Rob,

Have you had a look at Memrise?

There's a course on it supporting Buntús Cainte, and the speakers are, I believe, native. I do lots of repetition, just listening and repeating single words, phrases and sentences. I'm a beginner too, and it's just too overwhelming for me to be concentrating on 'is this is a slender sound, or is it a broad sound?' at the same time as learning a vocabulary, word order, when to lenite and when not to. The very thought is making me dizzy.

Aside from the issue that Duolingo has with pronounciation, I found it very demotivating. Just a personal thing - I prefer Memrise's reward method, and I doubt I would have progressed so far if I were using Buntús Cainte at home, with no other support.

There are other courses on it too (but I'd pick and choose carefully), and its free.

There's 'Irish for Beginners' (book and CD) published by Usborne - ISBN 978 0 7460 4643 2 that you might like to have a look at - if you go to their website you can see some sample pages as well as listen to a sample from the CD. I understand that the two of them are both native speakers, though obviously the man who does the presenting isn't.

Irish pronunciation is quite difficult, at least I found it so.
Guides tend to come in three forms:

(a) Very vague and based on English and often the authors particular kind of English.
(b) Linguistic, but a bit simplified, e.g. there is more than one broad r for example.
(c) The "Just listen and you'll get it, sure native speakers didn't need books" crowd.

(c) is very common in Ireland, although the people who say it are either:
(i) Non-native, but knew the language from a young age.
(ii) People with excellent ears, i.e. a naturally superb mimic.
(Native speakers themselves have not said this to me personally, they either don't say anything or have recommended a book to me.)

So given this, if you want to improve beyond a certain point, you kind of have to get a bit technical.


IPA isn't really too difficult, it's just a matter of memory like galaxyrocker said. Take a look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet#Consonants
Basically the consonants are arranged left to right based on how far back in the mouth you make them. Right is further back.
Then, top to bottom based on how much you close off the flow of air. There is two in each box, one where you turn on your voice and one where you don't.

For the top to bottom ranking, the most closed off are nasals and the least closed off are approximants.
Then there are flaps (tapping the mouth with the tongue) and thrills (tapping the mouth with the tongue multiple times quickly). They are just listed separately.
Then there are the L sounds (laterals being the technical name). With an L sound (try saying "ala") the air comes out over the sides of your tongue, so there is another ranking based on how closed off the air is (lateral fricative, lateral approximant).
Finally there are lateral flaps, which are just lateral (an L) where the sides of your tongue tap the roof of your mouth during the L. A combination of a lateral and a flap basically.

Now, with Irish you will notice that the consonants have a little 'j' or a little 'ɣ' above them.
The 'j' in essence means that you are raising the tongue, almost as if you were making a y along with the letter. Think of the difference between the 'k' in King and the one in Thank you. You'll notice in the second your tongue hits a different position, that is what the 'j' denotes.

The 'ɣ' means you raise the back of your tongue when you make the sound, but that requires a bit of practice.

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

Thanks, will definitely take a look!


I had taken a look at it, and now again. It's a very confusing site. I searched "Irish," and it popped up a slew of courses and I had no clue what to do haha Maybe I will just join the site and start on some of them and see what the reward system is that you speak of.


I didn't quite have enough money in Paypal for a copy of this one, so I grabbed a $4.48 copy of Irish: A Complete Course for Beginners. From reading the reviews, it sounds like it is very basic and mainly phrase driven, however. I already spent much of my Paypal on a CD that I saw recommended (on this forum I believe) called A Stór Is A Stóirín. It supposedly has children and adult songs in Irish, along with lyrics included. I think that album will be more helpful to me right now as compared to when I tried listening to TG4 for a bit, and only making out a word here and there like "uisce," "cailín," "agus," and perhaps a couple of others that don't come immediately to mind (though just hearing Irish being used in newscasts is probably helpful in its own right).


On the "get a bit technical" bit, I think that's how I HAVE to approach it from the beginning. I remember once in an algebra class I was taking, there was something we were working on. The teacher told us how to get to the answer, and I said, "okay, I understand HOW to get the answer, but I don't understand how it works, and why it works out in that manner." The teacher responded, "Well, just know that it works." Needless to say, I didn't do very well in that class after that, as there was a lot that I just didn't understand WHY things worked, as opposed to just getting the answer correct.

Also, thanks for the explanation on those two symbols! They make more sense now : )

If and when you have the means to get it, I would recommend the book and CD Rabhlaí Rabhlaí published by Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne and compiled by Roibeard Ó Cathasaigh. If you're interested in Irish learning materials for children, there a post specifically for that on the forum.

If you search for the Irish courses, list them by popularity, the course called 'Beginners Irish: First step to spoken Irish' (5th, in order) is the Buntús Cainte course, with full audio.

I've just been on and seen that 'Now You're Talking' is on there too (also available on YouTube, but maybe a different series?). Click on whichever course looks of interest to you, there might be a basic registration process, and away you go. If you don't like a course you can delete it and go look for another one.

They seem to range from very basic lessons (colours, or the weather, for instance), right up to some very heavy-looking advanced courses.

Take a look.

Started this one this morning! I like how it has a few basic words and then builds on those ones in simple statements with 'tá sé' and 'tá sé an-'. Even with this first section I'm on, it feels like some good building blocks so far. Thanks!

I'm glad you like it. It doesn't get much mention, but I think it's the best thing since sliced bread.

Once you've finished the first 20 lessons, click the link on it's home page to take you to the next 20.

You'll probably want to run something else alongside it after a while to get into the grammar side of things. There are a lot of choices, both on Memrise and off.

But that's for another day......