Customer Reviews

Colloquial Scottish Gaelic: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

One thing Colloquial Scottish Gaelic does very well is focusing on the phrases, expressions and idioms that are such an important part of the Gaelic language. However, the coverage of grammar is skimpy and inadequate. The pronunciation and spelling section at the beginning of the book is also quite poorly done; a lot of essential information is missing. In addition, what information there is describes a general Hebridean pronunciation, but the speakers on the accompanying recording have rather strong Lewis accents, and Lewis Gaelic is the most phonologically distinct dialect in the Hebrides; in short, the book describes (incompletely) one way of pronouncing Gaelic while the recordings feature another. I have personally had several students who got lost and confused trying to teach themselves with Colloquial Scottish Gaelic for this reason. So while I would say that this course is good supplementary material for somebody who already has studied some Gaelic, I do not recommend it as a first course for new students of the language.

I'd rate this just shy of 4 stars. I'm a beginner who's been through TY Gaelic a couple of times on my own. This book and cassette follow a similar format with dialogs supplemented by grammar sections. One difference is that this book gives a translation of the dialog rather than word/phrase definitions. I prefer the latter, since then you can use those words/phrases as building blocks while the translation gives you it all at once.

One nice thing about Colloquial SG is that there are multiple, subject-related dialogs in each chapter. Another useful feature is the descriptions of how Gaelic words and phrases work in relation to English syntax. Colloquial is more casual in it's approach to the learner: a positive. There are also various word puzzles to work on. However, I found TY Gaelic to have better cultural sections.

The set I bought features two cassettes, as does TY Gaelic. Colloquial Gaelic features more male speakers (although they don't seem as "lively" as the female speakers) on the tapes than does TY Gaelic. Also, like TYG, this book uses simplistic cartoons in the exercises, which I disliked.

Overall, I was glad to buy this book/cassette set for it's slightly different material, different speakers (accents, pronunciation, gender), and more casual approach than Teach Yourself Gaelic. The two complement each other more than they overlap.

Look elsewhere for a beginning point in gaelic. This course seems to be okay for a person that has some gaelic understanding. A beginner starts like a child learning names of things and people and then basic adjectives. The basic verbs come next and then more sophisticated conjugations.
The tapes do follow the book but they go too quick driving me crazy pushing "stop, rewind and play" to repeat the word. The book gives the sounds of the vowels and consonants but many of the words heard on the tape defy any attempt to construct the same word phonetically as found in print. If you have an apptitude in languages then you could try this method of learning but if you are like most of us - don't! I have studied other languages but nothing like this ancient Gaelic, it has only 16 letters in its alphabet.

I would respectfully disagree with a few of my fellow reviewers. This is a great way to start learning Scottish Gaelic. The audio is clear, and follows the book. The speakers might be fast, but that is how people normally talk. There is no point in the speakers talking slow, this gives you an opportunity to hear how Gaelic is really spoken. If you where to listen to slow speakers and learn to speak like that I'm sure that most native speakers would wonder why. Also you would not be able to understand native speakers, and would be asking them to speak slower or repeat themselves.

Now, I have tried to use Teach Yourself Irish which is similar is style to TY Gaelic. Both texts have dialogs followed by phrases and idioms. There is no true vocabulary lists aside from the vocabulary lists at the end of the book. That is my biggest problem with those books. I'm the type of person the needs to understand the words before understanding the idioms and such. Thus Colloquial Gaelic is on this line of thought, for after each dialog and most readings there is a vocabulary of words (not idioms!).

This might not be the best for everyone, but it works for me.

There's a long preamble, the pronunciation is very accurately explained, it runs later.
If you have some knowledge of Scottish Gaelic, it can be useful to have a rehearsal in little time; gaelic songs and crosswords are unvaluable.
Well, it's everything but an introduction to the language; I would be curious to know someone that has really become proficient only with the aid of that book.
If you don't want to forget your Gaelic, try it

An effective book for beginning Scottish Gaelic, especially now that it includes both CD and audio tape.