I'm Livi and grew up on the eastern coast of Ireland. I had Irish ... well, let me put it brutally: shoved down my throat at school for twelve years - it wasn't till the year before my final exams that I realised that the Aimsir Láithreach was the future tense. Our Irish teacher decided to re-teach us the language as a language and we learned more in one month than we had in the decade previously. Prior to that, we had been taught by teachers from the west of Ireland, who seemed to think that we all had an innate knowledge of Irish Gaelic and were only being stubborn by not speaking it So most of my childhood was spent doing grammar drills and never actually knowing what I was saying. Sad, isn't it?

In any case, I became a language teacher and re-discovered Irish as an adult and began to appreciate it as a beautiful language as opposed to an instrument of torture I'm still struggling to find a modern book for beginners - because I'd really like to go back to the very beginning and start again. I've realised that I still have a lot of passive knowledge and would like to activate it. So if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be grateful...

Welcome, Livi! Your story is one we've heard from a lot of people.

There are some excellent beginners books out there, and we can certainly point you in their direction. Do you prefer to focus on a particular dialect?

Here's one I used with a class I taught last year:

http://www.enjoyirish.ie/

There are books that are more focused on the nuts and bolts of grammar too, if that's more your thing.

Welcome to the forum!

Redwolf

Go raibh maith agat, Redwolf!

I'm not surprised you've heard this from a lot of people - most people of my age group that I know finished school with something ranging from an indifference towards to an abiding hatred of the Irish language. As a language teacher, I can only shake my head at the methods employed to teach children the language. Effectively, for many Irish people, it is a foreign language and certainly the stone-wall-headscarf-wearing-currach-rowing culture of the Gaeltacht areas was a foreign culture to someone growing up within 'the Pale' in the 1980s. I like the way the language is being taught at school now - as a living language. They read texts about young people going to discos and swapping telephone numbers. Twittering as Gaeilge. I remember when we were at secondary school we had to read a short story (?) about some guy rowing from an island somewhere to a market in Galway (?) and his wee little boat capsized killing his two pigs (? - the details are sketchy. A currach and pigs were involved.) To our Irish teacher's consternation (teacher in question was from Clare), we howled with laughter - the whole class erupted at the absurdity of it (absurdity = the cruel thinking of a bunch of 14-year-olds of the 'Beverley Hills 91210' generation!) It was as culturally removed from us as the plastic teenagers in Hollywood and considerably less attractive - kind of hick and decidedly uncool It's so refreshing to see that modern language teaching is adapting to the realities of modern Ireland.

Anyway, I have O'Siadhail's book and I really don't like it (she ducks to dodge the stones and bricks). Ironically, I've been asked to teach basic Irish lessons to Germans - kind of one-off short conversation classes (we don't get beyond "Is mise ..." and "Conas atá tú?") but it's a lot of fun and runs parallel to my own re-discovery of the language I'm not interested in any particular dialect, I'd probably prefer to start with standard Irish because I'm guessing it's closest to what I learned at school - I have no particular ties to any Gaeltacht area that would make me more interested in one dialect or another.

O'Siadhail is pretty grammar-heavy. Some people love it...others don't.

Another excellent book for learners (one that I and other teachers in this area have used extensively) is "Now You're Talking" (which was sold in the U.S. as "Irish On Your Own"):

http://www.siopagaeilge.ie/products/C%F ... uct1-1.htm

Most texts lean slightly toward one dialect or another, which can be confusing to beginners. When I teach, I tell the students up front that my Irish has a slight tilt toward Ulster, because my teachers have all been from Ulster, but that I can find them information on other dialects as we go along, if they have a strong interest in one or the other. So-called standardized Irish doesn't really exist as a living language, and ultimately all learners have to get comfortable with the way things work in other dialects.

In the final analysis, it's all about communication, and so long as learners recognize that there are regional differences in the language, they get along fine. For example, I taught my class that I usually say "how are you?" as "cad é mar atá tú?" but that a person from Connemara would be more likely to say "cén chaoi a bhfuil tú?" and a person from Cork would be more likely to say "conas 'tá tú?"...but that the important thing is that we'd all understand what was meant.

Another analogy I use is to remind them that English has many more dialect variations than Irish, and yet we still all manage to understand one another.

Redwolf

Thanks for the book tips. I just find O'Siadhail a bit stodgy - and I'm a grammar teacher! It's a good reference but it makes me laugh to learn words like 'farmer' and 'bull' in chapter 2. I guess I'd like something more relevant to modern life in my Ireland and use O'Siadhail as a reference work. And I can cope with dialects, having had teachers from Mayo, Clare and Donegal at some point or other - I'm sure they've all left their mark in some way! Anyway, time to whip out the plastic and look at a few books.

The irony is that people who really lead a modern life are moving out into the country and working over the internet. Come and stay at my place and we'll soon see if "farmer" and "bull" aren't useful vocabulary.

Ó Siadhail may start off "country" but by the end you have a fairly complete grammar and vocabulary for discussing religion, politics and literature. I've not found another textboook that comes even close. But as Redwolf said, it's not for everyone. Good luck in your search.

Irish is only as backward or modern as you yourself make it.

_________________
Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

Can I also suggest that you watch children's programmes as Gaeilge if you can access them. If you are based in Ireland, TG4 for children Cúla 4 is the business. Because they are geared towards a younger audience, they tend to speak more slowly and so it can be helpful to adult learners. You may not learn the vocab of the economic downturn but it will increase your confidence and make you realise how much you remember from school.

_________________

Hallo Saoirse,
Thanks for your suggestion, that's a great idea - I don't live in Ireland most of the year, so I've been using the limited access RTE player to look at stuff that isn't blocked due to copyright issues (Awww! ). There was a nice series called 'Scannán' (I think) that had English subtitles and I really loved it. Aside from the fact that a lot of the programmes were really interesting, I had a lot of "A-ha" moments when I heard words or phrases that I thought I knew and the English translation confirmed that I did One of the things that really helped me learn German, French and Italian was watching films in the target language with English/foreign language subtitles, or the other way around - watching English films with subtitles in the foreign language (amazing how many phrases and chunks you pick up that way.) But I don't know if there are (m)any films subtitled in Irish, or in Irish and subtitled in English?? I guess I'll have to use my Google-fu and find out.

Hi Breandán,
I'm not sure whether I agree with "Irish only being as backward or modern as you make it". I think it has to do with how relevant it is or can be made to your life. I guess one of the reasons why the traditional teaching of Irish at schools failed was its irrelevance to many learners' lives. Thankfully, attitudes to language learning have changed, and language learning is now influenced and driven by the Common European Framework for the Teaching and Learning of Languages - encouraging people to speak, communicate, speak from the beginning by giving them a functional syllabus and using grammar as the means to an end. Of course, a lot of people have complained about falling standards in language learning because the emphasis no longer sits firmly on a grammatical syllabus and to an extent I agree, in the sense that in order to master a language, one really has to be fluent (communicating fluently) and accurate (grammatically correct). However, it is refreshing to approach language from the point of view that you want your learners to start talking and expressing themselves straightaway. It certainly embodies the 'Is fearr Gaeilge briste ...' mentality in a good way.

While I live in an area with both farmers and bulls, the farmers don't speak Gaeilge and I'm not sure about the bulls, but I don't think they're bilingual either As a mostly-urban dweller, there's absolutely no harm in knowing words like this but I would like a book in addition to O'Siadhail that activates my spoken language. Goodness knows, if I'm ever to pluck up the courage to actually speak to someone in Irish, I'd love to feel confident that I'm not making a total wally of myself. You see, I fall into the very trap that I warn students about constantly - just have the courage to speak. Don't worry about mistakes. And O'Siadhail hits the solid grammatical training that someone like me wants to master and won't open her mouth till she thinks it's "correct" (to hell with Gaeilge briste and all the rest. ). So I need something else to balance this out or re-learning the language as a living language (as opposed to a school-book language) will be in vain.

A general wondering and not to be interpreted as an attack on O'Siadhail's book:
when I sat down to reply, I started thinking about the O'S. book - I guessed it was written in the late 1970s and upon checking the inside cover, I discovered that it was published in 1980 (i.e. written and developed in the late 1970s.) It's dated - and nothing wrong with that, I'm sure a lot of language teachers and learners feel that "if it's not broke, don't fix it." I wonder, though, if any attempt has ever been made to update the book? I work in educational publishing and many successful language learning series are re-vamped every ten years to adapt slightly to the needs of that particular time. O'Siadhail's book is now over 30 years old and as far as I can see, it hasn't been changed at all. I have a 1995 edition, but I just checked Amazon and what's being sold seems to be the same book. Clearly, from a publisher's point of view, it's much easier and cheaper to stick a new cover on it every few years and re-market it, but I wonder if anyone has ever considered re-working it to keep all its good bits and re-do parts of it that could be successfully modernised without undoing its essence?

Livi, I've split this interesting dicussion off into its own thread as it is outside the scope of the introduction thread it was in. Hope you don't mind.

I've always taught from Ó Siadhail with supplementary material from Buntús Cainte, Teach Yourself Irish and others.

Buntús Cainte is good for conversation, but if Learning Irish is "dated" then Buntús Cainte moreso as it uses base-12 pounds and pence - Ireland has been through two currency changes and an upgrade to the metric system since then. However, some of the basic elements of conversation have remained the same and are timeless. It's still a great text for conversation, especially for people who don't like grammar.

Teach Yourself Irish has gone through many iterations, each time a different course by a different teacher. The Ó Sé/Sheils version was kind of a mixture of contemporary material and semi-grammatical explanations, an interesting introduction to the language and good as supplementary material but on its own too shallow and sketchy.

One of my Japanese teachers once pointed out that any text that tries to be too contemporary will inevitably be out of date by the time it is published anyway. Textbooks will always contain yesterdays news.

The grammar on the other hand doesn't change. In the end it is how you supplement the old textbooks that counts. I always explain to my students the standard forms of the grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation where Cois Fhairrge dialect differs in parallel to teaching from that book. That's why I have set up a separate corner for the book here on this site - so that we can help people through an excellent but difficult textbook and put it into context in relation to the standard and to other dialects.

Here we can provide the living supplementary material (and links thereto) that even the best textbook cannot provide.

Breandán

_________________
Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

Hi Breandán,
Thanks a million - go raibh míle maith agat - for all your helpful suggestions. It's good to have recommendations from people who know the material well.



This is true. However, in the 30 years since the book was written, huge strides have been made in understanding how people process and learn language and many modern textbooks take this experience into account. It's not so much to do with whether words like "Internet" or "economic downturn" are included, or what the currency is, but rather how the writer approaches teaching the language and understands how the learner learns. Just as a BTW, I have an M.Ed. with a specialisation in foreign language learning, in particular English, I train other language teachers (teaching methodology to teachers of all languages), I write language-learning textbooks and articles on methodology, I teach English as a Foreign Language, occasionally German and - God help us all - the odd Gaelic class now and again.

So how we learn languages is not only my bread-and-butter, it's one of my ... passions. The grammar remains the same, but how you present it and practise it has changed. O'Siadhail's book is typical of its time - I have similar books in various languages on my bookshelf. I even have one in Swedish that has an almost-identical approach, except you learn words like 'king', 'island' and 'palace' in chapter one, rather than 'farmer' and 'bull' (clearly in Sweden in 1975, these words would've been very handy. They're probably not useless nowadays either.) I think O'Siadhail's book makes a good reference book, but I am sure it could be made into a better and more accessible textbook. In fact, if I were Queen of the Language Learning World (and, clearly, I'm not), I'd re-do it along the lines of Raymond Murphy's 'English Language in Use' - I don't know if you're familiar with the series, but it has become the standard in the British English (as opposed to American English) world. It's a simple concept: language presented on the left page, language practised on the right. Baby steps, building up from one point to the next. It's a super reference and practice book, but not used solely as a teaching aid. That's what I think of O'Siadhail as.

I'm not trying to be antagonistic - really, I'm not - but I always approach textbooks in two ways: how can I learn from them and how would I teach them? O'Siadhail is typical of the old grammar-drill frontal approach to language learning. There's no - for example - guided discovery. No recognition of different learning styles. Not a great emphasis on spoken communication. Again, nothing wrong with that: if you grew up in a system of grammar-drilling/translation, you'd probably find that quite reassuring as a student. It just seems like a wasted opportunity to draw upon what we've learned about language teaching in the last couple of decades, you know?

Anyway, down off my hobby horse now. I'm probably an exceptional case because I make my living writing materials for students that take all of this kind of stuff into account, so it's kind of ... sad for me to work with a 30-year-old book that could. be. so. much. better. that you wouldn't have to supplement it with other books.