Customer Reviews

The Gaelic-English Dictionary

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

 

 

This is by far the most expensive Gaelic dictionary available today. It is worth the price. It has an immense store of idiomatic uses and examples that are found in no other dictionary. The entries for especially important words, such as irregular verbs, are frequently several pages long, and cover many meanings, usages and variations. The appendices alone would make a small, but very useful reference grammar.

There are only three other dictionaries with which it can be usefully compared: the two older dictionaries, those of Dwelly and MacLennan, and the recently published dictionary by Angus Watson. Mark's dictionary is much easier to read than Dwelly's; it has a smaller vocabulary coverage, but the omissions are of words that have become archaic and are now rarely, if ever, used. Examples of usage are far more numerous. MacLennan's dictionary has the advantage of being the only large dictionary with an English-to-Gaelic section. MacLennan's Gaelic-to-English section is totally outclassed by Mark's dictionary. Watson's dictionary has a much smaller vocabulary coverage than Mark's weighty tome, but has a number of definitions which are in some way better, for example "seadh", which in Watson is seen to derive from the older "is eadh", where "eadh" is the now-obsolete neuter pronoun, rendered useless by the demise of the neuter gender. Watson has only two appendices, a table of definite articles and a much longer one of irregular verbs. Mark has no comparable appendix; he puts his extensive information on the irregular verbs in the dictionary entries; he does have an extensive appendix on the Gaelic verb which is quite different from Watson's appendix.

The first dictionary that I use it Watson's - it's small size makes it easier to find an entry, but missing words very frequently send me to Mark's dictionary. Dwelly's is the last resort, when an archaic word or usage must be found. I rarely use MacLennan's dictionary now that I have the ones by Mark and Watson.

This is one of the very best Gaelic dictionaries, and is absolutely indispensable for the serious student of the language. It provides extensive, detailed coverage of the language as currently used in prose and the media, filling the gap between Dwelly's and modern usage. In addition, there are no fewer than twelve excellent appendices, containg all sorts of valuable information on grammar and usage, much of which isn't to be found in other dictionaries or textbooks. If you are a serious student of the Scottish Gaelic language, if you read any Gaelic literature, you need this dictionary. I use it, quite literally, almost every day.

Although this will be an asset to add to my Gaelic learning library, it appears to be geared to the more advanced learner. It came recomended for it's grammer and sentence structure lessons. It only offers Gaelic to English but not English to Gaelic. There are other books better for the beginer that give two way translation.

Why does Amazon have this listed as out of print? It only came out three months ago. Other places on the net have it in paperback, so why not Amazon??? Guess I'll have to go shop there.

Why doesn't Amazon have the paperback version of this book? There are a lot of us out here who would like to buy it.