Has anyone used both versions of Learning Irish? The version with the cassettes from the 90s and the newer one from 2004 or 2006 with the CDs?

I assume they cleaned up the audio quality a bit. Are there any drastic changes to the text? Is knowledge of the IPA a prerequisite?

I have both versions of LI and without question I would tell a person to have the CD version today.

I didn't really see any difference in the book material itself. If they made any changes to the material, they were very minute changes.

But the CDs are definitely better than the cassettes! The voices are a lot cleaner on the CDs than they are on the tapes. And, for me...the best part of the CDs was that they were easier to navigate through the tracks and quickly find the section that I wanted. With the tapes, one hase to rewind the tape and hope they went far enough.

Anyone who wants to use LI needs to have the CD version. You are not missing any original material, and they are cleaner and easier to work with.

Is IPA a prerequisite? Yes and no. LI does have a lot of phonetic symbology that is a little confusing at first. But one of the things that separates LI from all other courses is the depth of pronunciation LI goes into. If you spend an honest week or two on the pronunciation section, which is easy to do given the amount of coverage it has before you go tackle the book, you will have no trouble with the sounds and symbology in the book.

However, I must warn you that LI is a very specific book. He concentrated an a specific dialect and his use of symbols reflects this dialect. This is not to scare people, only prepare them for some pronunciatins that will challenge their basic understanding of Irish sounds, especially the plural of nouns.

But the gold in this course is that if you can retain an honest 80% of the material in LI, you will be at an advanced intermediate stage of the Irish language which is a lot further than most learning courses out there now.

Go raibh míle maith 'ad, mo chara. I've done a bit more digging and it seems, in some cases anyway, that the grammatical terms in the book have been presented in an easier to understand fashion in the newer edition. At least that's according to a couple of reviews that I found.

I'm not worried that it focuses on the Irish of Cois Fhairrge. I want to learn a Conamara dialect!

Buntús Cainte just isn't doing it for me. I need something that gets me more involved. I know Learning Irish has overwhelmed many a learner so will have to try to pace myself as best I can.

Is it true that Ó Siadhail uses Conamara spelling in his text? Or not even 'standard' Conamara spelling, but rather one specifically based on the phonetics of Cois Fhairrge? Will I have a hard time looking things up in the dictionary?

You won't have trouble with most of the words. When I was working with it, I found that the only time I couldn't find words in the dictionary was when they used alternative words instead of alternative spellings.

For example...

kitchen = cistin = cistineach

window = fuinneog = fuinneoig

Here the spellings are very similir, and you wouldn't have any trouble with identifying them in the dictionary. The secret is concentrate on the beginning of the word and not at the end because the spellings differ for the most part at the end of the words. The two most common differences I noticed was that Cois Fharraige like to add an "i" or "each/ach" to words.

Don't worry, you will get used to that quickly.

Where you might have a little trouble, or at least this is where I had trouble is in examples like this:

farmer = feirmeoir = feilméara

auction = ceant = candáil

These words can be tricky with a dictionary and they leave learners scratching their heads or angry because they don't know which word they need to learn. If you can't find a word in a dictionary, then it is probably one of these words.

If you run into this problem, just learn both forms of the word. It isn't going to kill you to have a developed vocabulary ;-)

At the end of the book, Ó Siadhail explains the differences in spelling with the CO, anyway...

Oh I just had another thought Danny2007...

If you have not started working with LI yet, something you have to be ready for that is a sort of interesting are the pronunciations for the plurals. While the spellings are fairly the same, they are not said the same.

Cois Fharraige likes to make most nouns plural by adding an "i:" sound to them. And if a word ends in -acha, -nna, and a few others. They will be said as if there is an "i:" or í at the end.

For example:

fields = garranta but said like garrantaí "gar-un-tee"

souls = anamnacha but said like anamnachaí "an-um-ah-hee"

places = áiteacha but said like áiteachaí "ah-cha-hee"

That sort of thing. It is one of the characteristics that makes Cois Fharraige Irish unique. In some ways I really like it because in speaking terms, it sort of conforms the language into a more patterned language.

I often wondered why only this area does this? Did they have some contact with another language that influenced them that way? Did they do this on purpose for some reason?

I can promise you this. I started learning the language first with LI. So this was how I wanted to say some words when I was over there. However, my first trip to Ireland landed me in the Cork area...and when I said these words in this fashion they laughed. They understood me just fine, but they said they knew where my Irish was coming from.

Definitely put in the effort on the pronunciation guide as Do_chinniúint has said- O'Siadhail goes through this a little at the beginning and mostly at the end of the book- it will really pay off, and then when you learn a new word outside of LI itself, you can look up the dictionary of words at the back, find the lesson it is in,and get the pronunciation and more info about usage, etc.

What helped me was to do five lessons at a time, and in advance I would listen to the text first off, write down what I had heard without looking at the text, and then look up the text to check my spellings, etc.

It's a gem of a book but the pronunciation guide takes getting used to for sure but once you learn a pattern, you will recognise it in words you learn outside of LI; obvious e.g. 'mn' when occuring together= 'mr' sound.

Go raibh maith agaibh. I appreciate your input folks.
Will go ahead and order LI from Litríocht.