Customer Reviews

Sengoidelc: Old Irish for Beginners (Irish Studies)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First, a couple of admissions:
1. I'm not an academic; I have no professional qualifications to judge this book. But I enjoy learning languages, and I know what works for me.
2. I'm only up to lesson 9.

Several years ago, I took a stab at learning Old Irish, using a combination of Lehmann, Quin, and Strachan. I didn't get too far. It's an extremely difficult language, and it has an exotic, almost non-IndoEuropean look to it. But with this book, the dedicated learner should be able to reach what looks like a fairly sophisticated reading proficiency in Old Irish.

After a couple of introductory chapters, the author gets down to business with Chapter 3 (phonology and orthography) and Chapter 4 (overview of the initial mutations). Don't rush pass these chapters in your haste to get into the meat of the grammar; unless you have a sound basis in the phonology, spelling, and sound changes, you'll have trouble down the road.

There are a total of 58 lessons - each lesson introduces several grammatical points. Most lessons have extensive exercises, and translation work from English to Old Irish, and vice-versa. Best of all, the answers to the exercises and translation sentences are provided in the rear of the book.

If you enjoy the intellectual challenge of learning an ancient language, you'll love this book. And it will probably give you that enjoyment for the better part of a year - there's that much material packed into this book. Just a great, great book. It won't make the learning of Old Irish easy (nothing can do that). But it makes it accessible and do-able, if you've got the patience and perseverence.

A nice touch - there are dozens of whimsical little drawings of sheep scattered throughout the book. I don't know what prompted the author to put them in, put I'm glad he did. And you will be, too.

This is THE book for learning Old Irish, period. Old Irish is a notoriously forbidding language, probably the most difficult of all the older Indo-European languages. Stifter makes it come alive, through his mix of detailed yet clear grammatical explanations, translation exercises, and quirky humor (gotta love those sheep cartoons!) As an Indo-Europeanist, I wish I had had such a textbook when I first studied Old Irish, instead of having to slog my way through Quin's workbook like the last three generations of students ("The hero hit the two birds in the two trees with his sword"...)
Perfect for those interested in Celtic and Indo-European languages or medieval Irish literature!

I've been studying Old Irish, with varying degrees of diligence, for over two years and I find this textbook to be the most helpful of all. Not only does David Stifter present the material in a logical manner, building gradually and explaining each step thorough, but he explains each of the rather esoteric grammatical terms commonly used for this complex language, a great help for someone not an accomplished scholar of linguistics.

A few things that I particularly appreciate: early introduction of a few bits of poetry to give a sense of the rewards of studying this beautiful language, the easy to read layout of the book, and the bits of humor contained in the small drawings of sheep, especially the one with a grimace subtitled "A sheep after having tried to master Old Irish orthography."

Old Irish is never going to be an easy subject and taking it one piece at a time, learning each one thoroughly before going on to the next, is the best method I've come up with. "Sengoidelc" is of great help on the journey.

I'm writing this as someone with a lay (but serious) interest in Old Irish, who learned Modern Irish as a child, and has a reasonable fluency. I've also studied several languages over the years, ranging from Breton to Arabic. I've read the Lehmanns' book too, and compared to this, it feels like it's from another century. Oh wait, it IS from another century!

Seriously, this is a modern approach to Old Irish. I found it generally accessible, and the charts showing reconstructions all the way back to proto-IndoEuropean were interesting too. Where Lehmann provides a numbered list of sentences to be parsed or translated, during which the grammar is apparently expected to be assimilated by osmosis, Stifter provides actual prose describing the grammar.

The main shortcoming in my view, is that there's little comparison with modern Irish. What amazed me was how much of the structure has been preserved over the centuries, from VSO word-order to mutations to personal prepositions; even much of vocabulary has changed relatively little. Although students who are completely new to any form of Irish will find it strange in its grammar and orthography, much of that strangeness hasn't changed all that much over time, and will be perfectly familiar to anyone acquainted with modern Irish.

Personally I would have found it helpful to highlight the aspects that have REALLY changed or disappeared over the intervening millennium (e.g., deponent forms, dual forms, etc.) After all, as fascinating a link as Old Irish is to our ancient European roots, it's also the relative of modern Irish, which is still a living spoken language. I realise that this would satisfy a minor fraction of the readership, but it's so comprehensive, Stifter might have included it. Maybe in a future edition?

This is an excellent introduction to old Irish. It is not subject to the short-cuts found in other publications. Grammer, syntax etc. are explained in clear, easy to follow detail and one can lay out a clear pathway of learning without recourse to teacher or lecturer.
Thar cinn! Lean leis an obair.

An well explained and methodical book about the old irish language. Easy to study and very complete study.