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Teach Yourself Gaelic Complete Course

Teach Yourself Gaelic Complete Course

List Price: $27.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This is a very good introduction to Gaelic
Review: The text of the teach yourself book is a little spartan as the author attempts to cover a lot of subject matter in a very short time. The basic usage and forms of the language are covered clearly but, I found myself repeating a lot of the lessons as new questions arose. The tapes are invaluable to anyone learning to speak gaelic due to the very difficult pronunciation.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This book is very well done. It is clearly the best "Teach Yourself" or "Colloquial" series book out there. Everything has been explained nicely and it is fairly easy to work through. My favorite part, though, is that there is one dialogue per unit, and it usually very large. However, the cassettes are a must, because you don't stand a chance to be able to pronounce Gaelic without them.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Finally, what I've been waiting for!
Review: This book was a very good book in some ways, and yet, laking in others. I liked the pronunciation guide (the tapes really helped with pronunciation too), the cultural and linguistic tidbits about the language, and the dictionary in the back. I would have like to seen the dictionary to have more content, and I personally think that instead of jumping right in the middle of Gaelic conversation, the book should have given a little more basic short word phrases and need to know info like, numbers, greetings, time, names, etc. Overall I think it was a very informative work, and if you consentrate on the language hard enough, this book will give you a good working conversational grasp of the language.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A well rounded, full working guide to the Gaelic language.
Review: This is a great book for anyone who wants to learn the ancient language used by a great many people in the British Isles. The only drawback is that you have to use the book along side the tape to work with the tape. But the book is great by itsself and will take you where you want to go. The tape is also of great help so that you can be better understood by the Gaelic public. It's terrible to take all the time to learn a language and then having the people in the countries your in, not being able to understand you.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: a pretty good learning tool
Review: this is one of the better ways of learning Scottish Gaelic available to most North Americans. If you stick to it, it is very possible to get a good beginning grasp of the language using this set, with a fairly even emphasis between conversation and grammar. It's not perfect, but it's certainly not that bad.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Tha e Math Fhein.
Review: This is one of the most useful Gaelic books I have followed. Interesting lessons and excersizes. The tapes help in pronunciation. Like most books, it can only teach you to read and write. When used in conjunction with a conversation group or organized lessons, this book works very well.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Tha e math!
Review: This is one of the most useful Gaelic books I have used. Interesting lessons and activities are combined with cultural notes. The tapes are necessary for pronunciation. Like most books, it can only teach you to read and write. When used in conjunction with a conversation group or organized lessons, this book works very well.

To use along with "Gaelic : A Complete Course for Beginners," I recommend Morag MacNeill's "Everyday Gaelic" and "Dwelly's Gaelic/English dictionary." You'll soon be on your way with this wonderful language.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Tha e GLÈ math!
Review: This is probably the best single book for the beginning learner of Gaelic. It's a little weak on grammar - yes, I know, everyone hates grammar, but there are some things in Gaelic you just have to slog through and beat into your brain - but otherwise pretty good.

The tapes are also good, but be aware that they are being read very slowly and clearly; Gaelic "on the hoof" is spoken fairly rapidly and the words blur into each other a fair bit. Try also to acquire the rhythm and intonation, if you can - one trick some language learners use is to imitate a phrase starting at the *end* and working backwards, it works very well - because it's important. You can say a sentence with all the right words in the right order and a native speaker may not understand you if you have the rhythm wrong. Don't be paranoid, just careful.

Two other things to be aware of are (a) Gaelic has a number of dialects, which is why different people on the tapes don't pronounce words identically all the time, and (b) culturally a lot of native speakers seem to have extreme difficulty retaining and assimilating information they have no mental "box" for. Get used to being on the receiving end of the "look from Mars."

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: NO TAPES!
Review: This one ain't got no tapes. There is a different version of this that DOES have the tapes...read carefully before you buy!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: good, but not enough
Review: This set is a great introduction to Scots Gaelic, but the book really needs an English-Gaelic dictionary and phrase list to make it more useful for English speakers. The Gaelic Vocabulay at the end is good if one wishes to look up a Gaelic word to find its English meaning, but if one wants to quickly reference an English phrase with the Gaelic version, say, how to say "Good Morning" one cannot. (It's "Madainn Math", by the way) Because of this, I would recommend buying a separate English-Gaelic dictionary as an additional resource.


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