Customer Reviews

Oxford Pocket Irish Dictionary

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

 

 

As a learner of Irish I have purchased several Irish-English dictionaries. I was very pleased with my purchase of the Oxford Irish Pocket Irish Dictionary (which is a bit bigger than the Oxford Irish Minidictionary, and requires a fairly big pocket). This dictionary includes much more help for beginning learners of Irish going into a lot of detail about common multipurpose Irish words. It also includes entries for many irregular verbs in several tenses. These entries merely point you back to the main entry for the verb, but this is of great help when you don't recognize the main verb from the tense you are looking up. The complaint that it doesn't have pronunciation for the headwords is a fair one. I wrote the editors, and they told me that they had hoped to include it, but didn't get it into this edition. Pronunciation for Irish headwords can be found in two other Irish/English dictionaries: Foclóir Póca Gaeilge/Béarla and the larger version of it called Foclóir Scoile (which has larger print and more words than Foclóir Póca) both published by An Gúm the publishing arm of the Irish Government's Education Ministry. I would highly recommend this book to anyone serious about learning the Irish language in spite of the lack of pronunciation for headwords.

The Oxford Irsih pocket dictionary is one of the best sources for learning Gaelic. Not only does it provide a very wide range of Irish vocabulary, it explains pronounciation and grammer, such as past and present tense, plurals, verbs, nouns, and independents and dependents. It is a very good companion for learning Irish courses, and I found it to be especially helpful with the Michael O'Siadhaill Learning Irish Course. In fact, this dictionary provides more information and references than any on-line course I've every seen. It's probably one of the best Oxford has to offer because it has more helpful information about the Irish language than the Oxford Spanish dictionary has about the Spanish language, as I have also been learning Spanish. So anyone learning the Irish language will find it much easier with this minidictionary.

In response to these negative reviews, this dictionary does have pronounciation tips. It does not have as much information as pronouncing as language courses do, but remember that the purpose of learning language dictionaries is NOT to teach you the entire language, but to accompany the language course. Look in the beginning of the book and see the pronounciation guide, but also take a course, like the Michael O'Siadhiall Learning Irish Course.

I have found it rather difficult to find a basic Irish Gaelic dictionary at a reasonable price, and I'm quite impressed with this one. The grammar section is quite nice, and the dictionary contains a great many words I didn't even know existed in Gaelic. It's very helpful for translating Irish poetry, which is the main reason I purchased it.

Though this review is a bit late, as the book is out of print now, I'll still share my thoughts.

This is not a very good dictionary, which disappoints me. I would have thought that the Oxford University would have taken more care in making a dictionary. And I feel sorry for anyone that bought it (including myself).

As a beginner in Irish I have a few grievances. First and most important, there are no plural forms. Anyone learning Irish seriously will learn that Irish plural forms are not very predictable, thus they need to be learned with the singular form of verbs. This dictionary only lists the singular form for most nouns!

Secondly, and not as serious, it doesn't have any phonetic pronunciation for the individual words. Now the phonetic pronunciation is a mixed blessing anyway, but it does help. I say mixed blessing because the pronunciation represented may not be the pronunciation used it the area. There is no single standard pronunciation for Irish.

Buy this book only if you are already fluent or know everything there is to know about Irish, in which case you don't need it. Unlike every other dictionary on the face of the earth, this one has no phonetic pronunciation guide for each word. There is a pronunciation guide on pages v-ix, but it's useless when you are looking up something on page 427. The editorial review above which said there was a pronunciation guide for each entry must have been reviewing a different book. I was completely disappointed and annoyed by this book. I would love some help on pronouncing Irish words, but this is no help at all.

I'm extremely disappointed with the dictionary. The main reason I ordered it was to get phonetic pronunciation with every word. I read a lot of historically based novels about Ireland and would like to know how to say the words in Irish that appear in the books. I returned it immediately (along with the Scottish/Gaelic dictionary that was equally lacking).

A difficult language to learn, and even harder to master. The letters have a different sound to them than any lanquage based on the Latin forms. However, it is helping a great deal in my quest to conquor this old, and very melodic tounge. Now I just need to work on my brogue.

A difficult language to learn, and even worse to master. The letters have a different sound to them than any lanquage based on the Latin forms. However, it is helping a great deal in my quest to conquor this old, and very melodic tounge. Now I just need to work on my brogue.