Irish: Learn to Speak and Understand Irish (Gaelic) with Pimsleur Language Programs [Audiobook] (Audio Cassette)

Go raibh maith agat!

Overall, I liked the course. My complaints are: There really should be, at least an optional written manual. Seems kind of silly to ignore the written Irish language--it puts you at quite a disadvantage when you want to "see" what you've learned. The other complaint is that it is too short and brief--what's there is great, but it would be nice to continue with about 30 more CD's!

I've noticed the dialect differences with other courses, mentioned by some of the other reviewers. I find the dialect on these CD's to be very pleasant (pretty) compared to that spoken on the other courses. I wish they were all in this dialect!

Overall, I think these CD's are worth the nominal cost. They are nice to pop in every once in a while after going through them, just for review.

My stumbling block came when I was trying to comprehend the huge number of variations on the dialects as represented by the online pronunciation guides and as spoken on these tapes. I was not able to finish the tapes primarily as a result of the anseo and ansin discrepencies spoken on this set. Every other resource I had found stated that "se" or "si" made the "s" sound slender and consequently should be pronounce "sh" but Pimsleur pronounces it as a broad "s".

Well, I probably wouldn't have worried much about this dialect variation, except that I was wanting to be able to read Irish as well as speak it. Know that if this CD is your only resource, you will learn to speak some Irish and understand a bit of some spoken Irish, but you will graduate from Pimsleur not being able to read a single street sign.

I spent a good deal of my time trying to hunt down the words that I was hearing on the CD, and just the simple confusing "anseo" or "anso" (the latter is the expected spelling from the pronunciation on the CD) rendered me lost and confused. I have just picked up Ó Sé's book and have discovered that what was sounding like "an Troid Voor" on Pimsleur is actually spelled "an Tsráid Mhór", which if you see it spelled will help in the pronunciation greatly.

My biggest hurdle came with the 8 ways that Dia dhuit could be pronounced by comparing the online pronunciations with this CD. Again, Ó Sé's book cleared up my confusion with the explanation on the slender "d" and the slender "t" and how that becomes the "j" and "tch" sounds in some dialects. This CD will not provide any understanding of the subtle nuances of the language. If you are an English speaker learning Irish, you will come away from this CD with a strong English accent.

Yes, I want to see what I am learning, not just hear and repeat. A language is both written and spoken, and any course should provide for both. You should see some of the words I came up with trying to write out what Pimsleur's performers were saying on the CD! I am glad to have moved to a primarily written course after struggling through this CD.

I bought the UNabridged CD.