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Colloquial Irish: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) - Book & CDs
Specially written by experienced teachers, this easy to use and completely up to date course offers you a step-by-step approach to spoken and written Irish with no prior knowledge of the language required. What makes Colloquial Irish your best choice in personal language learning?: By the end of this rewarding course you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in Irish in a broad range of everyday situations. This pack contains the book and two 60-minute audio CDs.This audio material has been recorded by native speakers and will help you perfect your pronuncation, listening and speaking skills.
245 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 13, 2021
I used this as a textbook for my Irish 101 & 102 (first year first and second semesters) classes.
The book is not ideal for a textbook. It is written with self-learners in mind and the exercises are useless in a classroom setting. The explanations and layout are not ideal for a textbook.
That being said, it is better suited as a textbook than any other 'textbook' for Irish I have seen or worked with. It is at least appropriate for a college level, and at least includes explanations and references. It at least does include (albeit not much) cultural information and context.
If we compare this book to other Irish textbooks, it is excellent. But the competition is anything but fierce. If we compare it to textbooks for any other language, it is woefully inadequate.
The book is not ideal for a textbook. It is written with self-learners in mind and the exercises are useless in a classroom setting. The explanations and layout are not ideal for a textbook.
That being said, it is better suited as a textbook than any other 'textbook' for Irish I have seen or worked with. It is at least appropriate for a college level, and at least includes explanations and references. It at least does include (albeit not much) cultural information and context.
If we compare this book to other Irish textbooks, it is excellent. But the competition is anything but fierce. If we compare it to textbooks for any other language, it is woefully inadequate.
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April 20, 2022A younger, ruder version of myself would probably have given this book a low star rating and posted a review saying it was terrible. A fairer assessment might be that, like all language learning books, it has its good points and its bad points.
As far as criticisms go, it's really irritating that each chapter opens with a long dialogue that is not translated; you have to flip back and forth between that page and the back of the book to find the translation and compare (and the page numbers are sometimes wrong, meaning more flipping). More annoyingly -- why do textbook authors do this? -- a good chunk of the book consists of long lists of vocabulary words totally out of context. Just random words. One such list, from Chapter 10, tells you the words for 'rubella', 'measles', and 'whooping cough'. I've been learning languages for decades, had many conversations in many languages with many native speakers, and none of these words has ever come up once. In Chapter 11, we're told how to ask what color something is. All right. Then follows the inevitable list of vocabulary, including my favorite, the word for 'dark red-purple', always good to know. But on the bright side, if you could work into a conversation that someone's face was 'dark-red purple with measles', they'd be in awe of your Irish skills.
There's info on Irish culture, which is fine, but I question the need to have an entire page on Irish pubs in Chapter 9 when something actually useful for conversation, like, say, the past tense, hasn't even been introduced.
All of this isn't to say the book is all bad - you can parse it and actually find some useful explanations and material in it, and it's certainly better than many I've seen - but there are a number of things about it that seem as though they could have been better thought out.
As far as criticisms go, it's really irritating that each chapter opens with a long dialogue that is not translated; you have to flip back and forth between that page and the back of the book to find the translation and compare (and the page numbers are sometimes wrong, meaning more flipping). More annoyingly -- why do textbook authors do this? -- a good chunk of the book consists of long lists of vocabulary words totally out of context. Just random words. One such list, from Chapter 10, tells you the words for 'rubella', 'measles', and 'whooping cough'. I've been learning languages for decades, had many conversations in many languages with many native speakers, and none of these words has ever come up once. In Chapter 11, we're told how to ask what color something is. All right. Then follows the inevitable list of vocabulary, including my favorite, the word for 'dark red-purple', always good to know. But on the bright side, if you could work into a conversation that someone's face was 'dark-red purple with measles', they'd be in awe of your Irish skills.
There's info on Irish culture, which is fine, but I question the need to have an entire page on Irish pubs in Chapter 9 when something actually useful for conversation, like, say, the past tense, hasn't even been introduced.
All of this isn't to say the book is all bad - you can parse it and actually find some useful explanations and material in it, and it's certainly better than many I've seen - but there are a number of things about it that seem as though they could have been better thought out.
August 5, 2011
A good book covering basic conversational Iirsh (emphasis on Cois Fharraige dialect), but may be a little difficult for a beginner as the texts are not translated and vocabulary is sometimes introduced without comment.
April 11, 2015
Quite a few typos, but fine overall. I should have used the accompanying CDs more, but oh well. It's nice to have one of the authors as your teacher directly.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews