Gravecloth wrote:
Dia duit,
Mark is ainm dom agus tá mé i mo chónaí i Chicago. I blew my free course on Ranganna a couple years ago, but I'm back now with a plan. I'm starting with Micheal O'Siadhail's Learning Irish and Mary Stenson's workbook, have a pretty decent streak going on Duolingo and am considering Ros na Rún to assist in pronunciation and conversation building. Anyway, I hear this place is the real deal.
Slán go foíll!
Hi Gravecloth! How's it going with
Learning Irish?
If you're finding it hard going, there are two simpler options for getting started. One is
Colloquial Irish, where the speakers use the Cois Fharraige sub-dialect of the Connemara dialect. I.e. the same sub-dialect used in
Learning Irish. You can find the book and audio recordings for free on various websites. Another is
Buntús Cainte, volumes 1, 2, and 3. The audio is recorded by native speakers from Connemara but they don't use dialect-specific phrases.
On the forums here the main complaints that Irish-speakers have about learning materials is about the poor quality of the recordings, e.g. recorded by non-natives or using Irish in a way that a native wouldn't. But from reading lots of comments here,
Colloquial Irish and
Buntús Cainte have the seal of approval. As does
Learning Irish.
But... neither go as far as
Learning Irish does, so in the end you'll still have to go back to that book, but if you start with one or both of the other books then you'll have the base of knowledge and confidence to get you through the shortcomings of
Learning Irish in terms of being poorly organised and containing a few consistency errors.
...or if
Learning Irish is working for you, then that's great. Let us know how you get along and what you think of whatever materials you use.
_________________
Pages I made:
(These are unfortunately offline for the near future, but they'll be back!)