(If you're thinking "Oh, the beginner-wants-to-pick-book question again...", please read on just a little. I've read all th posts in the threads linked to from Acmhainní Foghlama - Learning Resources)

(To cut to the chase, my question is: what book sets exist that take someone from lower-intermediate to upper-advanced in a single accent?)

Hi all!

So I'm living in Brussels and I recently became a dad. Might move back to Ireland in ten year's time or so, and if we do then I want my kid(s) to be able to follow the same curriculum as everyone else. So I want to get my own Irish up to the level where I can teach my kids, year by year, the level of Irish the national curriculum teaches. So the first peculiarity of my situation is that I have about two years before my Irish has to be above "intermediate", but I do have to eventually get to quite a high standard.

My second peculiarity is that I've a unusual amount of experience learning languages as an adult. I speak my wife's Asian language in the house, I'm studying at masters level through French and Dutch, and I've good levels of some other languages. So I know how much work it is, and I don't mind grammar and exercises. In school years, my Irish was alright for a Dub in an English-speaking school, and after school I never used it.

So here comes the part about dialects. From my experience, pronunciation has to be learned as early as possible and having a coherent pronunciation is essential when aspiring to one day speak (what I call) fluently. I've read tonnes of posts on this site about dialects, Urban Irish, standarisation etc. For me, I don't mind which dialect I learn, I just don't want to speak an incoherent mix. For example (just an example), I would happily learn "Buntús Cainte" Irish, and I know that this "dialect" is a mix, but at least it's consistent (if what I read is correct). The problem is, after Buntús Cainte 3, I won't be anywhere near the level I need and I see no advanced books with which I could continue my learning through "Buntús Cainte" dialect Irish. I don't want to start down a route doesn't go far enough.

So that's what leads me to the question: what book sets exist that take someone from lower-intermediate to upper-advanced in a single accent?

(I said I don't mind which dialect, however, since my learning so far has been in Leinster, Galway and Donegal, probably in equal amounts, so I should give all these preference over Munster Irish. If I've a choice.)

Normally, speaking with a native is a core part of my language learning technique but there's not many Irish speakers in Brussels and I don't have the budget for it anyway.

I know exposure to all dialects is important but I'm not worried about it. For one, I'll be listening to RnaG and watching TG4, so it's unavoidable. For another thing, working on my comprehension of other dialects is something I can do later, after I've solidified my own pronunciation.

I have Ó Siadhail's Learning Irish. I don't like his non-standard spelling and non-standard pronunciation symbols but it seems to be the course that goes furthest and it's very clear about being consistent in its accent. Maybe Cainnt Ros Muc afterwards, as suggested by Bríd Mhór. Is that it? Is there any course that I've missed that's more complete? I should be home for Christmas so I can get other books then.

Thanks! (For reading this far )

If you have no problem with a linguistic bent to the book, then learn Conamara Irish through Mícheál Ó Siadhail's Learning Irish. Follow that up with introductory stories in Conamara Irish like Scothscéalta and examples of speech like Caint Ros Muc, while listening to RnaG's Connacht Irish programs (others will have a good idea what they are).

Since you have no strong dialectal preference, I'd recommend Conamara Irish for four reasons:

1. It's a real native dialect
2. The learning material for it is the most complete, in that one has a book that teaches the real dialect to an advanced level
3. For an English speaker it probably has the simplest grammar (case system is simpler)
4. Largest quantity of native speakers who are easy to find and converse with.

Just note that there are kind of three mini-dialects within Conamara Irish: Ceantar na nOileán, Cois Fharraige, Iorras Aithneach. They're all fairly close, but just so you know up front as you will see some pronunciation differences (there are some grammatical ones as well). The big one being Cois Fharraige Irish (Learning Irish's dialect) shortens words quite a bit.

There are a few good Conamara Irish speakers here, so any questions fire away.

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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

If you can only use books, I'd recommend Connemara Irish too for the same reasons.



writing in a dialect using the standard spelling would lead you to pronounce badly (if you base your pronunciation on the spelling), or to wonder all the time why that consonant is pronounced slender while it's written broad etc.
What are the "non-standard pronunciation symbols" you mentioned ? Are there standard pronunciation symbols for Irish?

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

I'm guessing he means Ó Siadhail's modified IPA. He's probably familiar with the IPA since he's into languages.

LI doesn't used "modified IPA" but a phonological transcription - which is the same, or almost the same, in all publications about Irish - the main feature being the use of the apostrophy to show that the preceding consonant is slender.

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

I would have thought that there would be, if not native speakers, Irish speakers aplenty in the translation department in Brussel.
There might also be conversation groups, these certainly existed in Paris and Amsterdam not so long ago, and indeed they might still exist, so it might be worth looking for them on the internet, or asking on the FB group Irish Learner's Forum.

My mistake. I've seen it referred to as a modified IPA on Daltaí before, and read a lot of complaints about it.

In any case, I had never encountered anything of the sort before I started Learning Irish but I found it pretty easy to understand and not an obstacle to learning. I try to rely almost exclusively on the recordings anyway. So to the OP, I vote for Learning Irish.

The problem with a phonological transcription, is that it doesn't help much if they don't say anywhere what sound(s) does every symbol represent and how they combinate with each other.
For instance, the word "buí" is written /bi:/ in phonology, and if they don't say it, you can't know there's a w-sound between a bilabial consonant (p, m, f, b) and sounds like e or i... (buí is pronounced "bwee").
Learning Irish talks a bit about that, but not much and not in detail although it's very important.

To me, a phonological transcription like that is useful for linguists but not so much for learners because you have to know quite a lot of rules in order to understand how a transcription has to be pronounced. Writing in IPA (even if it's a bit simplified, say, half-way between phonology and real IPA) would be much more useful.

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

Interesting. So it would be pointless to try to actually learn how to speak solely from the transcriptions, whereas with IPA that would be possible.

For me, the main function of the transcriptions is to confirm that there is a difference between certain sounds even when my non-Irish-speaking brain can't tell the difference. So if peictiúr and peictiúir sound exactly the same to me on the recordings, I can then look at the transcription, confirm that there is infact a difference, and listen harder until I can hear it. Other than that it's just a quick reference for pronunciations I sort of know but I've forgotten part of, like what kind of 'n' to use in 'níl'. Of course the IPA would be much more useful, but then readers might end up focusing on the IPA to learn how to pronounce instead of just listening to the recordings, and he might not have wanted that.

In all the other foreign language texts I've read, the IPA or even a comprehensive phonological transcription is not used; the sounds are often just related back to your own language, but with modifications to get it right (e.g. "the Japanese r is sort of like a mix between an r, l, and d; your tongue taps behind your teeth"), and ideally you're learning from a native speaker (this was the case when I took Japanese in college) so you just hear it.

However, Irish learning materials might be a case where the IPA should be used, because there are so few native speakers to go around and teach and make sure everyone gets it right. But there is a wealth of recordings of natives to be used for that purpose. I think ultimately decisions like this are made the way they are because educators want people to learn by hearing and imitating, not by reading. Whether that's wise is a good question.

IPA is a transcription. It's just that, being a system of phonetic notation, it includes more phonetic detail than a phonological transcription, which is only concerned with showing the basic contrasts.

Irish orthography is actually better at showing such phonetic detail than phonological transcriptions. To take Lughaidh's example of buí, the "w" sound he talks about is right there in the word, written u. And it you listen hard enough to peictiúir, you'll hear that brief "ee" sound which marks the transition to the final slender consonant, so it's quite reasonable for this to be represented with i.

So Ó Siadhail's approach of modifying the standard spelling to reflect the actual sounds of his dialect has a lot going for it. Writing, say, feilméara is going to be of more use to the average learner than writing feirmeoir and providing a transcription, regardless of how broad or narrow it is. Yeah, it's nonstandard. But if you can get used to reading "gonna", "'cos", and "ejumicated", you can adjust to that as well.