so the accents & vocab may not match up exactly with what you'll learn in Galway.

Muzzy Irish by the BBC is also good, but not very comprehensive.

I'll be very interested to see what other advice you get.

I'll have to second Cionaodh's advice regarding "Progress in Irish". To date it's the single best resource I've unearthed. Get the book and above all make sure to join the yahoo group he listed above, as you can get audio files of pronunciations there for free. (A Chionaodh, whoever took the time to do that has my eternal thanks as they've performed an invaluable service.)

I'll be able to speak to a wider variety of books within the next few months; I just procured a rather large selection of Irish learning resources from amazon.com, but since some of them are not readily available, they'll be trickling in between now and November. If one of them proves to be Unbelievably Fabulous, I'll certainly advise.

For my part, I've been a student of foreign languages for many years now and I know myself well enough to be aware of my most effective learning methods. For me, a clearly presented, concise, and comprehensive grammar course is the foundation on which everything else rests. Without that, I'm lost. I do horribly with "organic" approaches - I need structure and rules. This is partly why I found the "Teach Yourself Irish" book to be practically useless. "Teach Yourself Irish Grammar," on the other hand, was a good sight better.

I'm constrained to admit that, in the case of Irish, a comprehensive audio program is almost equally important. With languages like Spanish or German, the orthographic rules are quite well-defined and simple. With Irish, I find that the rules are pretty well-defined, but I find them far from simple, and I have yet to find an easy *explanation* of Irish orthographic rules. (They seem to be needlessly complicated by Ivory Tower types, in my experience so far).

I would also say that Cionaodh has identified the best materials for beginners with PiL and Buntús Cainte.

And of course (here we go again!), for the linguisticially adept there is the old warhorse--"Learning Irish". And for those linguistically adept with a masochistic streak there is the ultimate warhorse by the great Myles Dillon, the very first "Teach Yourself Irish".

I would say that the large version of the Foclóir Póca (so you can read the type without a microscope) and maybe a copy of the "New Irish Grammar" by the Christian Bros might help to start out.

Although true, the advice on getting a good teacher is often simply not operational with a "minorty" language like Irish. You are very lucky indeed to get anywhere near a good teacher like Cionaodh in the US for Irish.

It seems like teachers and classes blip on and off the screen here in Seattle and even then they are usually located in the equivalent of different county--sometimes literally in a different county.

Though there is an dedicated band of Scottish Gaelic enthusiasts here who consistenly get classes started--the indomitable Richard Hill being among the most dedicated--unfortunately I am just not that interested in Scottish Gaelic. The major problem being that there is very little prose being published in the language. But attempts are being made to catch up to Irish. The past few years have seen the first salvo in what I hope in a new surge of fiction writing in Scottish Gaelic.

I have accepted the inevitable and I have resigned myself to just acquiring a good reading abiity in Irish--unlike Scottish Gaelic there is a lot published in Irish. This is something I can tackle on my own. Which is a pity since to really have an entirely different linguistic world open up for you, you really need to speak the language well. It's like a muscian finally mastering her instrument. I have come close it in Spanish. It is a singular experience.

William, this makes three of us in the Seattle area thus far. Will you please ping me with your contact information?



(Message edited by domhnall_Ó_h_aireachtaigh on September 24, 2006)