Customer Reviews

Progress in Irish: A Graded Course for Beginners and Revision

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I have studied modern Irish off and on for many years, and I have found that this book is a marvellous workbook for the beginner in learning Irish. However, it is necessary to have a dictionary and a grammar book available as well as this one. This book is wonderful for those people who already have a few hundred words of Irish in their vocabulary and have a basic grasp of pronunciation.

This book is very simple in format. It contains a series of numbered lessons that slowly increase in complexity. Most of the lessons present a few new words, and then give advice concerning grammar in plain terms as well as some lessons that utilise the new terms.

The lessons build on all the previous lessons in the book, so the learning process is quite logical. Further into the book, the sentence structure becomes a little more complicated, but the bits of advice on usage and sentence formation are quite adequate if a beginner has a handy Irish grammar book nearby. Lessons are presented in English and Irish; do not worry about getting lost quickly. This is not an 'immersion' sort of text.

There is a glossary of Irish terms used in the text located in the rear part of the book. Nouns are noted with their proper gender, which is helpful at a beginner's level.

The only real lack of information in this book is a guide to pronunciation or sample phonetic transcriptions. However, that data is very easily found in this Irish dictionary:

Foclóir Póca (Focloir Poca in Anglicised letters)
publisher: An Gúm (An Gum in Anglicised letters)
ISBN: 9781857910476
latest edition: 1992

The Foclóir Póca is available at many different bookshops online, though it has to be bought used rather than new these days. Each headword in the dictionary has an approximated pronunciation oriented toward English speakers.

While this book is not appropiate for complete beginners, it's a great addition to those who've had a little Irish Gaelic already and want to learn more, or for those who would like a review. A little gem of a language book!

The Best book on the rules to Irish Grammar is "New Irish Grammar by the Christian Brothers". However, to really understand what the rules mean you need a good amount of examples which their book lacks. That is were "Progress in Irish" excells. However, Progress in Irish is very sparse when it comes to describing the rules -- so you need both books.

Progressively more detailed lessons that can get you speaking a bit right away. Starts very simply and builds in a logical way. While it doesn't explain grammar, it does lead you through examples and repetitions that will make many of those rules intuitive. You will want to combine it with sound files or recordings by native speakers. Many of these can now be found on the internet, or in one of the other learning sets that include audio. Grammar needs to be studied as well, but many people enjoy how this approach gets them speaking right off.