# Irish Gaelic: Tips for Learning



## Jocaste

Bonjour !
I'm looking for a book, a website or anything else to learn Irish (gaelic).
I've found a book (_Teach Yourself Irish_) but if anyone knows another one, thanks in advance for your help


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## palomnik

Jocaste said:


> Bonjour !
> I'm looking for a book, a website or anything else to learn Irish (gaelic).
> I've found a book (_Teach Yourself Irish_) but if anyone knows another one, thanks in advance for your help


 
What type of material do you prefer (e.g., heavy grammatical vs. conversational approach) and what do you want to learn (speak it on vacation, study older poetry, work into Old Irish)?


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## Jocaste

palomnik said:


> What type of material do you prefer (e.g., heavy grammatical vs. conversational approach) and what do you want to learn (speak it on vacation, study older poetry, work into Old Irish)?



I'd like to be able to speak the language. But as a beginner, I'd rather begin learning the grammar.


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## palomnik

If you want to study grammar, the _New Irish Grammar_ by the Christian Brothers is pretty complete without being overwhelming. It doesn't have any exercises, though.

Michael O Siadhail's book _Learning Irish _is a good choice with a reasonable emphasis on speaking and and adult approach to grammar. Oddly enough, it's based on a dialect that isn't generally considered the standard, but that shouldn't present too much of a problem. It has audio available too. I think it's a better choice than the current edition of _Teach Yourself Irish._

If you can get a hold of an edition of the old _Teach Yourself Irish _by Miles Dillon it gives more detail on grammar and a scrupulous explanation of the sound system. Not easy to find, though.  I understand that the _Teach Yourself_ people have recently come out with a _Teach Yourself Irish Grammar _book too, but I haven't had an opportunity to look at it.


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## Outsider

Salut. Les pages de la Wikipedia anglaise sur l'irlandais me semblent être exceptionellement bien écrites et complètes. Elles indiquent une bibliographie très riche. Ça peut être une bonne place pour commencer.


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## Jocaste

Eh bien merci à vous deux


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## Spectre scolaire

palomnik said:
			
		

> Michael O Siadhail's book _Learning Irish _is a good choice with a reasonable emphasis on speaking and an adult approach to grammar.


 I agree! I have an allergy against all these textbooks of different languages in which the learner is treated as a child. You know, a picture of a girl saying (in a balloon) “I am a girl”.

Micheál Ó Siadhail, pronounced [shil], is actually a poet, a fact which does not disqualify him from writing an excellent textbook of his language.

Giving the pronounciation of his name reminds me that the initial problem with Irish is the highly idiosyncratic historical orthography. This is never enough focused on by the Irish themselves – a source of frustration for foreigners. In the Wikipedia article “Irish language” (rightly recommended by _outsider_), there is a section “Irish words used in the English language” where IPA is partly added. When it comes to Irish material on the Internet, it is mostly taken for granted that _people understand_ how words are being pronounced when examples are provided. They don’t. It takes you some time to grasp the phenomenon of _lenition_ about which Wikipedia has a separate article. In the main article it is called _mutation_. Whatever you call it and whatever your interest in theoretical phonetics might be, this is of paramount importance in Irish. Irish phonetics is not easy. In fact, here is what Das Fischer Lexicon 25: “Sprachen” once wrote on the issue: 





> Die Orthographie des Neuirischen ist stark historisch; phonetisch gehört es zu den kompliziertesten Sprachen der Welt. Sandhi, völlige Änderung des Anfangskonsonanten eines Wortes nach bestimmten Gesetzen sind allgemein.


 An exaggeration? Is Irish, from a phonetical point of view, one of the most intricate languages to be found in the world? This book was published 45 years ago, but the same languages are still around...

You should absolutely get hold of Terence Patrick Dolan: _A Dictionary of Hiberno-English_, Dublin 1998 (also mentionned in the Wikipedia article). As it gives etymological explanations _galore_ (a word missing in the “Lexicon” section of the Wikipedia article), it will give you a “flying start” to the study of Irish. If you are a dictionary freak, this book can be read “like a novel”. It is also a _sine qua non_ if you want to understand everything in James Joyce’s _Ulysses_. Initially you don’t need a big dictionary of Irish; the word list in Ó Siadhail will suffice for some time to go.

A brilliant lexical tool is Focal an Lae, see http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=559186.

The map showing “Official Gaeltacht areas” (in Wikipedia) is very “official”. I have been to most of these places and much of the _green spots_ are more wishful thinking than reality. In fact, the main problem related to learning Irish is to find a place where you can dive into an Irish linguistic community and feel that everybody around you speaks Irish all the time. Not easy to find! And ironically, in many of those places where you really do find compact Irish-speaking areas, the language is not considered to be very prestigious. On the top of it, as “the differences between dialects are considerable” (Wikipedia) you’ll be sure to end up one day not understanding people you have set out to meet - even if you have acquired reasonable talking skills. The misfortune of today’s Irish learner is that you don’t really find “villages” where Irish is being spoken – like you would find everywhere in China a “monolingual village” to practice your Chinese... Irish is mainly spoken in the family, in the pub, between native speakers doing their daily work (mostly in the field!) and between intellectuals in Dublin... (If somebody thinks I am exaggerating again, please give me a hint and I’ll elaborate on details).

There was an excellent several-page article in the weekly Irish newspaper Foinse (“The Source”) January 5, 2003 with an updated statistical survey of Gaeltacht areas - in Irish. Searching for native speakers you’ll need something like this. The information you might glean from various tourist guides including heritage centre pamphlets is highly insufficient - sometimes even perverting reality.

Good luck to _Jocaste_!
 ​


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## Jocaste

Spectre scolaire said:


> Good luck to _Jocaste_!
> ​


Luck and mostly tablets !  It's gonna be hard 
Thank you anyway  : a friend of mine owns "_Learning Irish_" ^^ J'ai de la chance sur ce coup-là


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