Thanks again for the suggestions. The two hefty volumes might have to be a Christmas present, but it's definitely going on my list.

Cnósach ana-mhór 'sea é sin! Dá gcruinneofá an leabhar thuas, Leabhar Ghaelainn Iorrais Aithnigh agus Learning Irish, beadh cúntas iomlán mar gheall ar na canúintí beaga i gConamara agat.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

I'm currently using Buntús Cainte and now need something more grammar-focussed to run with it. I thought I'd give this book a go, particularly having read some of the comments here. However, on Amazon, it's had awful reviews and now I'm not sure it's for me. I do like grammar, but am worried it's going to be too technical in that aspect.

One of the Amazon reviews:

"This is truly atrocious as a beginners course, if it's your first try at irish this course will have you giving up at the first attempt!!. This course is like a school text book from fifty years ago! It drops the learner straight in at the deep end,describing grammar ,syntax and complex pronunciation. This very technical work is more suited to an intermediate learner with an already developed love of the language , anyone else will never develope a love of this wonderful language. I've read more enthralling phonebooks than this, take my advice and try another beginners course, ANY beginners course but this one!!"

Is any of that fair?

Is there anyone who would perhaps scan and e-mail me the first page of this book, to give me a feel for how technical it is? Or is that a bit too cheeky? It's not a question I'd normally ask, but it's rather a lot of money to pay for something that turns out to be not suitable - between £55 and £65.

I was hoping to use this book alongside a Memrise course that supports it.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me along here.

maidofkent, where are on earth are you looking and finding that price? Even on Amazon the new edition is only around 30 euros, but you can still get the older edition for half that and you can even get second-hand copies.
As I said in my original post, I DO like grammar. But that is not to say this is a heavy grammar tome. Yes, it's very light on conversation, but you have that with your other course. This is small bite-size chapters introducing a grammatical point and then a bit of reading (with dvd) and a few excercises.
You have to be prepared to cope with vocab lists of about 20-25 words in the first chapters. Which, if you take your time, you can easily digest over a few days or a week. The little readings don't treat you like a schoolchild, and they are read by native speakers.
I'm really grateful I looked into this before anything else. It has equipped me to be able to cope with some very enjoyable reading since I finished it!

Hi Nuala,

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong thing?

I've just been onto Amazon, which is where I saw it earlier, and there are two copies, one at £58.56, the other at £66.61. But there is also 'Learning Irish, An Introductory Self-Tutor' at £18.00. Is that what I should be looking at?

I wouldn't say it is very heavy maidofkent, maybe towards the end it gets a bit technical, but you can ask here anyway if confused.

The audio and excercises that go with it are very good though, I think you'd know ~90% of the grammar of Conamara Irish after reading it.

_________________
The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Thank you,

I think I'm leaning towards getting this book now. Comments haven't been as frightening as the Amazon Review.

I like Buntús Cainte too - the next time you go looking for books in or about Irish, may I suggest that you have a look at Litriocht.ie and there are other Irish on-line booksellers such as Siopa Leabhar or CIC. There's a whole section here on this forum that gives you suggestions of books, websites and other materials for learning Irish. It depends of course on what dialect you're interested in, but it's all there if you want it.
(I find that the CD recordings go just a bit too fast for me to take in at one go - though you get used to it of course - and when the dialogues finish, suddenly you're into the next lesson, so I transfer the CD recording onto an audio-cassette where I can put in the spaces where I want to or I can put it on pause if I need to - but not everyone has a cassette recorder nowadays.) Abair leat!

Hi Franc,

Yes, I use Litriocht - I buy children's reading books from them at the moment. (Not that I've managed to read one yet , but I'm building up a library). I always look to them first because their service is excellent and books are delivered very quickly.

I'm not going down any particular dialect route at the moment - it was agonising over this that stopped me learning almost as soon as I started, last year, but I finally came to the conclusion that it's probably more important to just start, and think about dialect later.

Learning Irish is in Cois Fharraige Irish, just so that you know, that is a subdialect of Conamara Irish and a little different from the other Conamara dialects. For example oíche is just í in Cois Fharraige and there are some grammar differences.

If you wanted a nice book to go along with Learning Irish, the following is cheap enough and designed for beginners:
http://www.litriocht.com/shop/product_i ... CA-v_ldXsY

Just a few things to note, virtually any book written by a native speaker will have words you cannot find in any dictionary, or a spelling variation not found in any dictionary, so they can be quite hard to read when you are starting off. Just to let you know in case you think you are making slow progress if your try to read one.

For example Iomramh Bhréanainn - Ón nDaingean go hÍoslainn, an amazing book, one of the best books I have ever read, has about six words in the first two chapters not in any dictionary and about twenty words that technically are, but you'd need a good grasp of Irish etymology and linguistic history to relate them to their dictionary form.

Again this is just to let you know because reading and not understanding can be demotivating, so it can help to know it is quite hard. It's worth it though to read some of these great books and talk to people in the Gaeltachtaí.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal