Hi,

I just bought Teach Youself Irish by Diarmuid Ó Sé as a suplement to Learning Irish. Unfortunatly, sometime after having purchased it I heard it wasn't a too good book. Oh well...

Mind you, I haven't looked at it at all yet and I haven't heard the recordings. In the mean time I would like to hear your opinions about the book.

I know it's in the Standard but are the speakers in the recordings natives (I mean born with Irish as their tongue) or Gaeilgeoir with a heavy English accent (as frequently seen on TG4)?

Also, is the grammar in this book actually accurate at all as of the Standard?

Go raibh maith agaibh!
slán!

Angmar,
I found it to be helpful overall, but I detest the organization of the thing. It jumps all over the place with their different sections "conversation" etc. Within the layers is useful information. I don't know about the recordings because I got a library edition that didn't have them. I did like in the back an appendix which lists off the instances of lenition and eclipsis. Overall I have taken the course of sifting from individual books different lessons and writing note sheets for myself. Sort of a "greatest hits" for my Irish learning.

The copy you have is often the target of unfair and quite scathing attacks merely becuase it replaced an earlier book with the same title (but different authors). The earlier book of the same title was a fine introduction to the Munster dialect of Irish. But taken by itself, the later book is a fun introduction to Standard Irish. I have both the cassette and CD editions of the book you have and I find that the CD edition is much easier to understand because the speed of the recordings is perfect for beginners.


(Message edited by student on September 02, 2009)

I like it on the whole, but oddly enough find it better suited to a classroom environment.

Still, it's worthy of space in your language learning toolbox.

I agree with Seánw.The track listing from the cd is not a 'read across' from the book.Mar shampla dialogue 1 is on track 2, if I remember correctly,and so on annoyingly.I photocopied the pages with the text of dialogues on them so I could read and listen simultaneously.


That said I found it easy enough to follow the cds after a couple of listens.I've never come across an English accent as Gaeilge.The language will be spreading across the world if it ever comes to pass! You often hear Dublin accents on RnaG/TG4.But not on Teach Yourself Irish,Angmar.

I bought the book/CD combination at a local fair a few months ago. I had the tape version when I first starting working with the course and I must say that the CDs are definitely a lot cleaner and easier to listen to.

This course is really designed for someone who has absolutely no contact with the language. And if you fall into this class of people, then TYI is a wonderful course for an introduction to language.

However, I have three major complaints with this course.

1)

The reason it seems to be jumping around all over the place is that the authors of the course cut and pasted Irish grammar into a pre-fabricated format used by TY. So in my opinion, the course really isn't designed for the Irish language because it does not progress in a direction that works well with Irish grammar. They don't introduce you to a grammar feature in detail, and then gradually build on this feature. Rather they just say here's the feature, and then move on to another. This can cause confusion in new students of the language.

2)

The audio coverage is very poor in ratio to the amount of material it could be covering. The first CD is only 48 minutes of material and the second CD is only 47 minutes of material. The CDs only cover 46% of the Irish material in the course. This means that a beginner is left guessing how to pronounce 54% of the Irish they are encountering for the first time. And with a language like Irish, you have to be spoon fed the sounds and spellings for a while until you gain the ability to do them with confidence on your own. This is extremely frustrating for beginners.

With the storage capacity of modern CDs, they could have easily covered every single example in the course.

3)

While there is only so much a person can do with an introductory course, there is really no meat to this course. This course doesn't offer anything more than any other course, or what a person can go and see for free on the internet. If I am going to pay money for something, I want to know that I am getting something for it. And I didn't always feel that way with this course.

In fact, I was often left with more questions than answers thanks to this course, and I often had to go searching for the answers. Now this is a natural, and often the best part of learning a new language, but the book doesn't give you any guidence on how to move on and find the information. It doesn't have anything to support it.

Anyway there's my two cents. I am not discrediting the authors in any way. In truth, TYI has been very good in raising interest in the language, especially here in the States with no contact to the language. I just think that they have potential to turn this course into a major learning resource. They just have to expand and add, and for love ot Pete bring in comprehensive and quality audio!

quote:

Do_chinniúint said: I am not discrediting the authors in any way. In truth, TYI has been very good in raising interest in the language, especially here in the States with no contact to the language.

I have to reiterate that. Almost every bookstore I've gone where I live in California has TYI. I've never seen Learning Irish, for instance. It has raised interest because I think a lot of bookstores and libraries purchase this series.

Seánw,

Part of the reason you have seen Teach Yourself Irish and not others in the stores is more likely a matter of cost. Remember that bookstores aren't out to sell books in order to improve people's lives. They're out to sell books for money plain and simple.

Teach Yourself has made a name for itself, so they know that with this series there is a higher chance of sale for the product. It is a safer bet than some of the other courses out there.

Also for reasons I haven't figured out yet, Teach Yourself continues to give you a decent product for being one of the cheaper learning courses out there.

The main marketed languages courses here in the United States seem to be Teach Yourself, Living Language, Berlitz, and Pimsleur. You can usually find these courses in most bookstores.

Of the four, Living Language is my favorite. While they have a grammar based approach to learning, I fell that they do a wonderful job of covering the basics with enough depth to help a new learner get a good foundation. But where they rule is in audio coverage category. For a moderate price, they have the most audio coverage of all the courses. And this is essential in my opinion for introductory courses. Even in their smaller procucts they still cover 80% of their language corses. In their revised Ultimate Series they claim to have 90%, but I have not purchased this product so I don't know for certain. I know that their original product only claimed 85%.

But sadly, Living Language is not going to be making any products for the Irish language in the near future. Like the Rosetta Stone, they require a certain level of demand before they even think of products.

I wrote an e-mail to them about two years ago asking if they ever thought about an Irish language course. They said that they have it on the list of potential products. They said something to the affect that they receive requests, however, they feel there still isn't a high enough demand for it. And if they did, they would only make a limited number of copies for a trial run.

But then Rosetta Stone said the same thing. And they recently sent me an e-mail saying that Irish was one of their best sellers. It has risen above projected sales every quarter. So maybe, it is just a matter of time.

In your opinion, what would be the most suitable learning book/stuff for classes (evening classes for instance) ?

Honestly, I think Teach Yourself would be my choice for a beginner class (because it looks the most like my hs French book). I also very much like Buntús Cainte for sheer volume of stuff learned, but with no exercises or grammar explanations, it is incomplete.

Rosetta Stone would be my choice to use for truly independent study (although I would invest in "Irish Grammar" and a good dictionary to go along with it).

Hmm...

In my opinion that is a trick question ;-)

If there is going to be an evening class, then I would hope it would be led by a person who is fluent, or has the level of fluency to aid the students where the book cannot such as pronunciation and more examples to help solidify the grammar. So in that case, the book is really not important because the real source of information is going to be the instructor of the class.

The problem is that Teach Yourself is not, and was not, designed for classes. If it was, then it would be called "Teach the Group." LOL

It was designed for the majority of the people who are buying the course...those who have an interest in the language, but lack the ability to be in an area where it is spoken or taught by fluent speakers.

That's why I am so harsh with it. Not because it is a bad product, but because they were so busy trying to give the market a product, they may have passed a wonderful chance to create a higher quality product.

In my little fantasy world, a textbook similar to the many language textbooks produced the McGraw-Hill companies would be a dream come true. I have the Vis-A-Vis for French, their Nachalo for Russian, their Wie Geht's for German, and the Prego for Italian. (I had to to a comparitive research paper for language learning strategies for school) Now while there is a template being used by the company, they write the books more to the individual languages. These books take a grammar approach to language learning. The most common complaint I see in reviews is that they needed a native speaker to help them with things. But then, who doesn't need a native's help when starting out. Their real strength is in the supporting materials. They have the most comphrehensive audio coverage 100% of all material presented, DVDs, and work books, and test books for every language. They even make them for the lesser spoken languages that they don't advertise.

For example, a friend of mine bought a complete package for Swahili.

They are always looking for new books...and they even said they would hear a proposal for Irish. The problem is they are very strict for their author selections. You have to be either on the A list, or recommended by an A list of ten or more on the language. I don't know about their international or native speaker requirements, but it would take the best the States has to offer in the field Irish / Celtic linguistics to get them to take even take a look at a book offer seriously for such a small market demand. But at least there is a glimmer there.

(Message edited by do_chinniúint on September 03, 2009)

Seánw:

quote:

I have to reiterate that. Almost every bookstore I've gone where I live in California has TYI. I've never seen Learning Irish, for instance. It has raised interest because I think a lot of bookstores and libraries purchase this series.

I often used to see LI in bookstores around here (NorCal) but I haven't seen it in a few years.

quote:

If there is going to be an evening class, then I would hope it would be led by a person who is fluent, or has the level of fluency to aid the students where the book cannot such as pronunciation and more examples to help solidify the grammar.

Well, *I* would be the teacher :-)
By the way, what learning books have many exercises? To me it's very important, and I don't like creating exercises by myself... I'm not much inspired to invent tons of sentences and stuff for exercises!

LOL...

I knew that Lughaidh. I remember you saying in other posts that you use this course. Don't you also use it for an online course or something like that?

I thought it was you who had a yahoo learning club or something?

Personally, that's the flaw of all courses. There is only so much space on a page and most courses don't often go beyond 5-10 example questions.

I don't know if there is a book out there with massive Irish exercises?

Perhaps there are children books used in the Irish medium schools that can be bought and photocopied for your class?

I saw at Litriocht that they have school books for children by age...that could be helpful.

The sentences would not be too complicated, and they are going to cover basic vocabulary from TYI?

Bhoil, go raigh maith agaibh

I checked out the book and the recordings finally.

I think I'm a bit too advanced at this point for some of the grammar in TYI. It just seems very basic to me in many respects. Then again, I've been used to the insane grammar complexities of Learning Irish so, whatever...

Anyway, my verdict is that LI is by far way better than TYI with regards to grammar and the overall presentation of the book. I agree with you Seánw the information is quite scattered and I had trouble following the recordings and the sentences given in the book. Moreover, I will say it again, it doesn't go very much in depth into the grammar unlike LI.

As for the recordings I had a quick listen. It appears to me that the speakers are indeed all natives (yeah!) and possibly from different dialects. However, I'm no specialist in the matter. Does anyone know for sure?

I guess in my case it's not an entire waste on money. I will use TYI once I'm done with Learning Irish in order to learn the Standard as well. By that point I should know enough Connemara Irish not to mix it up with the Standard.

quote:

By the way, what learning books have many exercises? To me it's very important, and I don't like creating exercises by myself... I'm not much inspired to invent tons of sentences and stuff for exercises!

You should maybe check out Basic Irish: A Grammar and Workbook as well as Intermediate Irish: A Grammar and Workbook both by Nancy Stenson.

quote:

As for the recordings I had a quick listen. It appears to me that the speakers are indeed all natives (yeah!) and possibly from different dialects. However, I'm no specialist in the matter. Does anyone know for sure?

I don't think they are all native Gaeltacht speakers. The 2 of them (older male and female voices) seems Gaeilgeoirí with very heavy English accent and the other 2 (younger male and female voices) seems native Gaeltacht speakers with perfect pronunciation.
I detest particularly the older female voice, because she uses hardly any Irish sound and she speaks Irish with English sounds only. Maybe that's way it is so easy to follow such a pronunciation. I even tested those speakers' pronuntiation on my friend (with no knowledge of Irish) and made him listen to her (older female voice) pronunciation and he said that it sounded like English but he couldn't understand a word. Then, while listening to the other 2 speakers (younger voices), he asked me what kind of language it was and said it sounded nice.

Hello Crí,

I did something very similar in a presentation on age differences when speaking for my Interpersonal Communications class in school. I played small clips of the older female from TYI against small clips from the lady from Nead na Fuiseoige.

What I was trying to do is see if the person's age had an affect on the perceptions of the listener. I chose Irish because I enjoy the language, and I thought it might make for a more interesting comparison.

I then had them asnwer questions like:

Which of the two seemed more comfortable speaking Irish?

Which of the two would you assume is a native speaker?

Which of the two would you rather listen to?

After a few questions along these lines, it was obvious that the even though none of the students had any information about the Irish language, they had no trouble hearing a big difference between the two ladies, and they all seemed to prefer the lady from RnaG. But then again, it is hard not enjoy the Irish of the presenter from RnaG. I have enjoyed listening to her speak Irish for years.

Now does this mean or prove anything...of course not. But it could suggest that people making audio examples need to be mindful of who they choose to read their scripts. The best thing a product can offer is a person from the Gaeltacht speaking in a course written for them.

quote:

I knew that Lughaidh. I remember you saying in other posts that you use this course. Don't you also use it for an online course or something like that?

This time it's for classes in a university. I'll teach Irish this year :-) (first class: September 21th).

quote:

Perhaps there are children books used in the Irish medium schools that can be bought and photocopied for your class?

I'll have a look in the university library (if I've got enough time!)...

quote:

I saw at Litriocht that they have school books for children by age...that could be helpful.

Ok, thanks. I'll try to have a look.

Caith súil ar scoilnet, a Lughaidh

http://www.scoilnet.ie

Tá roinnt ceistiúcháin ar líne ann, mar shampla an ceann seo

http://www.scoilnet.ie/Quiz.aspx?id=1043

agus é seo

http://www.teachnet.ie/mmorrin/2004/dalta/bricf/bcloze1.html

Agus, gan amhras, tá an t-ábhar a bhaineann le TEG ann

http://www.teg.ie/gaeilge/teagasc.htm

Grma a Aonghuis!

Níl a bhuíochas ort. Go n-éirí le do ranganna.