Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Irish Conversation (3CDs + Guide) (TY: Conversation)

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I welcomed this bold approach to teaching conversational Irish, and don't agree with most of the reviewers who focus on the dialect differences.

While the varitions may seem off-putting to begin with, it is important to recognise we are learning Irish - all Irish. When I am lucky enough to meet a fluent speaker, I don't want to have to say "oh, i don't understand your dialect!" And people who think they have problems with this approach, get over it - you don't know what dialect problems are until you study Arabic.

Also, the reviewer who called for a conversational course based on one dialect - well there is, it is called Learning Irish by Micheal O Siadhail and is the Galway dialect.

But this course is a good additional resource, I don't want to only be able to communicate with people from Galway! When I played the 'standard' Irish cassette I have from another course, I was told by my Irish speaking friend that "Nobody talks like that". So what is the point - I'm not learning to be involved in some standardization project of some fancy scholars - I want to speak to any and all speakers of this great language as it is spoken by them.

It's truly wonderful that Teach Yourself is producing such excellent cd's and texts for simple conversation. Unfortunately, only a few of them have any guides for pronunciation, other than the native voices. This Irish course makes things even more difficult because the speakers on the cd's apparently come from different dialect areas and the very first sentence, repeated by both people (good morning), is pronounced differently. Which is the more widespread form? Why didn't anyone discover this while recording? I guess I'll memorize the one that is easiest and move on, and hope to find a local native speaker. To supplement the basic conversations, you might like the Teach Yourself Irish book and cd's.

I appreciated the only review available on this book since the negative aspect is the very reason I am still searching for a good conversational Irish program/book. Everywhere you go, everything you read, everything you listen to seems to be pronounced differently or even have entirely different words. I know there is a standard Irish being taught in the schools in Ireland so I do wish someone would publish a book/CD with THAT pronunciation/dialect!! Most frustrating...